Faced with new Department of Labor rules requiring investment advisers to act in the best interest of their retirement account customers, Morgan Stanley’s decided to let its customers keeping paying for retirement advice with commissions—a marked departure from rival Merrill Lynch, which is dropping the traditional commission-based model for a percentage-of-assets fee-based model – WSJ
Big banks are looking to capitalize on the recent virtual assistant and chatbot trend that tech companies like Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft have trotted out in recent years. So if you thought in-person banking was growing scarcer now, just wait until Digit, Kai, and Erica are really rolling – NYTimes
And to help? The OCC, which is creating an Innovation Office to help banks and other financial services companies develop fintech while meeting safety and consumer protection standards – Law360
John Cryan’s welcoming some long-awaited (and unexpected) good news at Deutsche Bank, which managed to swing to profit in Q3 – WSJ and Bloomberg
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is spinning off a self-driving car unit from its X research lab into a stand-alone business – WSJ
A side effect of a successful AT&T/Time Warner deal could be more individualized (if not quite yet Minority-Report-esque) TV ads – NYTimes
PE firm Carlyle Group has announced plans for another round of fundraising in the coming years with an ambitious $100 billion goal – WSJ
While we’re talking about raking in the big bucks, Snap’s got its eye on a cool $4 billion in its impending IPO – Bloomberg
And Chinese delivery company ZTO Express actually has $1.4 billion in hand after its NYSE IPO—the largest in the US this year – NYTimes and WSJ
Big data? Sure. Old hat. Yawn. Let’s talk Bling Data. Because diamonds—and possibly your info—are forever – NYTimes