more   http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/morning-scan-m-and-a-double-dipping-foreign-banks-flock-to-fed-1066101-1.html

Morning Scan: M&A Double Dipping; Foreign Banks Flock to Fed

by Heather Landy

MAR 10, 2014

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Both Sides Now: If the folks in mergers and acquisitions look discouraged today, it's probably more than a bad case of the Mondays. A Delaware judge hearing a case about the conflicts of interest that possibly arise when bankers advise both the buyer and seller in the same deal has found that RBC acted improperly when its bankers tried getting in on both sides of a 2011 merger in the health care sector. While there's been no ruling yet on damages, the Journal says the case already is a big blow to banks, while the FT more demurely warns of "far-reaching consequences." Wall Street Journal, Financial Times

Wall Street Journal

You know that $2.2 trillion or so that banks have parked at the Federal Reserve? Curiously, close to $1 trillion of it has been put there by U.S. branches of foreign banks, the paper says, citing research published Sunday by the Bank for International Settlements. The explanation for this seemingly high proportion? For foreign banks, it turns out that earning 25 basis points on reserves at the Fed is a nice, risk-free way of making a small profit. But the arrangement is considerably less lucrative for domestic banks.

Financial Times

Here comes an antidote to consumers' slow acceptance of mobile payments: a new program to be unveiled today in the U.K. will let smartphone users with accounts at nine of Britain's largest banks make payments using only their mobile phone number. Paym (pronounced "Pay Em," but presumably with a British accent) is expected to be up and running by May.  All of that forward guidance that central banks are providing on interest rates could be endangering the global financial system by encouraging investors to take on risk, perhaps with the potentially false belief that they will be warned "well in advance about any rise in interest rates." That's the conclusion of new research from the Bank for International Settlements, the paper says.  The write-up of an interview with New York financial regulator Benjamin Lawsky gives the Department of Financial Services chief yet another chance to sound the warning: the people, and not just the companies, responsible for bad conduct in the industry "are going to be held accountable."  The sprawling, cross-border probe into the manipulation of Libor might very well end up looking like child's play next to the growing investigation into possible price rigging in foreign-exchange markets, the paper says...............

New York Times

Gretchen Morgenson pored through company documents recently filed in Massachusetts state court as part of an investor lawsuit against Credit Suisse, and found some real gems (i.e., "Our diligence process is such a joke") that not only detail gaps in the firm's due diligence in the years leading up to the housing bubble, but suggest that the decision to fight these kinds of legal cases may not be as smart a strategy as settling...............