JPMorgan Chase has hired a record number of senior commercial and investment bankers in the past year as part of an assault on markets it is targeting for growth. The Wall Street bank has poached about 100 managing directors from competitors including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup since early last year. The recruitment campaign has significantly exceeded hiring in previous years. JPMorgan has brought more managing directors into its global banking division over the past 12 months than it did in the previous decade. The spree was launched following an internal review when JPMorgan combined its commercial, investment and corporate banking units in early 2024. The bank wants to boost its market share in investment banking subsectors including healthcare, technology and infrastructure. It is also looking to expand in Europe and Asia and build out its middle market banking business. JPMorgan’s hiring spree has been across regions and has targeted its main rivals, as well as boutique advisory firms and private equity groups. JPMorgan is looking to cement its position as the top bank globally for total investment banking fees. It reported investment banking fees of $4.7bn during the first six months of the year, compared with $4.1bn at Goldman and $2.2bn at Citi for the same period. The bank has also reshuffled leadership roles in recent years as a handful of senior figures vie to succeed Jamie Dimon, chief executive for nearly two decades. The leading contenders to replace him are considered to be Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh, the co-heads of the commercial and investment bank, and Marianne Lake, head of JPMorgan’s consumer bank.
BoA’s president of Global Commercial Banking says preserving a multigenerational legacy demands a customized approach to managing family dynamics, succession planning and effective capital structuring and management
Wendy Stewart is president of Global Commercial Banking for Bank of America. In the United States, 32 million family-owned businesses form a vital pillar of the economy, injecting $7.7 trillion annually into the GDP and creating 83.3 million jobs, according to Deloitte’s 2024 Family Enterprise Survey. However, this blend of personal and professional relationships can also present challenges. Preserving a multigenerational legacy demands a customized approach to managing family dynamics, succession planning and effective capital structuring and management. Here are four considerations for navigating the complexities of a multigenerational family enterprise.
- Engage future generations: 46% of the upcoming generation expects to hold leadership, C-suite or executive-level roles within five years, and 28% of current leaders plan to transfer power within that time frame. In preparation, it’s a good idea to examine and simplify existing ownership structures to avoid fragmentation in later generations. Multigenerational companies can create a family constitution to help define prerequisites for joining the company, such as meeting specified educational requirements or gaining external experience. They can also form a family board to facilitate interaction, including annual meetings, role playing and family culture training. These companies engage with independent advisors, such as bankers, financial planners, lawyers and accountants, to assist with succession planning. Advisors can offer strategic and unbiased perspectives, help families focus on long-term goals and bridge generational gaps.
- Establish a board: A board of directors is one of the best resources a family business can invest in to sustain its success beyond the founder’s tenure, helping the company make smarter, future-focused decisions. The board’s structure is also important, including the number of members, the ratio of family-to-outside advisors, the diverse skill sets they provide and even their ages. Research supports the advantages of age diversity in boards, which are often comprised of more tenured individuals. For example, a PwC report found that age diversity helps facilitate smoother leadership transitions, as it allows older members to seamlessly pass along knowledge to the next gen. Establishing formal agreements that outline roles, term limits, confidentiality, attendance requirements and decision-making processes will help foster accountability and trust. And finally, owners need to account for potential exit strategies to delineate the conditions under which the board may need to be restructured or even dissolved.
- Preserve the philanthropic legacy: Family businesses are often local mainstays, with 81% of them telling PwC that they contribute to their communities. However, preserving philanthropic values isn’t a passive activity. Comprehensive estate planning is a powerful tool for ensuring the continuity of a family’s purpose-led philanthropic vision. Estate planning can help organize the family’s giving, as well as provide the legal and financial framework to ensure those goals are sustained. For example, they can establish a family foundation, a charitable organization set up and controlled by a family to promote selected philanthropic causes. It’s also vital to set gifting
- expectations with later generations of family members who did not
- start the company. Next-gen leaders may need help understanding the management of charitable endeavors, particularly if they’re interested in eventually joining the family foundation. This can also help them avoid one-off “checkbook giving” and ensure donations align with a family’s stated vision and mission.
- Shape the future through transformation: M&A can strengthen a company’s position by acquiring a competitor or a company in a complementary sector or geography. Owners can also facilitate generational transitions by selling a stake to bring in a professional management team. They might also welcome outside investment from the public or private markets to accelerate expansion. Another option is to transfer ownership of the company through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). This puts the company’s value and wealth in the hands of the employees — including family members who are leading the company — by financing thetransfer of ownership to a trust established to benefit those with the greatest vested interest in seeing the business thrive. Employees can cash in their ownership shares when they leave the company or retire. ESOPs are a particularly valuable tool for family businesses that lack an heir apparent, as they give current owners the ability to sell all or some of the business without having to secure an outside buyer. This structure can provide meaningful tax benefits to the selling owner.
