Mark DeCambre

The biggest bank in the US says its branches are going to get smaller.

JPMorgan Chase is cutting even more staff as it scales back its mortgage business. The sprawling bank is shedding an additional 2,000 staffers on top of the 4,000 cuts in mortgage banking it announced last year.

As the global financial industry struggles to shrink by jettisoning assets, Morgan Stanley’s Greg Fleming has expansion on the brain.

Here comes the axe.

Mark Zuckerberg may have turned Jan Koum into an instant Silicon Valley darling, but co-founder and chief executive of WhatsApp isn’t the only one who made money on the deal.

Forget arcane mortgage bonds, toxic derivatives or a swiftly shifting regulatory landscape.

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum has made some notable public pronouncements in recent years as mobile message app raked in users. He’s been especially outspoken in his opposition toward ad-sponsored business models and his relentless focus on building a high-performing product. Here’s a bit of what he’s said, which might give you a better sense of the kind of business Facebook is getting for their $19 billion in cash and stock.

The new non-banks playing an outsized role in the US mortgage business are increasingly drawing scrutiny from US government regulators.

If you’re an American homeowner, the bank that gave you your mortgage is increasingly unlikely to still be overseeing it.

Fattening your wallet in finance is getting a lot harder.

Who says mergers and acquisitions can’t create value?

No company wants to be pegged as a one-trick pony, especially on the eve of its IPO.

Paul Taubman strikes again!

Does Morgan Stanley’s Greg Fleming have the new Wall Street all figured out?

That Barclays simultaneously announced a huge profit hit while raising its bonus pool today ruffled investors’ feathers. But the bank’s planned 10,000 to 12,000 layoffs, also announced today, show that in some areas Barclays is joining the ranks of other big banks in axing employees and pay.

Goldman Sachs has named Ashok Varadhan as one of its co-heads of its securities division—the investment bank’s most-profitable, albeit volatile unit.

A handful of hedge funds are boasting their best-ever returns in dollar terms in 2013 according to a recent report by LCH Investments (paywall). Stephen Mandel of Lone Pine Capital generated $5.2 billion in returns for his investors last year; with the fund currently worth some $22.7 billion, that’s a roughly 30% return. George Soros’s hedge fund-cum-family-office Quantum Endowment returned $5.5 billion, its second highest dollar figure in 40 years, about a 24% return.

In the banking world, they’re considered the masters of the universe, the members of the most exclusive club on Wall Street. But for all the trappings, being a partner at Goldman Sachs may no longer be as lucrative for some, while the spots in the club may be shrinking.

For Switzerland’s two dominant banks, size matters. But there is a twist to the competition between UBS and Credit Suisse in recent years—both are desperately trying to shrink. The main target for reduction is the capital-intensive, error-prone investment banking operations at both groups, which suffered to varying degrees from damaging stumbles before and after the financial crisis.

These days, it doesn’t take much digging to find potentially scandalous behavior coursing through the world’s biggest banks. But the latest round of probes into currency trading are shaping up to be a real doozy.

A customer-service platform company, Zendesk is moving one step closer to launching an initial public offering.

Privately-held Jawbone is trolling for additional funding as the company, known for its Up series of health-tracking bracelets, aims to expand its business.

Box, the online storage company, has secretly filed paperwork for an initial public offering, according to a source.

Even after a brutal 2008 credit crisis and tougher regulations, which ostensibly made it harder for financial firms to make money, the top US banks are raking in the cash.