While these figures will look egregious to many workers with 22.2% median compensation gains in 2012, SNL is signaling that compensation packages have continued to align more closely with external views on how executives should be rewarded and what they should be rewarded for. SNL also shows that the median pay at the largest banks actually fell.

SNL indicates that Richard Fairbank of Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE: COF) and John Stumpf of Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) are among the highest compensated executives. SNL also showed that Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) has realigned its pay and listened to shareholders, while J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) considered how to balance CEO penalties with the bank’s broader and more positive financial performance.

Read also: The Seven Safest Big American Banks for 2013

Other banks included in this list of highest paid CEOs are U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB), State Street Corp. (NYSE: STT), First Republic Bank (NYSE: FRC), Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE: BK), Regions Financial Corp. (NYSE: RF) and BB&T Corp. (NYSE: BBT).

We show two different images below on this matter, both of which are snapshots from the SNL piece. The first image includes a highest CEO pay of all banks. The other shows the highest paid CEOs of the second-tier banks, with assets of $10 billion to $500 billion.

If we could steal one quote from Mel Brooks here, “It’s good to be da’ king!”

As you can see in the second table from SNL, the report also shows the lowest paid CEOs of the top second-tier banks with assets of $10 billion to $500 billion. Here you can see SNL’s full 2012 bank CEO compensation report.

The UBS team broke down the report with companies that would benefit most from rising long-term rates and rising short-term rates. Here are their stocks to buy based on those two scenarios.

Rising short-term rate stocks to buy:

TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. (NYSE: AMTD) is a top e-broker on the UBS list to buy. TD Ameritrade provides securities brokerage services and technology-based financial services to retail investors, traders and independent registered investment advisors in the United States. UBS has a $18 price objective for the stock. The Thomson/First Call consensus target is at $20. Shareholders are paid a 1.5% dividend.

Charles Schwab Corp. (NYSE: SCHW) had revenue growth that came in higher than the industry average of 6.3%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues increased by 7.9%. UBS has a $20 price objective, while the consensus for the stock is at $17. Investors receive a 1.2% dividend.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (NYSE: BK) is set up well for a rise in short rates. Warren Buffett has continued to add this stock to his portfolio of banks. UBS has set a $28 target, and the consensus sits just above at $28.50. Shareholders are paid a 2,0% dividend.

Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) is a bulge bracket competitor poised to do well in the rising short rate scenario. The company has begun expanding its Australian presence with an investment from its $4 billion global infrastructure fund. UBS has a $23 target, and the consensus target is higher at $25. Investors are paid a tiny 0.8% dividend.

Comerica Inc. (NYSE: CMA) has built itself into the largest commercial bank headquartered in the booming state of Texas. In addition to 136 banking centers in Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Kerrville regions of Texas, Comerica Bank locations can be found in Arizona, California, Florida and Michigan. UBS has a $42 price target for the stock, and the consensus is lower at $36. Investors are paid a 1.7% dividend.

Rising long-term rates stocks to buy:

Lincoln National Corp. (NYSE: LNC) is a top stock to buy on this side of the interest rate fence. The stock continues to trade at the low end of the valuation spectrum at levels close to 0.7 times book value. UBS has a $37 price objective, while the consensus is lower at $36. Investors are paid a 1.3% dividend.

MetLife Inc. (NYSE: MET) is another top insurance name on the UBS stocks to buy list. Strong gains in the book value per share during the past six months have kept the stocks multiple significantly below historical multiples. UBS has placed a $45 target on the stock. The consensus estimate is at $48. Investors receive a tidy 2.5% dividend.

Unum Group (NYSE: UNM) has recently been hitting 52-week highs. The company also raised its dividend 11.5% last week. UBS has a $31 target, but the consensus is lower at $30.50. Investors are paid a 1.8% dividend.

Historically, the stocks in most of the industries within the financial services sector have demonstrated moderately strong, positive correlations with U.S. Treasury yields. This could prove positive for investors that add stocks to their portfolios that benefit from both long and short rate movement.

The new Buffett holdings are below.

American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP) was roughly 151.6 million shares, SAME AS last quarter.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (NYSE: BK) was almost 19 million shares, which appears to be slightly lower but it had been raised before. What matters here is that it remains a substantial holding still.

Chicago Bridge & Iron Co. (NYSE: CBI) was a NEW POSITION at just over 6.5 million shares worth over $400 million.

Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) was more than 400 million shares due to the stock split of 2012, but this is virtually the SAME AS BEFORE.

ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) is the SAME POSITION at 24.1 million shares, but this is lower than in prior quarters.

Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST) was the SAME POSITION at 4,333,363 shares.

