A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets.
Whereas banks play an important role in financial stability and the economy of a country, most jurisdictions exercise a high degree of regulation over banks. Most countries have institutionalized a system known as fractional-reserve banking, under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure liquidity, banks are generally subject to minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, the Basel Accords. (Full article...)
In finance, a loan is the transfer of money by one party to another with an agreement to pay it back. The recipient, or borrower, incurs a debt and is usually required to pay interest for the use of the money.
The document evidencing the debt (e.g., a promissory note) will normally specify, among other things, the principal amount of money borrowed, the interest rate the lender is charging, and the date of repayment. A loan entails the reallocation of the subject asset(s) for a period of time, between the lender and the borrower. (Full article...)
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The Rhode Island banking crisis took place in the early 1990s, when approximately a third of the US state of Rhode Island's population lost access to funds in their bank accounts. The events were triggered by the failure of a Providence bank, Heritage Loan & Investment, due to long-term embezzlement by its president. News of its problems led to a bank run in which customers tried to withdraw money from the bank which did not have enough money available. In normal circumstances, depositors would be protected by the bank's insurance, but the state's private insurer had a long history of problems and was unable to fulfill its commitments. When the insurer collapsed, Governor Bruce Sundlun announced the closure of 45 credit unions and banks just hours after his inauguration.
In the first banking emergency in the state since the Great Depression, 300,000 depositors lost access to their money. Though some of the institutions reopened relatively quickly after obtaining federal insurance, many did not qualify and remained closed for an extended period of time. The state government set up an agency to manage the crisis, selling $697 million in bonds to repay people while filing about 300 lawsuits against the closed institutions and other companies that played a role in the crisis. (Full article...)
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A bank run or run on the bank occurs when many clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe the bank may fail in the near future. In other words, it is when, in a fractional-reserve banking system (where banks normally only keep a small proportion of their assets as cash), numerous customers withdraw cash from deposit accounts with a financial institution at the same time because they believe that the financial institution is, or might become, insolvent. When they transfer funds to another institution, it may be characterized as a capital flight. As a bank run progresses, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy: as more people withdraw cash, the likelihood of default increases, triggering further withdrawals. This can destabilize the bank to the point where it runs out of cash and thus faces sudden bankruptcy. To combat a bank run, a bank may acquire more cash from other banks or from the central bank, or limit the amount of cash customers may withdraw, either by imposing a hard limit or by scheduling quick deliveries of cash, encouraging high-return term deposits to reduce on-demand withdrawals or suspending withdrawals altogether.
A banking panic or bank panic is a financial crisis that occurs when many banks suffer runs at the same time, as people suddenly try to convert their threatened deposits into cash or try to get out of their domestic banking system altogether. A systemic banking crisis is one where all or almost all of the banking capital in a country is wiped out. The resulting chain of bankruptcies can cause a long economic recession as domestic businesses and consumers are starved of capital as the domestic banking system shuts down. According to former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, the Great Depression was caused by the failure of the Federal Reserve System to prevent deflation, and much of the economic damage was caused directly by bank runs. The cost of cleaning up a systemic banking crisis can be huge, with fiscal costs averaging 13% of GDP and economic output losses averaging 20% of GDP for important crises from 1970 to 2007. (Full article...)
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The passbook was the traditional record of savings account transactions before the use of the internet.
A savings account is a bank account at a retail bank. Common features include a limited number of withdrawals, a lack of cheque and linked debit card facilities, limited transfer options and the inability to be overdrawn. Traditionally, transactions on savings accounts were widely recorded in a passbook, and were sometimes called passbook savings accounts, and bank statements were not provided; however, currently such transactions are commonly recorded electronically and accessible online.
People deposit funds in savings account for a variety of reasons, including a safe place to hold their cash. Savings accounts normally pay interest as well: almost all of them accrue compound interest over time. Several countries require savings accounts to be protected by deposit insurance and some countries provide a government guarantee for at least a portion of the account balance. (Full article...)
