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U.S. banks are seeking to shield from scrutiny the $30 billion they collect annually in checking-account fees, saying a proposed requirement for periodic reports is unacceptable even if it exempts small institutions, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The dispute is the latest installment in a multi-year fight between the industry and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over how to monitor the way banks assess charges on their depositors. The bureau, along with the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, proposed last year that all institutions include detailed breakdowns of their revenue from account fees in the public quarterly reports they file with the FDIC. That would give the consumer bureau data it could use to write new regulations curbing revenue from overdraft services. Small banks, which earn a larger slice of their revenue from such fees than big institutions, pushed back on the plan. Their resistance led the FDIC and OCC, which regulates nationally chartered banks, to break ranks with the consumer bureau and oppose the change.

The day after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. declared the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history in 2008, Federal Reserve officials remained unsure whether the financial crisis would do lasting damage to the U.S. economy, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. “I don’t think we’ve seen a significant change in the basic outlook,” Dave Stockton, the Fed’s top forecaster, said on Sept. 16, 2008, according to transcripts released on Friday. “We’re still expecting a very gradual pickup in GDP growth over the next year.” The records show Fed officials struggling to understand the magnitude of the financial crisis that was underway, and the potential fallout for the economy. At the September meeting, officials discussed the collapse of Lehman, yet left their main interest rate at 2 percent, rebuffing calls by some investors for an immediate cut.

Citigroup Inc. has settled a lawsuit against Barclays Plc in which it sought to recover more than $141 million for providing foreign exchange services to a unit of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. during the 2008 financial crisis, Reuters reported yesterday. In a letter filed yesterday with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the banks said that they had reached an agreement in principle to resolve the case. Terms were not disclosed as U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice and gave Citigroup 30 days to refile if warranted. The case related to Citigroup's role in the Continuous Linked Settlement system, which was designed to ensure that foreign exchange trades are completed. Citigroup said that it sought to stop settling trades for Lehman's brokerage unit on Sept. 17, 2008, two days after Lehman filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, because it was incurring large losses. It said that because Barclays was then buying Lehman's U.S. broker-dealer business, the British bank urged it to continue the services, and would cover its losses from Sept. 17 to 19. Citigroup had said Barclays failed to honor this indemnity, causing it to lose $580 million. It later reduced this sum to $90.8 million, and sued for the lowered amount plus interest and legal fees.

The Federal Reserve's move to impose tough capital rules on foreign banks in the U.S. could complicate global coordination on another post-crisis priority: international agreement on a plan that eliminates the chance any bank is too big to fail, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The central bank's decision, which came after months of pushback from overseas policy makers, inflamed other financial-system overseers who saw it as an intentional break from international coordination on post-crisis financial rules. That includes ongoing talks on a plan for dismantling a global financial firm without using government money in a future financial crisis. In response to the Fed's vote on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Michel Barnier, European commissioner for the internal market, said the new rule "conflicts with the international standards on cross-border cooperation in bank resolution," referring to the standards for handling a large firm's failure. U.S. regulators said that the Fed's move was consistent with efforts to make the global financial system more stable.

Fannie Mae reported an annual profit of $84 billion for 2013, a banner year in which strong home-price gains in housing markets across the U.S. powered the mortgage-finance giant to an astounding rebound, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Fannie also said that it would pay $7.2 billion to the U.S. Treasury next month after it reported a $6.5 billion fourth-quarter profit. The payment means the mortgage-finance giant, together with its smaller rival Freddie Mac, will do what many considered impossible just two years ago: They will have paid more in dividends to the government — around $192.5 billion — than the $187.5 billion they received from the U.S. Treasury for their 2008 bailouts.

An entity created by the investor group would receive a $1 million breakup fee and be reimbursed for up to $1.75 million of its costs if the bankruptcy court selects another buyer for First Mariner Bank, according to a filing in the chapter 11 case of the bank’s parent company, First Mariner Bancorp, the Baltimore Business Journal reported today. A group of investors led by Baltimore native and New York hedge fund manager Howard Feinglass has a deal to buy First Mariner Bank and recapitalize it with $85 million to $100 million. The chapter 11 filing affects only First Mariner Bancorp, not First Mariner Bank or its customers. RKJS Bank, an entity the investor group created, will serve as the stalking-horse bidder in the bankruptcy auction.

Creditors of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. will receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the estate of the bankrupt firm following a settlement with Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley C. Chapman yesterday approved a $767 million payout from Lehman to settle Freddie Mac's claims over two loans the mortgage giant made to Lehman before the investment bank's 2008 collapse. Lehman creditors already have received $60 billion out of the more than $70 billion Lehman's estate hopes to return, and more is expected in the near future. The deal is structured similarly in some ways to a recently approved settlement between Lehman and Fannie Mae, which will receive about $540 million for its claim based on the latest calculations. Freddie and Fannie will hand over loan information that will allow Lehman to pursue claims against mortgage originators for alleged misrepresentations. Lehman's lawyers said those claims can be substantial.

Steven Antonakes, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's deputy director, said that mortgage servicers have had more than a year to prepare for a reform rule that took effect last month and suggested that the CFPB would move quickly and harshly against violators, American Banker reported yesterday. Antonakes acknowledged that the agency has previously suggested that it would be tolerant of mortgage servicing companies so long as they were making a "good-faith effort" to comply with the rule, but he warned that such allowances only extend so far. "A good-faith effort, however, does not mean servicers have the freedom to harm consumers," Antonakes said. The new mortgage servicing rule that went into effect on Jan. 10 requires clearer monthly statements and stricter timelines in responding to borrowers. It also bans servicers from dual tracking loan modifications and foreclosure procedures, as well as using force-placed insurance as a regular practice rather than a last resort.

The Federal Reserve approved new standards for foreign banks that will require the biggest to hold more capital in the U.S., joining other countries in erecting walls around domestic financial systems, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Banks with $50 billion of assets in the U.S. will have to meet the standard under a revised rule approved yesterday, which raised the threshold from $10 billion proposed in 2012. The central bank left out two controversial elements of the original proposal, saying that those were still being developed. Walling off U.S. units of foreign banks, designed to protect taxpayers from having to bail them out in a crisis, may increase those companies’ borrowing costs and hurt their profitability. The firms say that it will also raise borrowing rates for governments and consumers.

A growing number of homeowners trying to avert foreclosure are confronting problems on a new front as the mortgage industry undergoes a seismic shift, the New York Times reported today. Shoddy paperwork, erroneous fees and wrongful evictions — the same abuses that dogged the nation’s largest banks and led to a $26 billion settlement with federal authorities in 2012 — are now cropping up among the specialty firms that collect mortgage payments, according to dozens of foreclosure lawsuits and interviews with borrowers, federal and state regulators and housing lawyers. These companies are known as servicers, but they do far more than transfer payments from borrowers to lenders. They have great power in deciding whether homeowners can win a mortgage modification or must hand over their home in a foreclosure. And they have been buying up servicing rights at a voracious rate. As a result, some homeowners are mired in delays and confronting the same heartaches, like the peculiar frustration of being asked for the same documents over and over again as the rights to their mortgage changes hands. Servicing companies like Nationstar and Ocwen Financial now have 17 percent of the mortgage servicing market, up from 3 percent in 2010, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry publication.