Banking + Finance

MN Man Gets 5-Yr. Sentence for $11M Ponzi Scheme

Jason Michael Meyer admitted to diverting investors’ funds for his personal use through a fraud scheme that resulted in more than $11 million in losses.

U.S. Bancorp to Buy Deutsche Bank’s Bond Trustee Biz

The deal will add roughly $57 billion in assets under administration and 1,100 trust and agency contracts to U.S. Bank’s corporate trust division.

One Bank Merges 3 Brands, Another Closes 4 MN Branches

Locally-owned Franklin Bank, Park Midway Bank, and University Bank will merge and be rebranded as Sunrise Banks; meanwhile, San Francisco-based Bank of the West recently closed four Minnesota branches.

U.S. Bancorp Rolls Out Photo Tool for Mobile Payments

The company said it is the first major bank in the country to offer such a tool to its customers; the feature eliminates the need to manually fill in certain fields when paying a bill with a mobile device.

Narayana Kocherlakota’s Evolution as a Central Banker

How a central banker’s views evolved and moved him from being a dissenter to a leading advocate of the Federal Reserve’s policy of keeping interest rates low.

Private Equity Firms Get Back In the Game

Private equity firms in the middle market had a generally busy 2012. And they have the money for more deals.

Gopher Angels Share Wealth, Wisdom in New Angel Network

Entrepreneurs Sara and David Russick share the wealth—and wisdom—through Gopher Angels.

Analyst: TCF Is Regional Bank Most Likely to Be Sold this Yr.

An analyst report says TCF is the regional lender most likely to be sold this year, due in part to “uncertainty over CEO succession”; a TCF spokesman said, however, that the bank’s stance has long been that it would consider a reasonable offer.