NEWS
By Eugene A. Ludwig | October 14, 2009
The financial crisis of 2007-2009, has tilted the playing field against community banks and has raised a general danger for all banks that they will face steeper regulatory burdens than other kinds of financial firms. This is not only bad for the banking industry but for the American economy. Regulatory anomalies create economic inefficiencies that translate into less safe and sound financial institutions and less sound credit being made available to the marketplace. Once the financial crisis was at a full boil, the Treasury, Federal Reserve and financial regulatory agencies rightly, through a variety of mechanisms, kept many larger institutions from failing.
NEWS
By Mary Gail Hare | February 1, 2009
As he has done on Saturday for several years, Steve Ricker went to Suburban Federal Savings Bank in Crofton yesterday to get change for his convenience store a few blocks away. "This bank has always met my needs," Ricker said. "They gave me my first mortgage 30 years ago." Though by all appearances it was business as usual, yesterday was no ordinary day. After seizing Suburban Federal the night before, federal officials were on the scene yesterday with the bank's staff, paving the way for Suburban's sale to a Virginia-based bank.
NEWS
By New York Times News Service | July 15, 2008
As the Bush administration moved to rescue the nation's largest two mortgage companies, confidence in the banking sector spiraled downward yesterday. In Southern California, lines snaked around branches of IndyMac Bancorp, the large lender seized by federal regulators Friday, while customers hurried to withdraw their money. As the anxiety spread through the financial markets, two other big banks, one in Ohio and another in Washington state, felt compelled to assert that they were sound.
NEWS
By Laura Smitherman | December 14, 2007
A ruling yesterday from the state's highest court over prepayment mortgage charges could make it more expensive for some to obtain home equity loans, the banking industry's trade association warned. The Maryland Court of Appeals found that state-chartered Provident Bank assessed a "prepayment charge" that's not allowed under state law. The bank had waived $680 in closing costs on a $17,000 loan to Andrew Bednar in 2003 but collected the money after the loan was paid off early when he refinanced with another lender two years later.
NEWS
By Gregory Karp | August 5, 2007
Consumers have a plethora of borrowing and saving options, from traditional banks to online-only banks to credit unions and investment brokerages. And while Internet-only banks can offer the most competitive rates for saving and borrowing, credit unions offer a mix of favorable rates and personal service. They're often a good alternative to traditional banks, which still dominate the market. Credit unions are affiliated groups of people who pool their money and lend it to each other. They don't have divided loyalties; they're not trying to serve a customer at the same time as boosting profits and the stock price for shareholders.
NEWS
By RICHARD B. SCHMITT | July 12, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is considering requiring banks, for the first time, to inform the government of all their customers' international wire transfers, regardless of possible terrorist ties, a Treasury Department official said yesterday. Such mandatory reporting would mark a major expansion of the government's efforts to comb financial data to fight terrorism and other international crimes. Depending on how the program is structured, it could mean that banks would be forced to turn over data on millions of transactions that they are now required to keep secret.
NEWS
By Childs Walker | May 19, 2004
In the not-too-distant future, small cargo planes such as the one that crashed in Ferndale last week, killing its pilot, might no longer embark on such journeys. Or at least, the planes might not carry checks. Backed by federal legislation called the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, banks are making plans to send checks by electronic imaging rather than by ground or air transport. Industry experts predict banks eventually will save more than $2 billion a year through the transition.
NEWS
November 5, 2003
William W. Simpson Jr., a retired banking executive and accountant, died Sunday of kidney failure at Stella Maris Hospice. The Timonium resident was 80. Born and raised in Baltimore, he was a 1940 graduate of Polytechnic Institute. He earned a business degree from the University of Baltimore and a master's in business administration from Loyola College, and became a certified public accountant in 1952. In 1946, he started work as a teller at the old Baltimore Federal Savings and Loan Association, and in his 34 years with the institution rose through the ranks to become senior executive vice president and chief administrative officer.
NEWS
By William Patalon III | January 12, 2003
Maryland's banking sector could experience some solid growth this year, but it may require higher interest rates and less economic uncertainty for that industry to truly rebound, local banking executives and other experts predict. "It's been a good environment for all Maryland banks," said J. William Knott, regional president for Wachovia Corp., a Charlotte, N.C.-based bank with a growing presence in Maryland. "We've seen good deposit growth, and still-good loan growth." Nationally - and locally - last year's headlines above stories about banking scandals tended to obscure what was actually one of the banking industry's best years ever, said Arnold G. Danielson, chairman of Danielson Associates Inc., a Rockville-based consulting firm.
NEWS
By Robert Little | February 12, 2002
Working to clean up the damage to its finances and its image left behind by an alleged "rogue trader" who cost it $750 million, Allfirst Financial Inc. has enlisted a former Clinton banking official with the more staid reputation as a "rogue regulator." Eugene A. Ludwig was once the top banking regulator in the nation. From 1993 to 1998, he implemented broad reforms and rewrote the country's community banking regulations. And showing a quality that no doubt led to his latest endeavor, Ludwig did so while remaining in the banking industry's good favor.