EXECUTIVE VIEW-Banks size up reform bill impact

NEW YORK, July 20 | Tue Jul 20, 2010 11:41am EDT

NEW YORK, July 20 (Reuters) - The final passage of landmark financial regulatory reform coincided with a lackluster batch of earnings from some of the top U.S. banks, many of whose executives indicated they are scrambling to assess the lasting effects of the new regulations.

For more coverage of the financial reform overhaul: [ID:nFINREG]

FRED TOMCZYK, CEO, TD AMERITRADE HOLDING CORP AMTD.O:

"As with most bills that are the result of a political process, there are some good things and there are probably some things that are not related to the crisis. The capital rules and liquidity rules which are in Basel III are important, and I also think some of the things on systemic risk and regulation are good. But that's not to say that all of them are good.

"Directly, there's nothing really in the bill that impacts us. There is one area that is singled out for future study and that is whether the standard for broker dealers should be the fiduciary standard or the suitability standard, when you're giving personalized investment advice. We don't have a strong bias either way as long as, if it goes with a fiduciary standard, it shouldn't be a watered down fiduciary standard."

VIKRAM PANDIT, CEO, CITIGROUP INC (C.N)

"On the debit interchange, debit purchase is not a significant business for us, our volumes show that, and we're about one-tenth of the volume size of market leaders.

"Another key point on consumer reform is that our regional consumer bank is much more international than most. Fifty-three percent of first-half revenues came from outside the U.S. and they reflect a substantial part of our profitability.

"On the institutional side on prop trading and funds we have continued to sell many prop trading and fund businesses and assets. And on the derivatives side -- the vast, vast majority of the derivatives we did in the bank we can continue to do in the bank. Our bookings were already in line with the reform thinking."

BRIAN MOYNIHAN, CEO, BANK OF AMERICA CORP (BAC.N)

"We have two levers to pull, either through fees or the spread, and we are working on all those dimensions. Whether it's new account fees or higher account minimums, all these are on the table. But it will take time to retool the whole franchise.

"Because we're customer driven, (global markets chief) Tom Montag has been pushing out the vestiges of our proprietary trading business. What we do is all customer driven, so we don't see much of an impact. There's actually some benefits to it, in terms of counter-party risk that will help our business. It has not been a primary concern for us."

MIKE CAVANAGH, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF TREASURY AND SECURITIES SERVICES, JPMORGAN CHASE & CO (JPM.N)

"It's not like the potential financial impacts are going to be here tomorrow. This will gradually affect our results to whatever degree it does. What effect it does have is clearly going to be a result of how clients respond in terms of what they choose to -- what services they avail themselves of and at what volume levels -- so that's a little bit of guesswork at this stage and of course whatever impacts there are going to be is going to be in part mitigated at least through adjustments to business models or pricing of products and services and in many cases in our businesses the benefit that our shareholders will get back by having capital released as a result of some of the changes in these -- in this legislation." (Reporting by Maria Aspan, Jonathan Spicer, Joe Rauch and Elinor Comlay. Editing by Robert MacMillan and John Wallace)

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