Citigroup to Buy Wachovia’s Banking OperationsThough the FDIC is quick to assure customers that Wachovia has not ‘failed,’ the government spent the weekend helping Citigroup finance a deal.
A Wave of Online Banking Frauds Soaks HSBCNews to everyone who uses HSBC online banking: We’ve heard of four different people who mysteriously had a couple of thousand dollars withdrawn from their HSBC checking accounts this week. When they called the bank to figure out what was going on, they discovered that it’s been happening to hundreds of other people. So much so, that the bank’s fraud department can’t keep up with the reports. A quick Internet search turned up this consumerist.com post on the subject, which explains that it’s a widespread problem among online banking users. According to the Website, a fraud investigator told one customer that the bank’s “fraud department was so overwhelmed, it was still in the developing stage” of how to handle it. When we contacted HSBC, they acknowledged there was an issue but reassured us:
We are ensuring zero liability for our customers and are reissuing ATM/debit cards to those impacted. HSBC has well-established internal security measures to prevent fraudulent activity. We take fraud of any kind very seriously and are continually monitoring customer activity to identify and avert fraud.
“I don’t what angers me more, the fact that I am missing all this money or that this crook only got charged a $1.50 withdrawal fee!” one customer, who lost nearly $3,000, told us. “They tell me it will take 10 to 20 business days to get my money back in my account. This is not a very impressive turnaround for the ‘world’s bank.’” So, if you have an HSBC account and use online banking, you should probably check your accounts today. You’d rather deal with it today than stew over the weekend about it. You’ve got guacamole to make for the Oscars!
Is HSBC Straining Under an ‘Unprecedented’ Wave of Fraud Activity? [Consumerist]
the morning line
Rudy’s in the Money (Sorta)
• Rudy Giuliani came out on top in the second round of Republican fund-raising, becoming the only GOP candidate to raise more dough in the second quarter of 2007 ($17 million) than in the first ($16 million). For comparison’s sake, Barack Obama took in $31 million over the same period. [NYDN]
in other news
Happy Birthday! Would You Like a Receipt?
While the rest of the world is looking ahead to the allegedly life-changing imminence of the iPhone, the Times’ consistently intriguing ephemera blog, the Lede, takes a look back at some actually life-changing technology. The ATM, it seems, turned 40 today. As noteworthy as we find that milestone, we’re much more jazzed about the photo the Times turned up to illustrate the story: a 1968 shot of a woman using what might well have been New York’s first ATM at the headquarters of the First National City Bank (which you know and love as Citibank). The text on the wall sign next to the machine, in case you can’t quite make it out: “This experimental cash-dispensing machine may be the forerunner of sophisticated electronic devices that will increase our capabilities to provide round-the-clock banking services. The machine dispenses a fixed amount of cash when a customer inserts a special card and keys in his own personal identification number. ‘The Cash Station’ is an electronic substitute for the conventional check-cashing system.” We like that term, “Cash Station.” We think we’re going to start using it.
Drop That iPhone and Wish an ATM ‘Happy Birthday [The Lede/NYT]
intel
Bank-Branch Infiltration Reaches Madison Square Garden
This just in via e-mailed press release: The space formerly known as the Theater at Madison Square Garden, formerly known as the Paramount Theater and even more formerly as the Felt Forum, will now be known as the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden. “The name of The Theater will be changed immediately,” the release reports, and the deal will include signage throughout the Garden and eleven WaMu ATMs at the venue. (Please tell us this doesn’t mean the end of the Chase machines near the Seventh Avenue entrance. WaMu, as we discovered the other night, is now up to a $2 charge for using its ATMs. So much for the buck-fifty stopping there.) Six months ago, the city’s three major sports venues — the Garden, Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium, — remained proudly unsponsored. Now the Garden’s got WaMu, at least peripherally, Shea’s gone Citi, and only one question remains: Which bank will meet Steinbrenner’s price? Full press release is after the jump.
ground-zero watch
Chase Needs More Cash
Last we checked with JPMorgan Chase, the megabank wanted to join the ground-zero scrum by building a 50-story skyscraper on the site of the contaminated Deutsche Bank building. There wasn’t much opposition; in fact, city officials were ecstatic about this major score for the financial district. But there was one catch, as it turns out: It would need to be an even bigger score for Chase. As today’s Times reports, the bank wants the kind of lavish incentive package Goldman Sachs got to build a tower in Battery Park City: $650 million worth of cash grants, tax-free bonds, and a whole buffet of tax breaks. Which left the government in the slightly ridiculous position of explaining how that was then and this is now; Spitzer is not Pataki; and downtown, while it could use a boost, is not exactly a wasteland anymore, either.
in other news
Banking With Warhol and the Jews
The Warholidays we previously noted didn’t stop with Christmas, or with Barneys: The lobby of the Park Avenue Bank, at 350 Park, is now home to ten Andy Warhol paintings, as AM New York reports today. Normally, combining a business with an art gallery is the province of ex-hippie real-estate agents, but the bank is actually drawing kudos for the inventive use of its lobby space. (Since you don’t have to be a customer to get in, it’s also providing a free public service, of sorts.) The improvised gallery works, we think, for several reasons. First, if you’re going to stage an art exhibit in a Park Avenue bank, you could do much worse than Andy Warhol, the one dead painter who would have probably been tickled pink about it if he were alive. And second, if you’re going to stage an Andy Warhol exhibit in a Park Avenue bank, you could do much worse than displaying “Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century.”
Warhol Silkscreens on Display in Lobby of Swank Manhattan Bank [amNY]
Earlier: Department Stores Don’t Know It’s Christmas