Breaking News This Morning ...
It’s official
Charles Schwab Corp. said it agreed to buy TD Ameritrade in a stock-swap transaction valued at about $26 billion. Both boards have signed off on the deal.
Wall Street Journal
Guarantee needed
“Some of the biggest names in finance” — including BlackRock, Fidelity Investments and PIMCO — have “told the Trump administration that any move to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should include an explicit guarantee of the $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities they issue, which only Congress can provide. The Trump administration, by contrast, says it is willing to move forward without such a guarantee, arguing that it is past time for the government to reduce its role in housing,” the paper reports.
“Though the administration says it wants Congress to act on a sweeping remake of housing finance, it is laying the groundwork to privatize the firms even if Congress is unable to agree on legislation. The administration has said it
More money
SoftBank and Ant Financial have led
What goes up …
The price of bitcoin dropped back below $7,000 after climbing above $10,000 last month “as China reaffirmed its tough stance on companies involved in cryptocurrency trading and fundraising” despite plans by the country’s central bank develop its own digital currency. “On Friday, the Shanghai headquarters of the People’s Bank of China and an arm of the local government pledged to continue to target exchanges, and warned investors
Financial Times
Retreating
Europe’s four biggest investment banks — Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, UBS and Barclays — “have
“Since 2016, large foreign banks have been forced to move most of their U.S. operations into intermediate holding companies (IHCs) that are independently capitalized and stress-tested against their ability to withstand future crises. The four European banks have reduced assets in their IHCs by more than 34% in the three years since they first began publishing accounts. At the same time, the amount of capital in the IHCs has increased by almost 12% on average. The combination of higher equity capital and fewer assets further depresses banks’ returns.”
Accountability
Westpac, the under-fire Australian bank, said it “will
“The Westpac board has to be accountable for this breach,” Frydenberg said. “That will obviously involve decisions that they take about senior management, as well as the board.”
Third time the charm?
“Investors are
“This is the third time the bank has attempted a big overhaul in a decade, following similar efforts in 2011 and 2015. But returns still lag behind global peers such as JPMorgan despite HSBC’s unparalleled exposure to high-growth markets in Asia, which accounts for about four-fifths of profits.”
Bad timing
TSB, the U.K.’s seventh largest bank, “has come under fire after large numbers of customer [salary] payments were delayed [last week] just days after a report criticized the bank’s handling of an IT project that ended in disaster” last year. The new problem “came at a particularly embarrassing time for the bank, which [last] Tuesday insisted it had recovered and moved on from an IT fiasco that wiped out all its annual profit last year."
On Monday the bank is scheduled “to reveal a three-year strategy outlining its plans to move on from its recent problems and return to growth. The plan is expected to entail a number of
The findings on last year’s IT failure “are parochial. Though
“Perhaps the starkest lesson of all from the TSB affair is just how laggardly banks have been in ensuring their boards are capable of overseeing the technology machines that modern-day banks have steadily become.”
Washington Post
Identity check
Goldman Sachs “announced an initiative Friday to make it easier for employees to be identified by their gender identity, including
Quotable
“The
