Federal regulators are poised to crack down on eight financial firms that are not part of the recent government settlement over home foreclosure practices involving sloppy, inaccurate or forged documents.
Last week, a senior Federal Reserve official recommended fines for these additional financial institutions, raising questions about how deep foreclosure problems run through the banking industry.
In addition, judges, lawyers and advocates for homeowners say that people are still losing their homes despite improper documentation and other flaws in the foreclosure process often involving these firms.
The eight firms cited by the Federal Reserve — HSBC’s United States bank division, SunTrust Bank, MetLife, U.S. Bancorp, PNC Financial Services, EverBank, OneWest and Goldman Sachs — should be fined for “unsafe and unsound practices in their loan servicing and foreclosure processing,” Suzanne G. Killian, a senior associate director of the Federal Reserve’s Division of Consumer and Community Affairs, told lawmakers last month in a House Oversight Committee hearing in Brooklyn.
Pity Shaun Donovan. The much beset upon Housing and Urban Development secretary has the thankless task of facilitating that long sought after agreement between the state attorneys general and the banks, the one that would finally put that nasty robo-signing scandal behind us. Long anticipated, it was supposed to be signed by Christmas (not).
The Obama administration came under fire Monday from U.S. Democratic lawmakers and liberal groups, who argued that a forthcoming settlement over alleged foreclosure abuses won’t do enough to penalize the banking industry.
Administration officials and state attorneys general are have been putting the finishing touches on a settlement with major banks of foreclosure-processing problems that erupted into public view in fall 2010.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Associate U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perrelli were meeting in Chicago on Monday with Democratic attorneys general to review potential settlement terms, according to a spokesman for Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who has been leading the talks.
The officials were scheduled to hold a separate conference call with Republican attorneys general later in the day, but no announcement of a settlement was expected this week.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Private antitrust litigation pitting some five million retailers against Visa , MasterCard , and 13 large banks, including Bank of America , CitigroupCapital One Financial , JPMorgan Chase , U.S. Bancorp , Wells Fargo , PNC Financial , Fifth Third Bancorp , SunTrust Banks , HSBC and Barclays Plc has slipped under the radar of many analysts and investors who follow those companies, but the case may deliver a multi-billion dollar shock to bank bulls in the coming months.
Estimates of the potential cost of a settlement of the antitrust case vary dramatically–from a few billion dollars into the hundreds of billions. At least as worrisome to the financial companies
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