Finance

Flushing Financial seeks to raise $70 million

Published

6 months ago

December 12, 2024

Business Finance News

Flushing Bank in New York City.

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Flushing Financial, a New York-based commercial real estate lender, is seeking to raise $70 million to shore up its capital, CNBC has learned.

The bank’s CEO, John Buran, has told potential investors that he intends to sell low-yielding bonds and loans backed by commercial real estate, including multifamily buildings, moves that would generate a loss and necessitate the sale of fresh stock, people with knowledge of the deal told CNBC.

Bankers working on the deal have yet to finalize pricing, but it will likely be between $15 to $15.50 per share, according to one of the people, below the $17.25 level the stock closed at on Thursday.

The bank declined to comment to CNBC earlier Thursday, but later issued a release confirming the equity sale.

Banks with commercial real estate exposure have struggled after the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates through 2023, leaving them with unrealized losses on their balance sheet. New York Community Bank was forced to raise capital earlier this year after its stock sank amid concerns over its portfolio of commercial loans.

Most of the U.S. banks under pressure are community banks with under $10 billion in assets, like Flushing, which had about $9.3 billion in assets as of September.

Now, with a rebound in bank stock prices this year and the start of a Fed easing cycle in September, investors expect more banks to raise capital in the coming months. Behind the scenes, regulators have been prodding banks with confidential orders to improve capital levels.

“The rate environment is still a challenge, but we’re controlling what we can control and setting the foundation for a better future,” Buran told analysts in October.

Shares of Flushing Financial have risen about 5% this year through Thursday, trailing the 18% rise in the KBW Regional Banking Index.

Finance

UK’s FCA teams up with Nvidia to let banks experiment with AI

Published

2 hours ago

June 9, 2025

Business Finance News

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

LONDON — Britain’s financial services watchdog on Monday announced a new tie-up with U.S. chipmaker Nvidia to let banks safely experiment with artificial intelligence.

The Financial Conduct Authority said it will launch a so-called Supercharged Sandbox that will “give firms access to better data, technical expertise and regulatory support to speed up innovation.”

Starting from October, financial services institutions in the U.K. will be allowed to experiment with AI using Nvidia’s accelerated computing and AI Enterprise Software products, the watchdog said in a press release.

The initiative is designed for firms in the “discovery and experiment phase” with AI, the FCA noted, adding that a separate live testing service exists for firms further along in AI development.

“This collaboration will help those that want to test AI ideas but who lack the capabilities to do so,” Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, intelligence and information officer, said in a statement. “We’ll help firms harness AI to benefit our markets and consumers, while supporting economic growth.”

The FCA’s new sandbox addresses a key issue for banks, which have faced challenges shipping advanced new AI tools to their customers amid concerns over risks around privacy and fraud.

Large language models from the likes of OpenAI and Google send data back to overseas facilities — and privacy regulators have raised the alarm over how this information is stored and processed. There have meanwhile been several instances of malicious actors using generative AI to scam people.

Nvidia is behind the graphics processing units, or GPUs, used to train and run powerful AI models. The company’s CEO, Jensen Huang, is expected to give a keynote talk at a tech conference in London on Monday morning.

Last year, HSBC’s generative AI lead, Edward Achtner, told a London tech conference he sees “a lot of success theater” in finance when it comes to artificial intelligence — hinting that some financial services firms are touting advances in AI without tangible product innovations to show for it.

He added that, while banks like HSBC have used AI for many years, new generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT come with their own unique compliance risks.