JPMorgan Chase Patent Highlights Risk of AI Bias in Banking
JPMorgan Chase may want to track when its algorithms are making questionable decisions. The financial institution filed a patent application for “algorithmic bias evaluation of risk assessment...
View ArticleWall Street Spreads More Love Outside of Big Tech
There’s a reason they don’t call it the S&P 7. After spending the first half of the year betting big on the so-called Magnificent Seven tech firms — that’s Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google,...
View ArticleRegulators Point the Finger at Banks for Overdraft Fees, Fintech Records
We’ll call it a pair of bank shots from Washington. Two US financial regulators told banks Tuesday to step up protections for consumers: in the first case, to keep their overdraft fees away from...
View ArticleStock Prices in Half-Pennies Are in Your Future
If you cut a penny in half, you could be charged under 18 US Code Section 331 for the mutilation of a US coin. But half-pennies might make life cheaper for investors if they’re used to price stocks....
View ArticleGerman Government Investigates Itself Over UniCredit’s Shock Commerzbank...
When German-speaking composer Mozart and Italian librettist Da Ponte teamed up for “Don Giovanni,” they brought together melodrama, comedy, and the supernatural. When Italian bank UniCredit took a...
View ArticleBofA Bets on Brick-and-Mortar with 165 New Branches by 2026
Bank of America is counting on customers doing two things that may not come naturally in 2024: putting down their screens and driving over to an actual bank to speak with a human. This week, BofA...
View ArticleBlackstone and Vista to Take Workplace Software-Maker Smartsheet Private for...
With $1 trillion in assets under management, Blackstone probably deals with more spreadsheets in a day than most people see in a lifetime. Soon, the private equity giant will own the software they run...
View ArticleMastercard Continues Crypto Crusade with Seamless Transaction Patents
Mastercard may be continuing its crypto bid: The credit card issuer filed two patent applications for systems to facilitate blockchain-based transactions. First, the company sought to patent a system...
View ArticleCitigroup and Apollo Strike $25 Billion Partnership in White-Hot Private...
It’s just like they say: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Sometimes that means entering a burgeoning sector that just so happens to compete with yours. On Thursday, banking giant Citigroup and asset...
View ArticleCreative Planning Sells Minority Stake to TPG
Private equity’s hunger for wealth management is insatiable. The massive registered investment advisor Creative Planning announced a PE investment from the buyout firm TPG that could value the...
View ArticleMastercard Buys Startup That Will Help You Manage Pesky Subscriptions
Does this sound like the life you subscribe to? In a single day, a hypothetical person could wake up, brew some coffee delivered by MistoBox, read The Wall Street Journal, work out at their local...
View ArticleJPMorgan to Open Nearly 100 Chase Branches in Low-Income Neighborhoods
Even in the desert, flowers bloom. The same is true for so-called banking deserts, or communities that lack adequate access to financial services. On Wednesday, JPMorgan Chase announced it will cut...
View ArticleWells Fargo Cloud Patent Could Fight Data Security Risks
Wells Fargo wants to make sure you can trust the cloud. The financial institution filed a patent application for a “cloud residual risk assessment tool.” Its filing describes a way to identify...
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Weathering the Storm: A Q&A with Vanguard on Market Volatility
There was a pandemic, a financial crisis and recovery, a supply chain crisis, and the so-called retail apocalypse. War broke out and sparked a global energy crisis. Historic inflation paved the way...
View ArticleJPMorgan Patent Could Add Guardrails to AI in Banking
As JPMorgan Chase plows ahead with AI integrations, it may be eyeing some guardrails. The financial firm filed a patent application for “determining machine learning model anomalies” and their...
View ArticleHow Clients Can Invest in NFL Teams
Investors can now not only wager on the hottest NFL games, but place investment bets on their favorite franchises, too. The National Football League is one of the last major global sports leagues to...
View ArticleTD Bank Accepts Cap on US Growth, $3 Billion in Penalties After Failing to...
It’s like a Canadian adaptation of “Breaking Bad.” TD Bank, the US subsidiary of financial giant Toronto-Dominion Bank, pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiracy to commit money laundering for criminal...