TD Bank has shrunk U.S. assets by $48B since asset cap, offloading a chunk of U.S. loans to create space for growth in credit cards, home equity lines of credit, and loans to middle-market companies and small businesses
TD Bank has shrunk its U.S. business by $48 billion since it was hit with an asset cap last October, as the Canadian megabank makes room on its balance sheet for growth in more promising lines of business. The Toronto-based TD has completed its planned sell-off of $25 billion worth of securities, and it has run off about half of the roughly $35 billion of U.S. loans it has slated to shed. The efforts have taken the bank’s stateside assets down to $386 billion. TD had previously said that it was aiming to shrink assets by 10%, a benchmark it passed during its third quarter, which ended July 31. The contraction efforts began when American regulators told TD that it would have to limit its stateside size to $434 billion after the bank pleaded guilty to fumbling its anti-money-laundering controls. The bank has been selling or winding down “non-scalable and non-core” U.S. loan portfolios, such as point-of-sale financing, correspondent lending, export and import lending, and a commercial auto dealer portfolio, it said Thursday in a quarterly earnings release. Leo Salom, president and CEO of TD’s unit south of the border, said the bank moved out of areas that weren’t as accretive to its return on equity, or where the bulk of its loans were from standalone relationships. Offloading a chunk of U.S. loans creates space for growth in other businesses, like credit cards, home equity lines of credit, and loans to middle-market companies and small businesses, Salom said. “With this asset reduction, the U.S. retail segment could grow core loans at a rate consistent with our historical performance through the medium term without breaching the asset limitation,” he said on TD’s Thursday earnings call. The bank won’t hit an inflection point for U.S. loan growth for at least another year, as it expects to spend most of 2026 trying “to get to the fighting weight size for the U.S. business,” Salom said. TD’s U.S. balance-sheet restructuring efforts since October have resulted in after-tax losses of $1.4 million. Total losses from the strategy should eventually land around $1.5 billion, the bank said, but the restructuring should also benefit TD’s net interest income and return on equity in the long term. Salom declined to give projections for U.S. return on equity until the bank’s investor day at the end of September. But CEO Raymond Chun pointed to “momentum” in the unit.cTD’s U.S. business logged $695 million in quarterly net income after excluding the balance-sheet restructuring efforts. The results were based primarily on overall operating results, not the benefits of fixing up its securities portfolio, Salom said. John Aiken, an analyst at Jefferies, wrote in a note that TD’s third quarter was “arguably not as impressive as some of its peers,” but the bank has had a strong year-to-date run, and “additional upside is still available.” He added that the bank’s results from the U.S. are encouraging, despite a heavy lift ahead.
UK fintechs explore buying US banks to speed up push for licences, enabling lending across all 50 states
UK digital banks Revolut and Starling are weighing acquisitions of nationally chartered banks in the US, which would allow them to be granted American banking licences and lend across all 50 states. Revolut, Europe’s biggest fintech, has approached advisers including Bank of America about buying a US bank, according to one person familiar with the matter. Acquisitions are seen by many as a way of accelerating growth in the US and being granted a licence more quickly than applying from scratch. The US offers access to new customers and significant deposits at a time when many large UK fintechs are winning customers in their home market at a slower rate than before. Declan Ferguson, chief financial officer of Starling, said the company was considering applying for a US banking licence but that an acquisition might be quicker: “We’re considering both paths although we are probably more inclined towards acquisition.” The takeover plans come as regulators in the US adopt a more relaxed attitude to policing takeovers. Michelle Bowman, vice-chair of supervision at the Federal Reserve, signalled plans for a more bank-friendly approach, including faster approvals of mergers, shortly after being confirmed in the role in June. The two other main US bank regulators — the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) — have rescinded guidance that had made deals harder to complete. Executives at the UK’s biggest fintechs now believe Trump’s deregulatory push will speed up the process of having a banking licence approved through the OCC, as well as making mergers easier. Klarna is considering applying for a US banking licence but is likely to make any decision after an initial public offering, one of the people added. Another executive added that buying a charter through an acquisition could still bring complications because watchdogs investigate changes of ownership to ensure the buyer has the infrastructure needed to maintain a bank’s operations. Another challenge is the US retail banking market’s dependence on physical branches — unlike the UK, where even traditional lenders have reduced their high street presence. Digital lenders which acquire a US bank could find themselves managing a costly store estate — something neobanks purposefully shunned in the UK.
