JPMorgan Chase raked in a record profit last year, and chief executive Jamie Dimon is getting a pay hike. The company's board of directors approved a $31 million pay package for 2018 that includes cash and stock awards, according to a public filing. That's 5% more than the banker received last year. JPMorgan is one of the first banks to disclose approved executive compensation for last year...

Wells Fargo's deposits and loans are under pressure from two years of scandal. It's cutting up to 26,500 jobs and shutting hundreds of branches. And the bank's stock price has trailed the rest of the market. Despite those challenges — or perhaps because of them — Wells Fargo ( WFC ) has lavished shareholders with aggressive share buybacks. Wells Fargo shelled out $7.4 billion to repurchase its stock in the third quarter, nearly triple what it spent the year before...

The just-concluded 2018 elections have been referred to as a new " year of the woman ," as nearly 25% of all members of the next Congress will be female. That puts Congress one point ahead of S&P 500 boardrooms, where 24% of all corporate directors are women . Neither number is impressive — and the pace of change remains glacially slow...

This year has been filled with transition and turmoil at Starbucks. But don't tell that to Wall Street. Despite negative publicity in 2018 that stemmed from the arrests of two black customers in a Philadelphia store in April, worries about more competition from Dunkin' and McDonald's and the retirement of its iconic leader Howard Schultz, shares of Starbucks are up more than 15% this year and are not far from an all-time high...