Bolt Financial said to be buying crypto firm for $1.5B; Biden's SEC nominees

TOP NEWS IN BANKING & FINANCIAL SERVICES

* San Francisco-based payments company Bolt Financial Inc. is buying cryptocurrency firm Wyre Payments Inc. in a deal valued at about $1.5 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

* President Joe Biden is planning to nominate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's senior adviser, Jaime Lizárraga, and SEC lawyer Mark Uyeda to fill in vacancies at the SEC, completing the agency's five-seat slate of commissioners should they get confirmed. Democratic commissioner Allison Herren Lee announced last month that she will be stepping down from her post once her successor has been confirmed, while Republican Commissioner Elad Roisman announced his January 2022 departure from the regulator in December 2021.

➤ Banks taking advantage of flood of deposits to shrink CDs, hold rates

Banks continued to decrease their reliance on higher-cost certificates of deposits and borrowings in the fourth quarter of 2021, and the trend is unlikely to change in the first quarter as institutions remain awash in deposits.

➤ European bank stocks sink in Q1, as Russia-Ukraine war impact reverberates

European bank shares slumped in the first quarter as Russia's invasion of Ukraine sparked a sell-off in equities, drove up inflation in the eurozone to a record high and dimmed economic growth prospects in the region.

READ MORE about the market reaction and industry impact of the evolving situation in Russia and Ukraine in our new Issue in Focus.

BANKING

* JPMorgan Chase & Co. is supporting Viva Wallet Holdings SA's plan to expand into business loans across Europe following the U.S. banking giant's stake acquisition in the Greece-based digital payment platform, Bloomberg News reported, citing an interview with Viva Wallet CEO Haris Karonis. The CEO told the news outlet the loans Viva Wallet will be making will be transferred to a special purpose vehicle owned by JPMorgan, making it the first bank to offer financing across the continent.

* Democratic state attorneys general are calling on JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and U.S. Bancorp to do away with their overdraft fees due to such fees' effects on consumers, American Banker reported, citing a letter. In the letter to the banks, dated April, the attorneys general urged the companies to immediately commit to eliminating overdraft fees the same way Citigroup Inc. has planned to do.

* The Toronto-Dominion Bank is targeting to have most of its staff return to their offices in April and to transition to their new working models by June, Bloomberg News reported, citing a company memo.

* Banking industry groups suggested Congress should pass the bipartisan bill H.R. 5912, or the Close the ILC Loophole Act, in a bid to close the loophole that allows industrial loan companies to control a full-service Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-insured bank without being subject to the oversight and prudential standards or limitations on the mixing of banking and commerce that Congress has established for the U.S. financial system. The groups argue the exemption allows risks to build up in organizations outside the view of any federal supervisor.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

* Cryptocurrency exchange operator Coinbase Global Inc. plans to more than triple its employee head count in India in 2022 to about 1,000, Bloomberg News reported, citing CEO Brian Armstrong.

* The American Legislative Exchange Council has put forward model legislation that would provide states with a template for laws to prevent pension funds from considering environmental, social and governance factors in their investment decisions.

POLICY AND REGULATION

* The U.S. has announced full blocking sanctions against Sberbank of Russia and JSC Alfa-Bank, banned new investment in Russia by U.S. citizens and imposed full blocking sanctions on key companies owned by the Russian state. The U.S. has also imposed full blocking sanctions against top Russian officials and their family members.

* The SEC is proposing new rules to create a regime for the registration and regulation of security-based swap execution facilities, or SBSEFs. Among other things, the new rules seek to mitigate conflicts of interest at SBSEFs and national securities exchanges that trade security-based swaps.

* A new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau report indicated that only a few payday loan borrowers are benefiting from no-cost extended payment plans where this type of lending is allowed. The watchdog said borrowers continue to pay for costly loan rollovers, on which the payday business model depends.

* Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., introduced a draft bill, called the Stablecoin Transparency of Reserves and Uniform Safe Transactions Act, that would create a federal license for stablecoin issuers and provide standards for consumer protection.

* Federal Reserve officials generally agreed to reduce bond holdings from the central bank's balance sheet as early as May, setting monthly caps of about $60 billion for Treasury securities and about $35 billion for agency mortgage-backed securities as "appropriate."

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