DaVita Inc. (NYSE: DVA) was a LARGER POSITION and already more than a 10% stake and we recently saw that Berkshire Hathaway had entered into a standstill agreement not to buy more than 25% of the company after already having increased its stake recently. This was listed as 14.97 million shares as of March 31 versus 13.6 million shares before.

Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) was the SAME POSITION at roughly 4 million shares.

DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV) was HIGHER YET AGAIN at 37.275 million shares versus almost 34 million shares and that was also higher than before.

Gannett Co. (NYSE: GCI) was the SAME POSITION of 1.74 million shares.

General Electric Corp. (NYSE: GE) is listed as the SAME POSITION at 588,900 shares, but this is still way down from prior reports.

General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) is the SAME POSITION at 25 million shares, but this was previously up from smaller positions.

GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) is the SAME POSITION at 1.51 million shares.

Chesapeake will save $100 million in interest charges on the notes after redeeming them at par and refinancing the debt.

In the great scheme of Chesapeake’s efforts to reduce its debt burden, $100 million is not a huge amount, but the company needs every dime it can raise. Today’s ruling inches Chesapeake nearer to its debt-reduction goal.

Shares of Chesapeake are trading up 1.2% to $19.35 in the first half-hour of trading this morning, in a 52-week range of $13.32 to $22.97.

A small number of banks serviced or acted as trustee in the vast majority of the mortgages in foreclosure — and it is the same banks that now find themselves having to deal with those mortgages and deflated property values. As of February, Bank of America was servicing more than 95,000 loans in foreclosure, followed by Wells Fargo, which was servicing 85,000 loans. Based on RealtyTrac’s February 2013 data, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 10 banks foreclosing the most homes.

Click here to see the banks foreclosing on the most homes

The banks foreclosing on the most homes may not directly own the bulk of the mortgages. Rather, they often service them for other entities, which means collecting payments from homeowners and foreclosing on those properties when they become delinquent. In other cases banks act as a trustee, representing a pool of mortgage loans held in a trust.

As of 2012, according to Mortgage Daily, the banks foreclosing on the most mortgages — Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Chase — were the three biggest servicers of all mortgages.

According to RealtyTrac’s Vice President Daren Blomquist, the majority of loans originated prior to the recession. The banks that actually own the loans, Blomquist explained, are now stuck with these mortgages in foreclosure. Bank of America in particular is struggling to unload the assets it absorbed through its acquisition of Countrywide Financial.

Despite not being directly on the hook for the majority of the losses incurred when a home enters foreclosure, these servicing banks still stand to lose money, both from the lost fees they would have collected with each mortgage payment and the costs they have to incur to deal with the foreclosure. “All things being equal” Blomquist explained “they would prefer to have that as a performing mortgage, rather than as a non-performing mortgage, because they’re actually generating income as opposed to not.”

According to Sam Garcia, founder and publisher of Mortgage Daily, many of these banks have had to contract companies that specialize as servicers for distressed mortgages to work with borrowers that are delinquent or going through the foreclosure process. “It doesn’t really cost anything to service a loan that’s being paid on time,” Garcia said. However, “Once you have to start talking to the customer, that loan becomes unprofitable.”

To determine the 10 banks foreclosing the most home loans, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data provided by RealtyTrac, an online real estate marketplace and data source on distressed homes properties. All data are as of February 2013 and reflect the amount and value of both homes and mortgages serviced or held in trust by the nation’s major banks. At RealtyTrac’s suggestion, because Bank of America acquired Countrywide’s assets and liabilities in 2008, we treated loans in foreclosure that were serviced or held in trust by Countrywide as part of Bank of America’s portfolio. RealtyTrac also tracks the percentage of foreclosed properties it considers to be “seriously underwater” — defined as having a loan-to-value ratio of at least 125%. Additional data on the total amount of mortgage loans originated in 2012 and the size of the mortgage portfolio serviced or held in trust by banks as of December 31, 2012, come from Mortgage Daily.

These are the banks foreclosing on the most homes.

The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (NYSE: BK) released news this morning showing that it has been awarded three patents for key processes that enable electronic trading of commodities such as gold through ETFs. The patents also cover silver and other precious metals, as well as base and industrial metals.

The company shows that it launched this unique process back in 2003. Bank of New York Mellon claims to have created the commodities ETF business, and it said that now consists of nearly $100 billion in commodity assets administered. The organization also serves as custodian, record keeper or administrator for approximately half of all U.S. listed ETFs across a broad range of asset classes.

So here is the question to ask: Is the bank going to now outline competing ETFs that may be in patent violations? We would also want to know if these patents are enforceable and whether the bank wants to go after other ETFs.

There is a lot of money at stake here, and it is not surprising that a company would want to protect some proprietary things if and when it can. As of December 31, 2012, Bank of New York Mellon had a whopping sum of $26.2 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration. It also had $1.4 trillion in assets under management.

