Analysts have considered Citibank the weakest of the mega-banks during the last year. The successful share of its preferred securities was a litmus test of sorts, which some analysts believe may bring strength back to financial stocks, just one year after prices of bank bonds and stocks hit multi-year lows.

Citibank’s “Citigroup Capital XII” sold $2 billion worth of 30-year fixed-rate/floating-rate trust preferred securities (called “TRUPS” by many) yielding a dividend of 8.5%, in lines with expectations of the sale.

Since financial stocks hit their low in March of 2009, many of the large-cap financial institutions have repaid their bailout funds, investors’ hunger for risk has recovered and banks have given up a safety net of government-backed bond insurance.

Shares on bonds of bailed out financial companies rose on Tuesday and Wednesday, fueled by statements made by analyst that the valuations on the bonds were cheap.

The price of an existing Citibank 30-year bond maturing in 2037 rose to 98.4 cents on the dollar on Wednesday, up from about 95 cents on the dollar on Tuesday.

Preferred securities are among the riskiest investment instruments that bondholders can buy because they are low down on the capital structure. If a bond issuer defaults preferred holders are among a group of investors that are the least likely to get repaid.

This article (Demand for Citibank’s (NYSE: C) TRUPs Indicates Market Approval) was originally developed by and is property of American Banking News. Checkout American Banking News for up-to-date banking news and peer to peer lending news.

Federal regulators are becoming increasingly concerned about what will happen if a second financial crisis occurs and wants to avoid having to bailout financial institutions for a second time. The new focus on Bank of America hopes to shed the risk of the company being “too big to fail” according to the Fox Business Report.

The new regulatory focus on Bank of America comes as Citigroup (NYSE: C)  now the third-largest U.S. bank, has announced significant plans to shrink the company, and has already shed hundreds of billions of dollars worth of assets since 2007.

Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri commented on the story to Reuters, “We are comfortable with our integrated banking model as it exists today and don’t see any likely outcome to the regulatory reform discussions that would significantly affect our ability to keep operating as we are today.”

Bank of America had $2.2 trillion worth of assets as of the end of 2009, according to the company’s fourth quarter earnings report.

Any plans to shrink Bank of America would be complicated by what assets the company could sell.

Earlier in the day, Moynihan told investors and analysts at the Citigroup Financial Services Conference that the company has the ability to grow in the future and that it would only divest smaller non-core business units in the coming motnhs.

This article (Bank of America Facing Pressure to Sell Assets (NYSE: BAC) and Follow in Citibank’s (NYSE: C) Footsteps.) was originally developed by and is property of American Banking News. Checkout American Banking News for up-to-date banking news and peer to peer lending news.

Exchange-traded funds being put together by J.P. Morgan will be actively managed, meaning they will have higher fees, which of course means more revenue in profits. Most exchange-traded funds are passive investments and require little watching over, the reason fees are so low and why investors have been attracted to them; all other things being equal.

Actively managed ETFs having caught on yet, as the simplicity and low cost of them has been what has driven investors to them. Once you get the managed ETFs into the picture, it takes on the flavor of a mutual fund more than what an ETF is. That will be a challenge for J.P. Morgan and other financial institutions who are looking to the fees as a new source of income. It’ll take a lot of performance, marketing and persuasion to get someone to invest heavily in them.

It seems much of this is coming from competitors of J.P. Morgan launching some of their own actively managed exchange-traded funds, which seems to have influenced J.P. Morgan to make the move.

In recent filings, the company revealed they are seeking approval for both types of funds to begin with; both the normal index-based type of funds we usually think of with an ETF.

The index funds applied for would track U.S. municipal bonds with maturities up to 12 year. They will all be investment grade bonds being tracked by the ETF. The other fund will follow investment-grade U.S. corporate debt which is issued at $300 million or above.

In the filing for actively traded funds, they would hold stocks, bonds, unit investment funds and open- and closed-end funds.

At this time this is just a filing, which can take a long time to be approved by the SEC, sometimes in the years, although that’s doubtful in the case of J.P. Morgan.