Checkout shifts to software as biometrics tokenization and AI converge with SoftPOS on COTS devices replacing hardware terminals and also expanding low cost merchant acceptance worldwide
With the widespread adoption of smartphones and tablets, the once tangible POS is being reimagined as a digital service. The dependence on smartphones and tablets has transformed traditional business transactions. SoftPOS combines traditional POS with ongoing technological advancements, creating a more digital, less physical, and more connected future. Mastercard is playing a key role in driving SoftPOS innovation. To stay ahead of rapidly shifting consumer demand, Mastercard new solutions within the POS space, with enhancements like Tap on Phone and Cloud Tap on Phone further empowering POS systems. The direction of the POS landscape is undoubtably moving toward a digital future, as online and in-store transactions converge. Alongside tokenization, the adoption of biometrics in payments is on the rise, aiming to create seamless and user-friendly transaction experiences. The emergence of AI is showcased by the introduction of ChatGPT and its remarkable growth, with these innovations highlighting the continuing rapid evolution of digital commerce in the times ahead. The future of POS is a reimagining of the payments space, with advanced technology driving ongoing innovation. Businesses should adopt these new technologies to stay ahead of upcoming trends, such as the rise of alternative payment methods and digital currencies. Tokenization’s significance for businesses and the integration of AI in transaction digitization are set to see further advancements Point-of-sale software market value grows rapidly, going from $12.2 billion in 2018 to a projected $42.5 billion in 2027.
Data center workloads are reshuffling with AI rising toward 28% by 2027 (current load is 13%) while cloud slips to about 50% and legacy to 21% in Goldman Sachs modeling
Goldman Sachs Research projects that the five highest-spending US hyperscale enterprises will have a combined $736 billion of capital expenditures in 2025 and 2026 (as of July 16). Demand in the global data center market is forecast to grow substantially in the next half-decade or so, according to Goldman Sachs Research. Our analysts estimate current demand to be approximately 62 gigawatts (GW), comprised of cloud workloads (58%), traditional workloads (29%), and AI workloads (13%). AI is projected to grow to 28% of the overall market by 2027, while cloud drops to 50%, and traditional workloads fall to 21%. Data centers from the pre-AI era are increasingly ill-suited for the demands of today’s AI workloads, and the era of simple retrofitting is coming to an end. That’s because modern AI workloads require multiple GPUs working in concert, according to the Goldman Sachs Global Institute. In 2022, a cutting-edge AI system integrated eight GPUs into a single server. By 2027, the leading system will likely have 576 GPUs in a filing-cabinet-size rack, requiring a whopping 600 kilowatts (kW), enough to power 500 US homes. Specialized GPUs began superseding general purpose central processing units (CPUs) earlier this decade, ramping up power demand. Goldman Sachs Research forecasts that data center power demand will increase from 1%-2% of overall global power demand in 2023 to 3%-4% by the end of the decade. In the US, the weighting of power demand from data centers in the overall will increase even more, likely more than doubling by 2030 from 4% in 2023. Goldman Sachs Research estimates that 40% of the increase in power demand from data centers will be met by renewables, and there will be a modest amount of nuclear capacity that’s targeted for AI. The bulk of the remaining 60% is expected to be driven by natural gas. This will increase global carbon emissions by 215-220 million tons through 2030, equivalent to 0.6% of global energy emissions. Asia Pacific and North America have the most power demand for data centers and square footage online today, most notably in Northern Virginia, Beijing, Shanghai, and Texas. Goldman Sachs Research finds that capacity is centered around regions with high compute and data traffic, as well as robust corporate demand. In Europe, a surge in connection requests received by energy providers indicates that technology companies are planning to build new data centers. The increasing need for electricity for the infrastructure is reversing more than a decade of falling demand for power in the region. A new generation of data centers that can support advanced AI is rapidly being built up. In the US alone, spending on the construction of this infrastructure has tripled over the last three years, according to Goldman Sachs Research. Even as new facilities come online, occupancy rates remain near record highs for third-party leased data-centers across most US markets.
