will for up to$485 million in cash.
Meanwhile,Canadian banks' oil-and-gasreserves are four to five times lower than their U.S. counterparts', but itmight not just be because of loan quality. TD's Mario Mendonca argues it couldalso be due to the difference in how "impairments" are defined — andthat, regardless of the reason, "the next shoe [is likely] to drop"come second-quarter earnings, the FinancialPost reports.
In other U.S. banking news, Wells Fargo &Co. has chosen a site for a trading operation, Reuters reports. Butthe company's push to increase its capitalmarkets business is otherwise "a consistent, slow build-out,"Jonathan Weiss, head of investment banking and trading division, told thepublication, with the company "[adding] a person here, [adding] a personthere."
Meanwhile,subsidiary Wells Fargo BankNA's practice of recording customers' phone calls without telling them ina timely manner got it into trouble with California's attorney general. Theparties have reached an $8.5 million settlement.
At ,"Brexit" isn't mentioned in the presence of clients. According to theFinancial Times, BofA is trying to"steerclear" of the issue — and that involves changing its mind aboutdonating to the campaign to keep the country in the EU.
ADetroit-based credit union has beendeclared insolvent. VeteransHealth Administration Credit Union was and its members, assets,loans and shares assumed by Michigan's Public Service Credit Union.
In the specialty lender scene, sold its franchisefinance U.S. hotel business to Phoenix-based Western Alliance Bank and its Canadian franchise financebusiness to another party. RBC Capital Markets' Joe Morford notes that theportfolio bought by WesternAlliance Bancorp. "consists of well-underwritten, high-qualityloans averaging around $10 [million] in size [with] essentially nononperformers and/or delinquencies." Keefe Bruyette & Woods' BrianKlock estimates the deal will be 11% accretive to EPS and will improve thecompany's ROTCE by 137 basis points.
Broker/dealer Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. and havepartnered up to develop and test a distributed ledger-based method of managingthe clearing and settlement of U.S. Treasury, agency, and agencymortgage-backed repotransactions.
Here's arevelation: Louis Bacon's Moore Charitable Foundation was the client thatAndrew , formerly withPJT Partners Inc.,allegedly scammedfor an initial $25 million, The New YorkTimes reports.
just raised $100million — of which $65million was from new investor Kinnevik. The round brings the robo-adviser'svaluation to $700 million.
The SECannounced that StanleyKowalewski will spend 18 years behind bars, after having been found guiltyby a jury trial of wire fraud and obstruction of justice. He was CEO of ,which was also named in the regulator's 2011 civilinjunctive action.
The SEC alsofiled a brief saying VanguardGroup Inc.'s former lawyer, David Danon, was entitled to whistleblowerprotections, the Journal reports.Danon claims he was wrongfully terminated by Vanguard after he raised concernsabout the firm's tax practices.
Elsewhere inthe regulatory sphere, theGovernment Accountability Office wants lawmakers to expand the 's powers, in light of thecouncil's limited ability to compel action.
Janet Yellen'sspeech yesterday gave"an elegant and very market-friendlyrationale for the Fed to wait for the data, and to err on the side ofleaving monetary policy too loose," writes the FT. The publication also quotes Citi's Steven Englander, who saidearlier speculation on an April hike "has been blownout of the water very effectively."
And CFTCCommissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo, speaking at the DTCC's blockchainsymposium, said that the flourishing of distributed ledger technology requiredregulators to "do noharm." He suggested that his own agency revise rules to make themtechnologically neutral and argued that if blockchain had been available backin 2008, regulators might have reacted faster to problems at Lehman.
In other parts of the world
The day ahead
In Asia, theHang Seng was up 2.15% to 20,803.39. The Nikkei 225 fell 1.31% to 16,878.96.
In Europe asof midday, the FTSE 100 rose 1.71% to 6,210.52, and the Euronext 100 climbed1.81% to 879.07.
On the macro front
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