Now an exercise in extinguishing multiple fires

Fed's Hope of A Soft Landing Dashed

Private Equity Carried Interest Provision Lives On

Banks everywhere are ratcheting up their credit card marketing activities greatly increasing marketing expenses. Credit-card issuers are staying aggressive and shrugging off potential liquidity issues from consumers, despite rising interest rates and potential recession.  

Big Banks Keep Pushing Credit Cards to Consumers

BankerAdvisor's Ongoing Series of How Fintech is Making Lives Better

Remitting it Forward

Bank stocks are often perceived to be a harbinger of broader economic trends so BankerAdvisor wheeled around some of the big banks’ reported second quarter earnings to spot broad movements

Tea Leaves and Emerging Economic Trends

Run on digital assets leads platforms to freeze user accounts, including withdrawals. Bankruptcy looms. 

The Big Chill in Crypto

Rising interest rates should ostensibly benefit all banks taking deposits. But, while large consumer institutions benefit, higher-risk banks have been hammered down

Lending Profits Differ Greatly by Bank

Firm to combine asset, wealth and consumer banking into one unit

Goldman Sachs Reorganization 

Germany, Europe’s New ‘Problem Child,’ Has a Series of Self-Inflicted Issues

Is German Deindustrialization Underway?

National Bank of Middlebury is a community bank based in Middlebury, Vermont that was founded in 1831. National Bank of Middlebury offers personal and business banking services as well as wealth management services through Community Financial Services Group, a Vermont-based trust company and affiliate of National Bank of Middlebury. National Bank of Middlebury serves west central Vermont with seven locations. 

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Younger banking customers are making a decided move away from megabanks like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo for digital banks and fintech like Chime, PayPal, and Square, according to research done by Cornerstone Advisors.

Market Share is Moving to FinTechs and Digital Banks

CrossFirst Bankshares in Leawood, Kansas, has agreed to pay $75 million in cash to acquire the $567.5 million-asset Farmers and Stockmens Bank in Clayton, New Mexico.

CrossFirst Acquires Farmers and Stockmens Bank

The Canadian online loan provider VersaBank has agreed to pay Stearns Financial Services $13.5 million for a single-branch bank in Holdingford, Minnesota.

The acquisition of the St. Cloud, Minnesota, company's Stearns Bank Holdingford, which has a federal charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, would mark VersaBank’s official entrance into the U.S. market, according to a spokesperson for the digital-only bank.

VersaBank Enters US Market 

Celsius Network, a large cryptocurrency lender filed for bankruptcy after freezing customer assets that led to increased customer redemptions following a decline in cryptocurrency values.

Crypto Lender Celsius Files for Bankruptcy 

TD Bank Group  and Cowen Inc. today announced a definitive agreement for TD to acquire Cowen in an all-cash transaction valued at US$1.3 billion.

TD to Expand its U.S. Investment Banking Business and Capabilities with Acquisition of Cowen Inc.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said the company will reduce its headcount by about 23%. The layoffs will be primarily in operations, marketing and program management. Tenev blamed “deterioration of the macro environment, with inflation at 40-year highs accompanied by a broad crypto market crash.”

Robinhood cutting about 23% of jobs, releases second-quarter earnings

Protego Trust Bank named Ron Totaro chief executive officer as the bank continues its push to serve institutional clients in crypto and digital assets. Totaro’s most recent role was CEO at Tassat Group, a blockchain-based tech firm focused on digital payments. In 2021, Protego raised $70 million in a Series A with investors including crypto exchanges Coinbase (COIN) and FTX as well as Digital Currency Group, the parent company of CoinDesk.

Digital Asset-Focused Bank Protego Trust Names Ron Totaro as CEO

Over the past week, the bitcoin price soared 4.9%, at one point hitting a high of just over $22,500. Most major altcoins are recovering too. Rumor has it bitcoin will soon take yet another step to mainstream adoption. People familiar with the matter told Wall Street Journal that Fidelity, the world's fourth largest asset manager overseeing $4.3 trillion in assets, is planning to let individual investors trade bitcoin.



‘Coming To 34 Million Accounts’ 

Last week, 1,668 retailers and more than 200 trade organizations urged the US Congress to pass the The Credit Card Competition Act, which gives merchants a choice in the routing of credit card transactions to networks other than Visa or Mastercard.

Breaking Visa and Mastercard Dominance in US

But how far will the industry consolidate, and how many banks will the U.S. ultimately end up with? Is there something that will prevent America's financial system from shrinking until it resembles something like the Canadian banking system (about 80 banks operate in that country) or the airline industry (roughly 60 providers)?



Are there too many banks?

The macroeconomic outlook in Europe is bleak as supply disruptions and the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine on energy and food prices continue to stifle growth

HSBC warns investors to avoid European stocks

JPMorgan is piloting a platform it created for property owners and managers that automates the invoicing and receipt of online rent payments.  The majority of rent payments are still paid with checks.  JPMorgan sees the opportunity to leverage data and analytics for customers with rent rates, investments, and tenant screening.

JPMorgan Chase wants to disrupt the rent check with its payments platform for landlords and tenants

Banks looking to boost their digital capabilities reportedly may be taking a closer look at acquisitions of FinTechs as the valuations of FinTechs have fallen 70% this year.  The decline in FinTech valuations has been driven by the economic downturn, rising interest rates, and lower investor confidence after the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In addition, banks earnings have increased as their lending business benefits from rising interest rates, and it’s easier for banks to buy FinTechs than to merge with other banks because the latter involves more regulatory scrutiny.

FinTech Winter May Lead Banks to Increase Acquisitions 

Shares of Silvergate declined 42.7% on Thursday after the crypto-focused bank released preliminary fourth-quarter results that showed massive customer withdrawals. Total deposits from digital asset customers declined to $3.8 billion from $11.9 billion at the end of the third quarter, a decline of roughly 68% as crypto exchange FTX, a Silvergate customer, collapsed in scandal, raising questions about the stability of the digital asset industry. At the end of December, $150 million of the bank’s deposits were held by customers who had filed bankruptcy, Silvergate said.

Silvergate Capital tanks more than 40% after crypto bank discloses massive fourth-quarter withdrawals

The legendary co-founder of Boston-based investment firm GMO argued in a Tuesday paper, that “the first and easiest leg of the bursting of the bubble we called for a year ago is complete.” While the downturn has wiped the most “extreme froth” off the market, valuations remain well above long-term averages, he said, noting that in the past they have tended to overcorrect, falling below their long-term trend line as fundamentals deteriorate. Grantham estimated the trend line value of the S&P 500 index, adjusted upward for trend line growth and expected inflation, will be around 3,200 by the end of 2023 - roughly a 17% fall for the year.

Jeremy Grantham says ‘easiest leg’ of stock-market bubble burst is over. Here’s what’s next. 

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The National Bank of Middlebury

National Bank of Middlebury is a community bank based in Middlebury, Vermont that was founded in 1831.

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