This article (J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) Going into Exchange-Traded Funds Business) was originally developed by and is property of American Banking News. Checkout American Banking News for up-to-date banking news and peer to peer lending news.

George Tamke, who is a partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, a private investment company, is the man Stumpf is replacing. Tamke stepped down in retirement, which generated the board opening.

At the end of 2010, another board member will be stepping down from Target, who also was Chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo: Richard Kovacevich.

Kovacevich has been a board member at Target for 14 years, and he will retire on December 31, 2010.

Target and Wells Fargo have had a long tradition of having a board connection between the two, and with the opening from the Tamke retirement and Kovacevich stepping down at the end of the year, it ensures the tradition and connection continues by placing Stumpf on the Target board.

“We’re very pleased to welcome John to our Board,” said Gregg Steinhafel, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Target Corporation. “The Board and the company will benefit from John’s substantial banking experience and business insights, particularly with respect to our credit card and real estate strategies.”

Stumpf has been with Wells Fargo for 28 years and was named Chief Executive Officer of the company in June 2007. He was named to the Wells Fargo board in 2006 and installed as president in 2005. He was named as the Chairman at Wells Fargo in January 2010; essentially holding the top titles in the company other than CFO and COO.

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Since the close at the end of last week at $3.50, Citigroup shares have rising as high as $4.07 a share, and may even rise more. Shares exchanging hands has been high as well, with close to 200 million in volume being registered early today.

What is all this about? Part of it was the comments made recently by a hedge fund manager and debt research company. CreditSights and hedge fund manager Bruce Berkowitz made positive comments about Citigroup and the stock started running since then.

The strong response to the $2 billion in trust-perferred securities could have had an ancillary effect as well. That’s understandable with the 8.875 percent interest being offered, although that was lowered for some to 8.50 percent.

Possibly the biggest influence on the stock share run-up was the news reports that the government may be finally ready to abandon the 25 percent stake it holds in Citigroup, and could offload their shares over the next three months. That, probably more than anything, is what has driven the stock price up.

The combination of factors has helped Citigroup get a nice short-term bump in price and distract investors and the public from the negative side of the fundamentals of the company, which are a long way from changing.

Even as I write Vikram Pandit is about to lay out in detail his strategy for Citigroup, with the idea most think to take the focus off the negative fundamentals of the company and transfer attention to where he wants to take the financial institution.

Pandit is expected to lay out growth projections for Citigroup today, and that could seal his fate one way or the other as to his keeping his job. As the numbers he throws out will be watched carefully, and if he’s overly optimistic he’ll be putting himself in a corner which he won’t be able to escape out of.

This article (Citigroup (NYSE:C) Shares Continue to Rise) was originally developed by and is property of American Banking News. Checkout American Banking News for up-to-date banking news and peer to peer lending news.

After the sale Carroll now holds 41,560 shares directly and 501,930 options to purchase the stock. Carroll’s stake of the company represents a fraction of 1% of the bank’s outstanding shares. Carroll’s sale of stock comes just a few days after exercising options for 266,667 shares at a price of $13.05 each. After covering the exercise fees, Carroll had 174,597 shares, but after the most recent sale, only 6,597 of those remained in his possession. The options became exercisable on February 24^th.

Wells Fargo’s stock has risen more than 140% during the last 12 months, far outpacing the 58% gain seen by the S&P 500. Other banks have also seen rapid growth. Bank of America’s stock improved by 241% and JP Morgan Chase’s stock rose by 118% during the same period.

Carroll joined Wells Fargo from Wachovia after having founded Wachovia’s predecessor in 1979. He currently heads Wells Fargo’s wealth-management business, brokerage services and retirement services.

Carroll was granted 800,000 stock options in February 2009 as part of his contract. One-third of those options are vested to him each year in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

This article (Senior Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) Executive Sells $5 Million in Shares) was originally developed by and is property of American Banking News. Checkout American Banking News for up-to-date banking news and peer to peer lending news.

