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CURRENT NEWS TOPICS FOR COMMERCIAL BANKING:
 Western & Southern sells brokerage firm
Western & Southern Financial Group agreed to sell its investment brokerage unit to Lincoln Investment Planning Inc.
Downtown-based life insurer Western & Southern expects to complete the sale of Capital Analysts Inc. in the second quarter, it said Monday in a news release. The unit it is divesting is a broker-dealer and registered investment adviser that provides back-office services to money management firms.
Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
Western & Southern will continue to work with the combined firm...
Top stock investments by members of Congress
 Stock ownership by members of Congress has been an issue recently after several media reports that were critical of what some viewed as politicians capitalizing on inside information about the financial crisis, including a featured report on CBS news program "60 Minutes."
Just this week, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, called his peers in the Senate to be forbidden from owning individual stocks, saying it creates conflict of interest on several issues. Brown has reportedly sold all of his individual stock already...
MoneyGram raises $73,000 for education causes
A round-the-world relay by Dallas-based MoneyGram International Inc. raised more than $73,000 for education and school supplies.
The company donated $10,000 and school supplies to the students of Onesimo Hernandez Elementary School in Dallas. The two-month initiative kicked off at Dallas' Peeler Elementary School in December.
During the course of the relay, MoneyGram traveled to 10 schools in eight countries. Some of the stops included Pitesti, Romania; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Acapulco, Mexico; Moscow; Pasig, Philippines; and Rome...
Bank of America mortgage chief Barbara Desoer to retire
 Barbara Desoer will retire from Bank of America after her long-suffering stint as head of the bank's troubled mortgage operations.
BofA announced her retirement in an internal memo. The Wall Street Journal was first to report the story.
"I have given it my all," she said in the memo, according to the Journal.
Desoer will end a 34-year career at Charlotte-based BofA and its predecessors. She has served in various senior leadership roles, reported directly to two CEOs and has been listed among the most powerful women in banking...
Yahoo's Asian deal to officially close in 2013
Yahoo Inc. and its Asian partners are working on a deal that is not expected to officially close until 2013, All Things Digital's Kara Swisher points out in an article on Monday.
The definitive agreement centers around selling Sunnyvale-based Yahoo's (NASDAQ:YHOO) 33 percent stake in China?s Alibaba Group and 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, with a Feb. 24 target date to seal the deal that could now be pushed back to mid-March.
As the Wall Street Journal and Swisher point out, it is also a complex "cash-rich split-off" to avoid taxes...
Ralcorp completes Post spinoff
 Officials at Ralcorp Holdings Inc. said today that the company completed its spinoff of Post Holdings Inc. to Ralcorp shareholders on Friday.
Ralcorp shareholders received one share of Post common stock for every two shares of Ralcorp common stock. Following the distribution on Friday, 34.4 million shares of Post common stock were outstanding.
Post (NYSE: POST) replaced Comstock Resources Inc. in the S&P MidCap 400 index, while Ralcorp (NYSE: RAH) remains in the S&P MidCap 400 index.
Post?s stock was down 1...
Congress members' stock ownership includes GE, Intel, BofA, Apple, Berkshire
Stock ownership and possible insider trading by members of Congress has come under scrutiny lately and prompted bipartisan calls ? including from the White House ? for new restrictions and rules related to financial holdings.
New rules are making their way through Congress that would limit insider trades on Capitol Hill
For more information, click on the slideshow to the right.
A report by the Center for Responsive Politics indicates many members of Congress own large amounts of stock, and among the top holdings are some of the nation's biggest companies, including some of the biggest banks...
Northwestern Mutual on Baltimore hiring spree
 Northwestern Mutual wants to hire 40 financial representatives for its Baltimore office by the end of 2012. The Milwaukee financial services giant also has openings in Baltimore for 40 college interns interested in insurance and finance careers.
?We?re hoping to add professionals to keep pace with the strong demand among consumers for financial advice and financial security,? Scott Iodice, Northwestern Mutual?s managing partner for Maryland, said in a statement.
Overall, Northwestern Mutual wants to recruit 5,000 workers across the country this year...
H&R Block gets caught up in phishing scam
 Scammers pretending to represent H&R Block Inc. are sending text messages in an attempt to get their hands on personal information, and H&R Block is trying to short-circuit the scam in the midst of its busy tax season.
Typically, victims get text messages saying there has been a problem with their H&R Block (NYSE: HRB) Emerald Card and giving a telephone number for the person to call to straighten out the situation. Those who call are asked to share credit card and other sensitive information.
Emerald Cards are reloadable debit cards H&R Block offers customers seeking to get their tax refunds quickly...
Capital Hunt: What last year means for 2012
Last year was a great one for business owners interested in selling their companies. Consider the following:
? Attractive pricing ? When companies are sold, they're typically priced at a multiple of their earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).
Multiples in 2011 returned to levels not seen since the start of the economic downturn. Across all deal sizes, valuations for the third quarter of 2011 averaged 6.4 times EBITDA, the highest average quarterly valuation since early 2009, according to GF Data...
