Commercial banking

The decrease in long-term interest rates this year has helped banks' bond portfolios recover a bit. Some of them may consider restructuring their securities portfolios in the short run, and longer-term changes are also possible as the fallout from last month's crisis continues.

With the acquisitions of CIT Group and a large portion of the failed Silicon Valley Bank, the North Carolina company has doubled in size for the second time in a little more than a year and joined the class of super regionals.

First Citizens BancShares in North Carolina has entered into a purchase and assumption agreement for all deposits and loans of the failed bank, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. About $90 billion of securities and other assets will remain in receivership.

The San Francisco bank said the move is designed to "foster closer alignment with the shareholder experience and signal commitment to the bank and all of its stakeholders." The company's stock price has fallen 89% this year, and government officials have reportedly been working with industry leaders on a rescue deal.

The Los Angeles company says it secured $1.4 billion of cash from a financing facility from Atlas SP Partners after clients drew down an additional 20% of the bank's deposits. Deposit levels have "stabilized," PacWest says.

Wall Street leaders and U.S. officials discussing an intervention at First Republic Bank are exploring the possibility of government backing to encourage a deal that would shore up the lender, people with knowledge of the matter say.

After a bank run led to Signature Bank's failure, New York Community Bancorp bought much of what was left from the FDIC. The acquirer now faces questions about how it will persuade the remaining depositors to stick around.

A $13.5 billion advance to Silicon Valley Bank months before its collapse is another sign that the Home Loan banks encourage risk-taking that can burden the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. or even the system itself, critics say.

Recent clashes over how much investors should get paid when borrowers switch to a new benchmark are a small part of a much larger struggle by global regulators to shift markets away from the scandal-tainted London interbank offered rate.

The top five have over seven billion dollars in total assets as of June 30, 2022.

The acquisition, which was originally expected to close at the end of last year, ultimately took more than 18 months to receive regulatory approval. It is now expected to close on Dec. 1.

Eighteen months after the $2.6 billion deal was announced — and five days before the Oct. 31 deadline — New York Community is still waiting for regulatory approval to buy the Michigan bank. On their joint earnings call, the companies wouldn't say where the deal stands.

Banks including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have pulled back on financing for offices and other commercial real estate following a record burst of lending in the first half of this year. 

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's speech in Jackson Hole reaffirmed that the end of accommodative monetary policy is coming to an end. This is a boon to banks, but only those that have managed their balance sheets just right.

The $369 billion directed toward climate preparedness in the Inflation Reduction Act is expected to reverberate through the economy for years to come and could supercharge private investment in the nation's clean energy sector. 

The rating agency has revised the long-term issuer default rating for PacWest Bancorp and its banking subsidiary, Pacific Western Bank, from "BBB" to "BBB-" and says it doesn't expect the bank's common equity Tier 1 ratio to bounce back anytime soon.

The company says it’s making progress on other parts of its business-model revamp — including a shift to lower-cost deposit sources — while regulators weigh its application to buy Flagstar Bancorp in Troy, Michigan.

The move away from the scandal-plagued London interbank offered rate is going smoothly, according to a new survey of lenders and corporate borrowers. But many customers still face operational challenges ahead of a mid-2023 deadline for switching older loans.

Multifamily and specialty finance loans, which were highlights during the fourth quarter, should increase further in 2022, company executives said.

Alternative lenders, which often use aggressive underwriting tactics to generate high returns, were closing in on banks even before the pandemic. Now they've pulled ahead.