Moynihan added he’s comfortable with this not being considered a “big issue” at the company going forward. He agreed that there is a significant increase in write-downs, but believes the company can handle it okay.

Bank of America holds about $43 billion in home-equity loans where the mortgage is higher than the value of the home. Approximately 20 percent of those are no longer making their payments, said Moynihan, which means the company, in this area of business, is dealing with about $9 billion in losses if things continue on as they are.

Profits or losses in the industry will continue to be driven by how their home lending divisions perform, and Bank of America at this time is second in the United States in losses in their respective unit.

Moynihan addressed the claims that the entire portfolio of home-equity loans were having problems, saying it wasn’t true at all.

He did say BofA is writing off about $1.5 to $2 billion in loans a quarter. The one question is whether that will grow in the first quarter from mortgage re-sets, which are expected to surge through the first half of 2010. The re-sets are required by law.

One proposed solution to help borrowers is for the largest lenders in the country, which includes Bank of America, to write down the value of the mortgages, making is easier for the mortgages to be restructured successfully.

This article (Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) Not Concerned Over Home Equity Losses) was originally developed by and is property of American Banking News. Checkout American Banking News for up-to-date banking news and peer to peer lending news.

“We welcome these efforts by banks to try to begin the process of restoring trust and confidence for their customers and we welcome the fact that we’re seeing banks try to get ahead of the president’s financial reform effort that is now working its way through Congress,” Geithner told a U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations subcommittee.

Bank of America announced on Wednesday that it would be cutting its debit card overdraft fees and would be making up the lost revenue by pricing deposits appropriately and taking other steps to reduce levels of consumer turnover.

Geithner did not name any banks specifically, but said that he hoped all large-banks would take similar actions to lower fees.

“After a period in which we saw many financial companies competing to exploit vulnerable borrowers, it’s good to see banks once again competing to benefit their customers and I want to urge other large banks that have not acted to follow the lead of their competitors,” he said.

This article (U.S. Treasury Praise Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) Fee Reductions, Urges Citibank (NYSE: C), JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) To Follow Suit) was originally developed by and is property of American Banking News. Checkout American Banking News for up-to-date banking news and peer to peer lending news.

The 8.00% notes were priced at 98.320 to yield 8.25% or 453.2 basis points over comparable U.S. Treasury notes.

The join-book managers on the sale included Bank of America owned Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley.

The news of the sale comes after a Congressional panel criticized the U.S. Treasury for the $17 billion bailout of GMAC as the company dealt with a collapsing mortgage market in 2008 and 2009. The Congressional panel on the Troubled Asset Relief Program said that the government could have organized a strategic bankruptcy for the company, saving taxpayers from bailing out the company.

This article (GMAC Sold $1.5 Billion in New 10 Year Notes) was originally developed by and is property of American Banking News. Checkout American Banking News for up-to-date banking news and peer to peer lending news.

Once the center is operational, target is for this summer, it will function around the clock and the multilingual staff will provide service for calls coming around the world.

“This is a great opportunity for both Miami-Dade County and Visa – Miami’s vibrant business community will gain 350-plus additional jobs, and Visa will continue to enhance the level of customer support we provide to our clients,” said John Partridge, president of Visa Inc. 

“Despite tremendous competition from around the world to host this customer service center, Miami made the most strategic and financial sense, given our current operations, while providing the additional benefit of allowing Visa to keep these jobs in the U.S,” added Partridge.

The service center will be located in the same building as the company’s Latin America and Caribbean headquarters.  Including the new service center staff, Visa will employ nearly 600 workers in the Miami-Dade area.

“Visa has proven to be a terrific corporate citizen for Miami-Dade County and a sought-after employer for our residents,” said Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez.  “Its commitment to job growth in our region is a testament to Miami’s diversified workforce and growing economy.”

The move comes just a few months after Visa built a new state of the art data center in Northeastern United States, which employs 290 workers.

This article (Visa (NYSE: V) To Hire 350 Workers In Miami Area) was originally developed by and is property of American Banking News. Checkout American Banking News for up-to-date banking news and peer to peer lending news.