Blog: January jobs, Johnson gets infusion
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed workers fell in January to the lowest levels since 2009.
The U.S. economy added 243,000 jobs in January, beating economists? expectations and continuing the trend of positive economic data that began in the fourth quarter of 2011. The unemployment rate dropped from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent.
?All in all, a solid jobs report that is supportive of ongoing income and spending growth and improvement in business and consumer sentiment,? said Robert Dye, a Comerica Bank economist...
Startup advice from a $1 billion venture firm
The most successful IT companies usually have solutions built around their software.
This was just one bit of advice doled out to startup managers by David Jahns of Galen Partners during a presentation at the Entrepreneur Center in Nashville.
Connecticut-based Galen Partners was recently named the Entrepreneur Center?s health care sponsor for 2012. The firm has more than $1 billion in assets under management, and is looking to invest in young Nashville-area health information technology companies earning roughly $5 million to $10 million in annual revenue...
Wangard buys Good Hope Road strip mall for $900,000
 A strip mall facing West Good Hope Road outside a Pick ?n Save sold for $900,000 to an affiliate of Wangard Partners Inc., which is lining up tenants to fill 3,700 empty square feet in the building.
Wauwatosa-based Spectrum Development Group LLC, which developed the outlot mall in 2006, sold the property southeast of the busy retail intersection of West Good Hope and North 76th Street in Milwaukee.
?A lot of retailers today that would lease space in a strip center like this, they want to be out front of a large retail anchor that is going to generate traffic,? said Tony DeRosa, vice president of development for Wangard Partners, Milwaukee...
Money Talks: January job report, S&P gain buoy expectations the recovery is entrenched
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed workers fell in January to the lowest levels since 2009.
The U.S. economy added 243,000 jobs in January, beating economists? expectations and continuing the trend of positive economic data that began in the fourth quarter of 2011. The unemployment rate dropped from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent.
?All in all, a solid jobs report that is supportive of ongoing income and spending growth and improvement in business and consumer sentiment,? said Robert Dye, a Comerica Bank economist...
Database: Bank failures in U.S. since 2001
As the U.S. economy -- and that of global markets -- continues to reel from the Great Recession, many lending institutions still are struggling to regain their footing.
In the past three years alone, 389 banks have failed, including 90 in 2011, according to New York-based Invictus Consulting Group LLC.
Note: Click here for database of all 389 bank failures since 2001.
Of those, four were Ohio-based banks, including Peoples Community Bank in West Chester, which closed in July 2009, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation data...
Report: Risk of new bank failures grows
 As many as 17 Ohio banks could close or fail within the next two years without corrective action or a merger occurring, according to New York-based Invictus Consulting Group LLC, which completed stress and sustainability tests on all banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. More than 750 banks nationwide are at risk of failing in the next several years, which could further extend the financial crisis, according to the report.
Of the 231 financial institutions in the Buckeye State, 17, or 7...
Group lists top stock investments by members of Congress
Stock ownership by members of Congress has been an issue recently after several media reports that were critical of what some viewed as politicians capitalizing on inside information about the financial crisis, including a featured report on CBS news program "60 Minutes."
Just this week, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, called his peers in the Senate to be forbidden from owning individual stocks, saying it creates conflict of interest on several issues. Brown has reportedly sold all of his individual stock already...
Report: Shakeup among top bank brands
 There was a big shakeup at the top of the banking brand rankings released this past week, which included several of the top banks in the Dayton region.
Wells Fargo & Co. jumped ahead of Bank of America for the second spot on Brand Finance's Banking 500, a list of the best global banking brands in 2012, which was released Feb. 1.
Note: Click here for the Top 25 bank brands in America.
The value of the 500 banking brands this year was down nearly $100 billion to a total of $746.7 billion, which is equivalent to the GDP of Turkey, according to the report...
Bank of America, Wells and Chase?s legal woes mount as New York sues
 New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued banking?s Big Three -- J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo -- on Friday over their use of an electronic mortgage database that played a key role in financing the nation?s historic housing bubble.
Schneiderman, who gained additional clout last month when President Obama named him co-chairman of a new federal mortgage-crisis unit, filed suit against Bank of America, (NYSE: BAC) Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) in New York State Supreme Court...
Law firm accuses PI Bank of aiding fraud
A lawsuit filed by Seattle-based Shim Law Firm in King County Superior Court in late January accuses Seattle's Pacific International Bank of aiding an admitted thief in embezzling $322,136 worth of checks from the firm.
Paul Sabado, interim chief executive at P.I. Bank said in an email he didn't have a comment at this time.
According to the complaint, P.I. Bank cashed checks from an employee of the law firm that was part of a scheme by the employee to embezzle money. The suit says that employee, Veronica Pak, was charged with 105 counts of theft in King County Superior Court last fall as a result of the scheme and pleaded guilty to the charges...
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