Enforcement

Morgan Stanley will pay $63 million to settle a series of government lawsuits claiming the bank misrepresented securities it sold to banks that later failed.

While most federal banking regulators use enforcement actions as a way to shape industry practices, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is taking that to a whole other level, frequently using orders as a substitute for new rules or guidelines.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group took a surprise $5.2 billion hit to the value of its assets and set aside more money for past misconduct, limiting CEO Ross McEwan's ability to return capital to shareholders.

Bank of America and nine other banks have agreed to pay about $63 million to settle claims they misled the state of Virginia into buying faulty residential mortgage-backed securities.

Sun Bancorp in Mount Laurel, N.J., has agreed to pay $25,000 to resolve issues connected to the company’s former Sun Home Loans division.

A New Jersey man has been sentenced to six years in prison for running a scam that victimized distressed homeowners and private investors.

Ocwen Financial Corp. will pay $2 million to settle charges that it misstated its financial results in valuing complex mortgage assets, said the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Overlapping missions and jurisdictions are fueling competition between the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission, according to former officials at both agencies.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s fourth-quarter net income dropped 65% because of the costs to settle a mortgage probe.

Goldman Sachs said it agreed to settle a U.S. probe into its handling of mortgage-backed securities for about $5.1 billion, cutting its fourth-quarter profit by about $1.5 billion.

For luxury-home developers and brokers in Miami and Manhattan who are already contending with slumping prices and slowing demand, the U.S. government's decision to start scrutinizing all-cash buyers was more bad news.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has rejected a nonprofit housing group's allegations of racial discrimination against U.S. Bank. HUD found that the bank properly maintain foreclosed homes in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods and in some cases spent more rehabilitating the homes than in white areas.

U.S. lawmakers called for federal investigations into Clayton Homes, the mobile-home business at Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, after the Seattle Times and BuzzFeed News wrote that the company targeted minority borrowers and charged them higher interest rates on average than whites.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has filed charges against three California-based home loan modification companies and nine of their employees for allegedly violating the Fair Housing Act.

Independent mortgage lenders are expecting a wave of consolidation prompted by excessive compliance costs, a tepid housing recovery and the need for more capital to grow their businesses. Roughly 20% to 25% of independent companies could be eliminated or change hands in less than two years.

President Obama's administration, citing concern about the origin of funds used for all-cash purchases of luxury real estate, said it is stepping up scrutiny of transactions in New York and Miami.

Recent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforcement actions against lead generation companies emphasize the breadth of lenders' responsibility for the third parties they expose borrower clients to.

WASHINGTON — JPMorgan Chase and EverBank were released from business restrictions stemming from the foreclosure reviews that originated in 2011, but also face new civil money penalties for their earlier violations of those restrictions, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Tuesday.

All servicers that are part of the national mortgage settlement — except Ocwen Financial — passed metrics testing in the first half of the year, according to the settlement's monitor.

The new mortgage disclosures are not expected to have a large impact on origination volume, but could have a sizable effect on lenders' processes.