Risk management

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Texas banking regulators issued consent orders against Industry State Bank, Fayetteville Bank and Citizens State Bank, requiring major overhauls of their management, capital and risk controls.

There is a tendency to assume that banks carrying a large commercial real estate loan portfolio need to diversify. But that ignores the fact that many of those institutions have much deeper knowledge of the market than their critics.

A new academic paper dives into the key factors that have caused bank failures over the past 160 years.

As the commercial real estate industry sputters along, lenders, investors and analysts are putting less stock in loan-to-value ratios, a longtime bellwether of risk.

Tim Ryan, who joined the megabank in June, will work with COO Anand Selva to oversee enhancements to Citigroup's data integrity systems, according to a memo.

The regional bank has already seen a large reduction in "criticized" loans, and it expects that trend to pick up as lower borrowing costs alleviate the pain in the commercial real estate sector.

The Canadian bank expects to spend more than $3 billion on U.S. regulatory penalties in connection with its anti-money-laundering problems. "It's easy in a bank of our size to sometimes not look at accountabilities as clearly as we should," CEO Bharat Masrani said.

Cannabis is becoming a big business in the U.S., but companies in the field still struggle to find financing. A broadly accepted way of assessing their creditworthiness would be a huge help.