Homeownership financial hurdles reshape GenZ’s goals, student debt career instability and maintenance costs deter buyers and 64% choose to live without roommates to keep control and flexibility
Homeownership has long been seen as a marker of stability and success. But for many in Generation Z — the youngest group entering the housing market — that dream feels increasingly out of reach. Rising mortgage rates, high home prices, student debt and career uncertainty are reshaping what housing looks like for this generation — and many are renting for the long term. A recent survey of more than 2,000 U.S. renters conducted in January 2025 by Entrata in collaboration with Qualtrics sheds light on how Gen Z views renting, homeownership and financial priorities. The biggest obstacles to homeownership for Gen Z are financial. More than half of respondents (57%) said rising mortgage rates are a key factor preventing them from buying a home. About 52% cited escalating home prices, while others pointed to student loan debt and career instability as the main reason a mortgage feels out of reach. Many also expressed reluctance to take on the responsibilities of home maintenance and repairs. Roughly one in three renters said these costs and responsibilities were enough to steer them away from homeownership. “Many can’t afford the upfront costs associated with home ownership like down payments for (private mortgage insurance) if they’re unable to meet the (loan-to-value ratio) necessary to eliminate the requirement for mortgage insurance,” the report explained.
Stripe pushes back on JPMorgan’s new data fees; urges the CFPB to consider all options that would deter such fees
Stripe said in comments submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that while the regulator finalizes its revisions to the open banking rule, Rule 1033, it should ensure that banks do not “unlawfully charge access fees” for connecting consumers’ bank accounts to the financial products of their choice. The firm was one of the first FinTech companies to file comments with the CFPB in response to the regulator’s request for comments ahead of its revision of Rule 1033. The company believes that “immediate action by the CFPB is essential to preserving our thriving marketplace and innovation in financial services.” “The largest banks should not be permitted to charge prohibitive fees for data access while the CFPB considers how to address those same fees through the ANPR [Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking] process and while an existing rule prohibits such fees,” Stripe said in its comments. “Therefore, Stripe urges the CFPB to consider all options that would deter such fees until a comprehensive revised rule is in place.”
Citi’s whitepaper estimates that by 2030, 10% of market turnover could be conducted through tokenized assets with bank-issued stablecoins as the main enabler
The global post-trade industry is entering a new phase of transformation driven by digital assets and AI, according to Citi’s latest “Securities Services Evolution” whitepaper. Citi estimates that by 2030, 10% of market turnover could be conducted through tokenized assets. The report points to bank-issued stablecoins as the main enabler, helping with collateral efficiency and fund tokenization. Asia-Pacific is already leading adoption, thanks to strong retail interest in crypto and regulatory support for digital assets. The use of AI will further drive post-trade efficiency, the report states. Some 86% of surveyed firms say they are testing the technology for client onboarding as the key use case for asset managers, custodians and broker-dealers. A further 57% indicated that their organizations are piloting the technology for post-trade specifically. Speed and automation are a priority, Citi said, as the post-trade industry faces the cumulative workload of moving to T+1, a standard settlement cycle for securities transactions where the trade is settled one business day after the trade date. “From accelerated settlements to automation in asset servicing, and increased shareholder participation and governance, the collective vision of firms worldwide is converging on the same core themes. The industry is at the cusp of significant change as market participants intensify their focus on T+1, accelerate the adoption of digital assets, and implement GenAI across their operations,” said Chris Cox, Head of Investor Services, Citi.
U.S. Bank has resumed offering cryptocurrency custody services –for institutional investment managers with registered or private funds
U.S. Bank announced it has resumed offering cryptocurrency custody services – originally announced in 2021 – as an early access program to Global Fund Services clients. The services are intended for institutional investment managers with registered or private funds who seek a secure safekeeping solution for bitcoin. NYDIG, a vertically integrated bitcoin financial services and power infrastructure firm, will act as the bitcoin sub-custodian. Stephen Philipson, vice chair, U.S. Bank Wealth, Corporate, Commercial and Institutional Banking, said, “We’re proud that we were one of the first banks to offer cryptocurrency custody for fund and institutional custody clients back in 2021, and we’re excited to resume the service this year. Following greater regulatory clarity, we’ve expanded our offering to include bitcoin ETFs, which allows us to provide full-service solutions for managers seeking custody and administration services.” “NYDIG is honored to partner with U.S. Bank as its primary provider for bitcoin custody services,” said Tejas Shah, CEO of NYDIG. “Together, we can bridge the gap between traditional finance and the modern economy by facilitating access for Global Fund Services clients to bitcoin as sound money, delivered with the safety and security expected by regulated financial institutions.” Dominic Venturo, senior executive vice president and chief digital officer at U.S. Bank, said, “U.S. Bank has been at the forefront of exploring how digital assets can serve our clients. Further expanding our capabilities unlocks new opportunities to deliver innovative solutions to those we serve. U.S. Bank will continue to drive progress and shape the future of what matters for our clients in digital finance.