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A Christmas club is a special-purpose savings account, first offered by various banks and credit unions in the United States beginning in the early 20th century, including the Great Depression. Bank customers would deposit a set amount of money each week into a savings account, and receive the money back at the end of the year for Christmas shopping. (Full article...)
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An offshore bank is a bank that is operated and regulated under international banking license (often called offshore license), which usually prohibits the bank from establishing any business activities in the jurisdiction of establishment. Due to less regulation and transparency, accounts with offshore banks were often used to hide undeclared income. Since the 1980s, jurisdictions that provide financial services to nonresidents on a big scale can be referred to as offshore financial centres. OFCs often also levy little or no corporation tax and/or personal income and high direct taxes such as duty, making the cost of living high.
Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 578 U.S. 212 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case that found that a law which only applied to a specific case, identified by docket number, and eliminated all of the defenses one party had raised does not violate the separation of powers in the United States Constitution between the legislative (Congress) and judicial branches of government. The plaintiffs, in the case had initially obtained judgments against Iran for its role in supporting state-sponsored terrorism, particularly the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and sought execution against a bank account in New York held, through European intermediaries, on behalf of Bank Markazi, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The plaintiffs obtained court orders preventing the transfer of funds from the account in 2008 and initiated their lawsuit in 2010. Bank Markazi raised several defenses, including that the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather an asset of its European intermediary, under both New York state property law and §201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. In response to concerns that existing laws were insufficient for the account to be used to settle the judgments, Congress added an amendment to a 2012 bill, codified after enactment as 22 U.S.C. §8772, that identified the pending lawsuit by docket number, applied only to the assets in the identified case, and effectively abrogated every legal basis available to Bank Markazi to prevent the plaintiffs from executing their claims against the account. Bank Markazi then argued that §8772 was an unconstitutional breach of the separation of power between the legislative and judicial branches of government, because it effectively directed a particular result in a single case without changing the generally applicable law. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and, on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit both upheld the constitutionality of §8772 and cleared the way for the plaintiffs to execute their judgments against the account, which held about $1.75billion in cash.
The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and heard oral arguments in the case in January 2016, releasing their opinion in April 2016. A 6–2 majority found that §8772 was not unconstitutional, because it "changed the law by establishing new substantive standards"—essentially, that if Iran owns the assets, they would be available for execution against judgments against Iran—for the district court to apply to the case. JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, explained that the federal judiciary has long upheld laws that affect one or a very small number of subjects as a valid exercise of Congress' legislative power and that the Supreme Court had previously upheld a statute that applied to cases identified by docket number in Robertson v. Seattle Audubon Society(1992). The majority also upheld §8772 as a valid exercise of Congress' authority over foreign affairs. Prior to the enactment of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act(FSIA) in 1976, Congress and the Executive branch had authority to determine the immunity of foreign states from lawsuits. Despite transferring the authority to determine immunity to the courts through the FSIA, the majority contended that "it remains Congress' prerogative to alter a foreign state's immunity." (Full article...)
It can also refer to a bank or a division of a large bank that deals with corporations or large or middle-sized businesses, to differentiate from retail banks and investment banks. Commercial banks include private sector banks and public sector banks. (Full article...)
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An export credit agency (known in trade finance as an ECA) or investment insurance agency is a private or quasi-governmental institution that acts as an intermediary between national governments and exporters to issue export insurance solutions and guarantees for financing. The financing can take the form of credits (financial support) or credit insurance and guarantees (pure cover) or both, depending on the mandate the ECA has been given by its government. ECAs can also offer credit or cover on their own account. This does not differ from normal banking activities. Some agencies are government-sponsored, others private, and others a combination of the two.
ECAs currently finance or underwrite about US$430 billion of business activity abroad – about US$55 billion of which goes towards project finance in developing countries – and provide US$14 billion of insurance for new foreign direct investment, dwarfing all other official sources combined (such as the World Bank and Regional Development Banks, bilateral and multilateral aid, etc.). As a result of the claims against developing countries that have resulted from ECA transactions, ECAs hold over 25% of these developing countries' US$2.2 trillion debt. (Full article...)
