The Banker Next Door

This episode reviewed recent data for bank IPO’s and capital raises, M&A activity, new charter requests, FDIC problem bank list, recent bank failures, the return of shareholder activism, and the impact of rising yields on accumulated other comprehensive income or AOCI. Capital raises through preferred equity (IPOs) picked up in the second quarter of 2026, but subordinated debt and senior debt...

Bank CEO compensation for the big 4 CEOs dramatically increased in 2025. Citigroup CEO, Jane Fraser, became the highest paid bank CEO with a pay package of $95.8 million. Wells Fargo CEO, Charles Scharf, came in right behind with a pay package of $94.5 million. JPMorgan CEO, Jamie Dimon’s, pay package was $40.6 million. Bank of America CEO, Brian Moynihan’s, pay package was $32.7 million. The list...

Bank News: BitGo acquired NYDIG’s trading business. Equity Bancshares to acquire Lincoln Savings Bank for $123.8 million. FNBO to acquire InBankshares Corp for an amount up to $204 million. Bank7 wins auction to purchase 71% of Century Financial. TabaPay is seeking to attain a bank charter by purchasing Transact Bank. UK neobank Revolut receives conditional bank charter from the OCC. Zerohash reap...

This episode reviewed S&P Global’s list of top U.S. large and community banks by deposit franchise. The top 3 large U.S. banks by deposit franchise were 1) EB Acquisition Co. LLC, 2) CVB Financial Corp., and 3) Prosperity Bancshares, Inc. The top 3 U.S. community banks by deposit franchise were 1) Central Service Corp., 2) Bank of Marin Bancorp, and 3) Bank of Guam. The most recent trend for b...

What does BND offer compared to all the other financial influencers on TikTok? The Wall Street Journal analyzed hundreds of finance influencers on TikTok and was able to break them down into several categories. These include the educator, the young guns, the stock hypers, and the showoffs. Most of these influencers are pedaling stocks, get rich quick schemes, flashy videos to get clicks, or just n...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on August 29, 2026. Mark Walter’s TWG investigation continues to cause ripples through the Private Credit and insurance ecosystem. Mark Walter’s problems are not a ‘one off’ incident. Rather, he used a strategy that is being deployed by many across the Private Credit and Insurance industries. The web of interconnection between Private Credit...

The Banker Next Door (BND) weekly live stream show. Strategy Room provides financial news, commentary, top stories in the business world, economic indicators, and all things banking for the week.

The new hedge fund Situational Awareness (“situational”) created by 24-year-old boy wonder Leopold Aschenbrenner managed to barely dodge a total collapse by working out a last-minute deal with Citadel. Situational managed to lose $30 billion in a matter of weeks. Situational had ballooned up to $45 billion in assets under management, more realistically $100 billion with the leverage piled on. This...

Bank M&A had a good year in 2025 and got off to a slower start in 2026 but is looking to pick up through the rest of the year. Mergers of equals transactions or more to the point, mergers of healthy banks have really picked up steam. Capital is strong right now, the regulatory environmental is favorable, and closing times have returned to a strong average of 131 days. Technology is a major con...

Bank News: Gulf Winds Credit Union agreed to acquire Madison County Community Bank. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Valley National Bank agreed to acquire Providence Financial Corp. for $247 million. First Financial Corp. agreed to acquire First Illinois Corp. for $111.3 million. OCC and FDIC issued a final rule that formally defines “unsafe and unsound practices” and establishes uniform sta...

Bank Director issued their Ranking Banking survey results for 2026. Finishing first in the top 25 banks category was Commerce Bancshares. For the $50 billion and above category Columbia Banking System finished first. For the $5 billion up to $50 billion category Commerce Bancshares finished first. For the less than $5 billion category Northeast Community Bancorp finished first. Outside of the cate...

The FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile shows the performance of the bank industry but also breaks down the performance of community banks for the quarter and the performance of the Deposit Insurance Fund or DIF. The banking had the following results for the second quarter: Net income rose, net interest margin increased, net operating revenue increased, noninterest expense increased, provision expense...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on August 22, 2026. Stephen Miran and Nouriel Roubini wrote a research paper for Hudson Bay Capital titled “ATI: Activist Treasury Issuance and the Tug-of-War over monetary policy.” This research paper was originally published in July 2024. ATI, in a sense, was the Treasury Departments version of Quantitative Easing. ATI became a tool in the...

The Banker Next Door (BND) weekly live stream show. Strategy Room provides financial news, commentary, top stories in the business world, economic indicators, and all things banking for the week.

Bank News: Brazil’s Itau Unibanco Holding gets OCC conditional approval for a U.S. bank charter. Old Glory Bank is forced to scrap merger with SPAC. Flagstar Banks goes with Fiserv ‘s Finxact on new cloud-native core system. The SEC charged an ex-Bank of America Banker with insider trading. SouthPoint Bancshares is in trouble with the Federal Reserve and Alabama State Banking Department. CFTC bans...

Mark Walter’s, CEO of Guggenheim Partners (big wall street player) and owner of the Dodgers and Lakers, received what amounted to a $20 billion-dollar regulatory margin call. This forced him to sell the Lakers very quickly and scramble for additional funds. This event shined a light on the ties between Private Equity, Private Credit, and Life Insurance companies, which led to major concern among s...

Tioga-Franklin Savings Bank in Philadelphia becomes the fifth bank failure of 2026. The bank had $68 million in assets as of June 30th. The FDIC estimates that the failure will cost the Deposit Insurance Fund approximately $5.5 million. Second Federal Savings and Loan Association assumed all the single branch bank’s deposits and most of its assets. The FDIC acted as receiver. Tioga-Franklin Saving...

Why would someone want to start a De Novo bank? If you wanted to, how would you go about it? What is the process? This episode tries to answer these questions. First, if you want to start a De Novo bank focus on the “why.” What is a compelling customer problem and how will you solve it? What is your niche? Why would a customer switch to your bank? A good example is Bird-in-Hand Bank in Lancaster,...

The FDIC announced a new deposit insurance application process. This will be a two-phase process used to evaluate new applications to speed up the review process. The FDIC will provide de novo applications who satisfy requirements with a contingent authorization within 120 days of receiving the application. The idea is to make the process more efficient by getting a green light before organizers s...

The Banker Next Door (BND) weekly live stream show. Strategy Room provides financial news, commentary, top stories in the business world, economic indicators, and all things banking for the week.

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on August 16, 2026. Private Credit has a liquidity issue as loan defaults continue to increase. While cash redemption requests have calmed down a little, they continue at a concerning pace. At the same time, money inflows into Private Credit funds have slowed dramatically and loan defaults continue to rise. This mix of events is leading to l...

The Treasury department has ended reporting requirements for American small businesses know as Beneficial Ownership Information or BOI. The Treasury issued a final rule in the federal registry. The final rule also deleted all previously collected BOI information. Congress passed The Corporate Transparency Act in 2021, which required FinCEN to create a database that would collect BOI information on...

The off-balance sheet lease commitments and purchase commitments for Meta, Google, Microsoft, and six additional companies are almost $3 trillion dollars! These commitments far exceed their current CAPEX spending, which has already turned free cash flow negative. How are these commitments financed? Meta’s Hyperion data center is used as an example. Meta partners up with Blue Owl (yes that Private...

Bank News: HomeTrust Bancshares to purchase Blue Ridge Bank for $448.1M in stock. HBT Financial to acquire First State Bank for $204.6M. Citibank to acquire rewards platform Kard Financial to increase its consumer cards business. World Liberty Financial has received conditional approval from the OCC for a national trust bank charter. The bank will issue and manage its own stablecoins. Sezzle has d...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on August 16, 2026. There are currently seven major issues in the world of AI. 1) Price war – pressure from China’s AI models and chips, Anthropic busted changing plans and prices. 2) Models out of control causing havoc – OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta all had models breaking out. 3) Government oversight and potential regulation. 4) Data center...