Barron’s (April 13)
“Wall Street chief executives’ cautious-to-downbeat remarks about the economy on Friday stood in contrast with their firms’ first-quarter showings and their outlooks for the rest of the year. JPMorgan Chase +4.00%, Wells Fargo -0.95%, and Morgan Stanley +1.44% reported solid earnings results, while BlackRock +2.33% posted another quarter of record assets.” Investors who were “expecting market-sensitive firms to dial down their earnings forecasts” instead found the firms “left their outlooks largely unchanged.” This could, however, just ”mean revisions are in store for later in 2025.”
Tags: Assets, BlackRock, Cautious, Chief executives, Downbeat, Earnings results, Economy, Forecasts, Investors, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Outlooks, Q1, Remarks, Wall Street, Wells Fargo
American Banker (January 7)
“JPMorgan Chase bid farewell to the Net-Zero Banking Alliance on Tuesday, making it the last big U.S. bank to leave the climate-banking group ahead of the second Trump administration.” The latest defection “comes on the heels of similar departures last week by three of its peers — Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. In early December, Goldman Sachs became the first large U.S. bank to leave the alliance. Wells Fargo’s exit was reported about two weeks later.”
Tags: Bank, BoA, Citigroup, Climate, Defection, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Net-Zero Banking Alliance, Trump, U.S., Wells Fargo
Barron’s (March 7)
“Today, in response to a campaign by sustainable investors Arjuna Capital and Walden Asset Management, American Express (AXP) became the seventh financial-services company since Jan. 15 to agree to take steps to publish and close the pay gap between male and female employees. The others are Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), Bank of New York Mellon (BK), Mastercard (MA), and JPMorgan Chase (JPM).”
Tags: American Express, Arjuna Capital, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Campaign, Citigroup, Financial services, JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, Pay gap, Sustainable investors, Walden Asset Management, Wells Fargo
San Francisco Chronicle (September 28)
“Score one for public shaming. Following widespread outrage… Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf has said he’ll forfeit his outstanding stock awards of about $41 million.” That’s not enough. He should resign. “The public is worn out by Wall Street’s bad behavior — and it’s also tired of watching low-level employees be scapegoated while top executives get off scot-free.”
Tags: Bad behavior, CEO, Forfeit, Outrage, Public shaming, Resign, Scapegoats, Stock awards, Stumpf, Wall Street, Wells Fargo
Euromoney (October Issue)
“Rates will rise as the Fed begins tapering. “Short-term interest rates will rise to 3% over the next two to three years, with the 10-year and 30-year rate likely to reach the 6% range,” according to Mike Niedermeyer of Wells Fargo Asset Management. He adds, “I think people will be surprised by the relative performance of equities over fixed income. Past decisions have forced a correlation between fixed income and equities but we could now have a return to negative correlation between fixed income and equities.”
Tags: Correlation, Equities, Fed, Fixed income, Interest rates, Niedermeyer, Performance, Tapering, Wells Fargo
Washington Post (April 29, 2013)
Despite the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo remain too big to fail. “At $7.8 trillion, their combined assets are half the size of the entire U.S. economy, and they hold more than half of the nation’s $7 trillion in deposits.” It is unlikely that the U.S. government could ever allow any of them to fail.
Tags: Assets, Bank of America, Citigroup, Dodd-Frank, Economy, Financial Reform, JPMorgan Chase, Too big to fail, U.S., Wells Fargo