View ArticleEY Delays New Hires’ Start Dates Due to Lackluster Deal Environment
Maybe Ernst & Young should have hired a consultant before making any promises. The Big Four accounting firm informed around 200 recent graduates hired for its Parthenon advisory division that...
View ArticleMastercard Blockchain Patent Could Make Financial Audits Easier
Mastercard wants to set the record straight. The credit card giant filed a patent application for “transaction processing with complete cryptographic auditability.” This adds a layer of trackability...
View ArticleBig Brokers Beat Estimates in Strong Start to Earnings Season
Everybody’s a winner. Earnings season for Wall Street’s biggest names kicked off in earnest last week and got off to a good start as JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, and BNY all beat analysts’...
View ArticleTrading Windfall Pushes Wall Street to Surprisingly Strong Quarter
Nothing but sunshine it was not. Wall Street banks entered the third quarter amid both rising debt levels and credit card delinquency rates. Then, in early August, they saw the S&P 500 dip 8.5%....
View ArticleDon’t Celebrate the 2-Year Bull Market Just Yet
The two-year anniversary of the bull market grabbed headlines last week, but it also came as a reminder that not all ETFs are created equal. Sure, the S&P 500 keeps hitting all-time highs, up 62%...
View ArticleBlackstone Thinks It’s High Time for a Public Listing Blitz
The IPO market may seem dead in the water, but Blackstone can be forgiven for feeling invincible. On Thursday, amid a strong earnings call, the private equity giant announced that it is planning to...
View ArticleSay Goodbye to the Era of Towering S&P 500 Gains, Says Goldman
Hey, Goldman Sachs, in case you haven’t noticed, that raging mammal made of bronze down the street from you is not a bear. The financial giant’s equity strategy team forecasts that America’s blue...
View ArticleHSBC Announces Dramatic Makeover That Splits Lender East and West
They tried East meets West; now, they’re just doing their best. HSBC, long one of the world’s most active cross-border lenders, announced a sweeping restructuring Tuesday that will cut costs and, if...
View ArticleThe NYSE Wants to Go 22/5 on Its Arca Exchange
Wall Street has a lot of people born with silver spoons, but it may soon operate more like an all-night greasy spoon. The NYSE said Friday that it plans to extend trading hours for equities on its...
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Do Elections Matter to Markets?
Will the presidential election impact the markets? It all depends on who you ask. For BlackRock founder and CEO Larry Fink, the answer is a resounding no. The leader of the world’s largest asset...
View ArticleTrump’s Deregulation Promises Could Spell M&A Glory, Or Not
The deal-making vibes on Wall Street were strong after the author of “The Art of the Deal” won his bid to return to the White House. Shares of major asset managers Apollo Global, KKR, and Blackstone...
View ArticleThe Crypto Industry Spent Big This Election. Now Comes the Payoff.
You bet your bottom Satoshi they’re happy. Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election appears likely to send the cryptocurrency industry into a bonafide golden era. That’s big news for...
View ArticleKlarna Files for a US IPO
If looser regulations are what led Swedish buy-now-pay-later firm Klarna to choose the US over the UK to host its IPO, its decision is looking even smarter today. Klarna, like the rest of the BNPL...
View ArticleWhy Nvidia in the Dow Is Bad News for Dividend Investors
Nvidia’s entrance into the Dow Jones Industrial Average may just be the end of an era. The blue-chip stock market measure welcomed two new companies last week, including the sexiest stock alive,...
View ArticleCheerios Owner Buys Petcare Brand for $1.45 Billion
Snacking conglomerates all agree: Petcare M&A is the cat’s pajamas. General Mills, the packaged food conglomerate behind such brands as Cheerios, Cocoa Puffs, and Bugles, announced on Thursday...
View ArticleWall Street’s Trading Assets Cross $1 Trillion
It’s got to be at least a yellow flag whenever 2008 — the height of the Great Recession — is your point of reference, no? At the end of the third quarter, trading assets at US banks crossed $1...
