Financial Watch

Some of the largest U.S. banks were ranked very low for retail customer satisfaction, a marketing research company said on Thursday.

The study implies that as some of the biggest banks get bigger, customers may not be happy.

Smaller banks and even large regional banks fared better than their colossal counterparts, according to the survey from J.D. Power and Associates.

The three biggest U.S. retail banks — JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Chase, Citigroup’s Citibank, and Bank of America Corp’s Bank of America — consistently rank at or near the bottom for customer service in the regions they serve, the survey said.

As President Obama heads to New York City on Thursday to press for a major overhaul of financial rules, he faces stiff opposition by Wall Street to the toughest proposed regulatory crackdown since the Great Depression.

A Senate committee on Wednesday approved the final piece of the legislation: strict new oversight of the murky and unregulated market for complex financial derivatives. It is one of three significant provisions that rile Wall Street the most.

Trade finance banks are stepping up pressure on the G20 to ease regulation of the credits that keep global commerce flowing, after a new survey showed credit tightness is still hampering the flow of trade.

The survey, conducted by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), shows that the supply of trade finance remains constrained both in value and volume, and that banks have cut credit lines even though almost all of them say losses in trade finance are less than in banking generally.

President Barack Obama’s plan to tax financial institutions to recoup funds spent during the government’s bailout of financial firms received tepid enthusiasm from the top tax writer in the U.S. Senate.

Senator Max Baucus, the conservative-leaning Democrat who heads the Senate Finance Committee said on Tuesday he will hold a series of hearings to examine the plan.

But he also said good news on the government’s recouping of its bailout investments may cast doubt on the need for the funds Obama wants to raise.

“We need to learn whether banks will pass it on to consumers, and how it might affect lending to small businesses,” Baucus said.

U.S. Bancorp said Tuesday its first-quarter profit rose nearly 55 percent from a year ago, helped by higher revenue from its fee-based businesses and slowing consumer loan losses.

The bank also benefited from growth in traditional deposits, giving it a cheap source of money for loans.

But the Minneapolis bank still wrote off more bad loans during the quarter, and expects those write-offs to remain at a similar level this quarter as well, because of economic conditions.

Net loan charge-offs were $1.14 billion, up 2.3 percent from the fourth quarter 2009.