Bank of America hit with about $1.2 billion in penalties
A Trump-appointed regulator said Wednesday that some of America’s largest financial institutions, including JPMorgan, denied banking services to a range of customers, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Morning Risk Report.
The cases the regulator identified included a merchant selling T-shirts promoting Donald Trump, a public education organization favoring Democratic candidates and a company in the firearms industry looking for assistance with an initial public offering.
“All were businesses that were denied services by some of America’s largest financial institutions, a Trump-appointed regulator said Wednesday,” the WSJ newsletter reported. The newsletter did not name the regulator.
JPMorgan was among the institutions named in the regulator’s findings, according to the WSJ report.
In a separate regulatory action reported in the same WSJ newsletter, U.S. banking watchdogs hit Bank of America with about $1.2 billion in penalties.
“We have invested billions of dollars in technology and dedicated thousands of employees to combat financial crime, and our team is far along with and committed to completing the work required to address the issues raised by our regulators,” a Bank of America representative said in a statement.
Bank of America Chief Executive Brian Moynihan told analysts the bank had “resolved the government discussion” after some back and forth with regulators.
The Morning Risk Report’s Wednesday edition also covered an OpenAI legal filing in the company’s trade-secrets dispute with Apple. According to the filing, an employee who left for Apple sent himself more than 100 “highly confidential” files about at least one unreleased OpenAI device under development. The filing is the latest development in the case Apple filed against OpenAI in July, alleging that Apple’s own confidential information had been taken by employees who left for its AI rival. The filing does not name the ex-employee, though it uses a male possessive adjective to refer to the person, and it claims the information taken included engineering and manufacturing data, supplier information and project files.
In a “Risk Journal reports” segment, the newsletter said the European Union issued a proposal to delay reporting rules for oil-and-gas importers for one year to ease pressure on businesses wrestling with high energy prices. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said it is still committed to reducing methane emissions and that “the proposed amendment does not affect the ambition, integrity and scope of the regulation.”
Two Emirati cargo ships — the GFS Pride and the Cape Dao — have sunk in the past 24 hours after being struck in the Strait of Hormuz, an escalation with little precedent as Iran ramps up attacks to levels not seen since the war started, according to Pakistan’s National Hydrographic Office, which monitors maritime activities in Middle Eastern waters. Maritime-security companies confirmed the two losses Wednesday and said this was the first such incident in months.
The newsletter separately noted that Apple’s approximate market capitalization closed above $5 trillion at market close Wednesday, making the company the second after Nvidia to do so.
On China and Europe, the newsletter reported that Beijing is backing down, at least temporarily, as it buys time for further talks, after years of flooding Europe with exports that were crushing profits and killing jobs while issuing tough warnings to the bloc not to fight back.