The ECB Governing Council makes monetary policy for the Eurozone and the European Union, administers the foreign exchange reserves of EU member states, engages in foreign exchange operations, and defines the intermediate monetary objectives and key interest rate of the EU. The ECB Executive Board enforces the policies and decisions of the Governing Council, and may direct the national central banks when doing so. The ECB has the exclusive right to authorise the issuance of euro banknotes. Member states can issue euro coins, but the volume must be approved by the ECB beforehand. The bank also operates the TARGET2 payments system. (Full article...)
On September 25, 2008, the United States Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) seized WaMu's banking operations and placed it into receivership with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The OTS took the action due to the withdrawal of US$16.7billion in deposits during a 9-day bank run (amounting to 9% of the deposits it had held on June 30, 2008). The FDIC sold the banking subsidiaries (minus unsecured debt and equity claims) to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9billion, which had been considering acquiring WaMu as part of a plan internally nicknamed "Project West". All WaMu branches were rebranded as Chase branches by the end of 2009. The holding company was left with $33billion in assets, and $8billion in debt, after being stripped of its banking subsidiary by the FDIC. The next day, it filed for Chapter 11 voluntary bankruptcy in Delaware, where it was incorporated. (Full article...)
The Bank of France (French: Banque de France) is the French member of the Eurosystem. The bank doesn't translate its name to English and uses its French name Banque de France in all English communications. The bank was established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800 as a private-sector corporation with unique public status. Charles de Gaulle's government nationalized the bank in 1945 after several governance changes in the meantime. The Bank of France was granted note-issuance monopoly in Paris in 1803 and in the entire country in 1848, issuing the French franc. It remained France's sole monetary authority until end-1998, when France adopted the euro as its currency.
The Bank of France long held high prestige as an anchor of financial stability, especially before the monetary turmoil that followed World War I. In 1907, Italian economist and statesman Luigi Luzzatti referred to the Bank of France as "the centre of the world's monetary power." (Full article...)
Standard Chartered plc is a British multinational bank with operations in consumer, corporate and institutional banking, and treasury services. Despite being headquartered in the United Kingdom, it does not conduct retail banking in the UK, and around 90% of its profits come from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Through mergers, the oldest branch of the Bank of America franchise can be traced to 1784, when Massachusetts Bank was chartered, the first federally chartered joint-stock owned bank in the United States. Another branch of its history stretches back to the U.S.-based Bank of Italy, founded by Amadeo Pietro Giannini in 1904, which provided various banking options to Italian immigrants who faced service discrimination. Originally headquartered in San Francisco, California, Giannini acquired Banca d'America e d'Italia (Bank of America and Italy) in 1922. The passage of landmark federal banking legislation facilitated a rapid growth in the 1950s, quickly establishing a prominent market share. After suffering a significant loss after the 1998 Russian bond default, BankAmerica, as it was then known, was acquired by the Charlotte-based NationsBank for US$62billion. Following what was then the largest bank acquisition in history, the Bank of America Corporation was founded. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, it built upon its commercial banking business by establishing Merrill Lynch for wealth management and Bank of America Merrill Lynch for investment banking in 2008 and 2009, respectively (since renamed BofA Securities). (Full article...)
The Bank of China was founded in 1912 by the Republican government as China's central bank, replacing the Qing dynasty's Ta-Ching Government Bank. It has been the second oldest bank in China still in existence after the Bank of Communications, founded in 1908. From its establishment until 1942, it issued banknotes on behalf of the Government along with the "Big Four" banks of the period: the Farmers Bank of China, Bank of Communications and Central Bank of the Republic of China. After the People's Republic was established in 1949, it has become a national commercial and foreign exchange professional bank. Its original central bank designation was carried on by the newly formed People's Bank of China. (Full article...)
Image 20Statesman Jan van den Brink was instrumental in the merger of Amsterdamsche Bank and Rotterdamsche Bank in 1964, and remained on the bank's board until 1978 (from AMRO Bank)
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