View ArticleBlackRock Strikes Deal With Banks to Provide Closely Held Bond Price Data
Corporations have issued enough investment grade US bonds this year to break four monthly issuance records. But, if you wanted real-time prices for one of these coveted assets, you might still have to...
View ArticleArchegos’ Hwang Sentenced to 18 Years For Gargantuan Fraud That Walloped Wall...
Bill Hwang, the billionaire behind Archegos, whose collapse was described as a “national calamity” by a federal prosecutor, will be doing hard time after all. Brushing aside the “utterly ridiculous”...
View ArticleAfter Near Decade of Talks, a Global Carbon Credit Trading Deal at COP29
You don’t have to give credit where credit isn’t due. Countries at the United Nations COP29 climate summit struck a deal Saturday on the basic rules to launch a UN-backed international carbon trading...
View ArticleWells Fargo’s Costly Asset Cap Likely to Be Lifted in 2025
Wells Fargo is counting down the days to freedom. Reuters reported Tuesday that America’s fourth largest bank, which has been barred from adding assets to its balance sheet by US regulators since...
View ArticleAbu Dhabi’s Mubadala Capital Takes Big Step Into US Credit Market
On Wednesday, the alternatives subsidiary of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co. announced it will acquire a major stake in an LA-based credit manager backed by the family office...
View ArticleAsset Management Giant Vanguard Carves Out New Wealth Management Division
Vanguard, the $10 trillion asset management juggernaut, invented the index fund, but lately it’s trying to reinvent itself. On Monday, the firm said it will move its $900 billion wealth management...
View ArticleAllianceBernstein to Sue Switzerland Over $17 Billion Credit Suisse Debt...
A major American institutional investor is planning to join a lawsuit that says Switzerland’s time to pay up is long fondue — er, overdue. AllianceBernstein will seek $225 million in the case...
View ArticleNippon Steel’s $15 Billion Acquisition of US Steel Might Fall Through
The $15 billion bid for US Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel may be on life support. The Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) is divided on whether the deal presents a security risk. With a December...
View ArticleSixth Street Gives Affirm a Big Boost
Now another industry is vying to be your banker. On Friday, Sixth Street invested $4 billion into a vehicle that will take on consumer loans from BNPL player Affirm, which could ultimately allow the...
View ArticleInvestment Giant SoftBank Promises $100 Billion and 100,000 Jobs to the US
On Monday, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, Japan’s most famed and outspoken investor, joined President-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where he enthusiastically pledged his firm will invest...
View ArticleWhy Wells Fargo Is Tapping Into Banking Customers
Would you like a brokerage account with that? Wells Fargo is upping its cross-selling game and looking to tap into the assets held by its vast pool of affluent banking customers. By offering wealth...
View ArticleStock Buybacks are the Ultimate Gift for Companies in Record Year
Two more sleeps til Christmas: Those are words that will leave any last-minute holiday shopper sweaty at the brow. Executives at blue chip companies, however, will be sleeping easy. Their firms...
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PE Invasion Weighs on Wealth Management
Private equity firms just couldn’t keep their hands off wealth managers in 2024. With markets roaring and assets hitting all-time highs, there were at least a half a dozen multi-billion-dollar deals...
View Article2024: The Year a Rising Star of US Banking Had Its Wings Clipped
Measured by volume of jaw-dropping details, the Wall Street scandal that eclipsed all others in 2024 came through New Jersey by way of Toronto. TD Bank (TD for Toronto Dominion), the Cherry Hill,...
View Article2024: The Year Europe’s Bank Merger Dominoes (Maybe) Started to Fall
Nothing to shake things up like some Italian bravado. For years, a predicted tidal wave of bank mergers across Europe didn’t happen. In 2024, one CEO tried to change that — he was still going as of...
View Article2024: The Year the Rates Were Cut
Nøh, Dăăă, Bah ouais — every language has its own version of duh. And the most obvious, biggest story of the financial world in 2024, in every tongue, was the interest rate cut. Duh. The United...
View ArticleWinner of 2024: Investment Bankers
In some ways, being an investment banker is like being a surfer — only the waves are made of things like underwriting and M&A rather than water molecules. After two years of diminishing returns...
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