We will be looking into this matter much closer because, ultimately, this is the sort of odd financial news that needs to be watched closely. ETFs have more than $1 trillion in assets now, and they account for a large portion of the average daily volume on direct trading in ETF share volume each day. More importantly, these ETFs also are responsible for much of the daily trading volume in the stocks and financial instruments that they have to include to replicate their investment strategy.

The adverse scenario was a moderate U.S. recession that would have begun in the fourth quarter of 2012 and lasts until early 2014. In this period, real GDP would fall by 2%, unemployment would jump up to 9.75%, CPI would reach 4% by the middle of 2013, and equity prices would fall by 25% by the middle of 2013. The VIX (volatility index) would also rise to more than 40 at the start of the scenario, housing prices would drop more than 6% during 2013, and commercial real estate prices would fall by 4.5% during 2013.

The Federal Reserve said that the nation’s largest banks have continued to improve their ability to withstand an extremely adverse hypothetical economic scenario and are now in a much stronger capital position than before the financial crisis.

The full results are here.

We expect that Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), SunTrust Banks Inc. (NYSE: STI), U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB), KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (NYSE: BK) PNC Financial Services Group Inc. (NYSE: PNC) and others will all have sought to request higher dividends and to resume share buybacks.

Several banks were very close to meeting all of our financial, historic and transformative criteria, and they may be eligible for the list of safest banks in 2014, or even after the stress tests and after decisions have been formalized over returning capital to shareholders. Some of the data may seem investor oriented, but the reality is that institutional depositors, creditors and trading partners generally evaluate peers with many of the same metrics. The global economic recovery has lost some steam at the same time that the stock market has recovered. The public needs to know which of the larger banks are safe, regardless whether the economy stabilizes or worsens again.

The criteria to be among the safest banks has to be very strict by nature. It also has to apply to the larger institutions, which are either money-center banks or have multiple-state geographies. To make the list, a bank either had to have a minimum of 100 branches or it had to have retail branches in multiple states as the base level for relevance and importance. We used banks with a minimum market capitalization of $3 billion and a minimum asset base of $20 billion. These safest banks had to have the bulk of their image tied to retail and commercial banking operations with many branch offices (probably eliminate, we said above). This eliminated the great fiduciary banks such as State Street Corp. (NYSE: STT) and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (NYSE: BK), even though they certainly would be considered among the safest banks. It also eliminated the bank holding companies with no retail banking operations, such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS).

24/7 Wall St. took a “Made in America” approach as well, and we screened out U.S. banking outfits that are actually subsidiaries of foreign banks. We also screened out the banks that were still in the process of making large, game-changing or transformative acquisitions, which are too difficult to evaluate in order to avoid absorbing any hidden or unknown risks.

With credit ratings becoming a risk again after a U.K. sovereign downgrade, and on the heels of the fiscal cliff and spending sequestration, all these banks also had to be considered investment grade by the major credit ratings agencies. A minimum hurdle of a 7.0% return on equity had to be seen, and we included the return on assets in this analysis as well. These safest banks had to have a minimum divided yield of 2.0% for their common stockholders, as proof that management believes that it can continue returning capital to shareholders through good and bad times, while still maintaining normal operations.

We screened out the nondiversified banks to avoid too many fluctuations throughout the business cycles. For an investment angle, we also gave preference to the banks where Wall St. analysts have a consensus price target above the current share price, indicating that some underlying value potentially remains. If a bank’s common stock was less than $10.00 per share, it had to have its metrics well above average among the largest banks.

Read Also: The Best & Worst Run Cities in America

While Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) was the best performing of the 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks in 2012, it and the money-center banking giant Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) actually do not qualify to be in the safest banks in America, even though the reality is that these banks are almost certain to survive another recession. The Federal Reserve deems them to still be problem banks, and they have so far not been freed up to raise their dividends or to increase share buybacks. That may change ahead, and the reality is that these banks are believed to be strong enough to weather most negative scenarios under the impending stress tests.

Finally, we eliminated banks that we did not feel would survive another recession. Consumers have to keep their money somewhere other than under their mattresses. Having an extremely safe bank to protect your hard-earned cash, nest-eggs and safety deposit boxes in hard times is much more important than how high of a rate depositors can get on certificates of deposit and in their checking and savings accounts. As far as quality is concerned, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) has large stakes in three of the seven safest banks.

In mid-2012, banking regulators proposed to incorporate Basel III capital changes for substantially all U.S. banking organizations. Our list of safest banks shows the Tier-1 ratio today as well as the company’s projected Tier-1 ratio under the proposed rules. This also helps to eliminate any problems over safety and vulnerability ahead. If Basel III is finally adopted as proposed, the threshold for the Tier 1 common equity ratio will be 7%, consisting of a minimum level plus a capital conservation buffer.

Based on the analysis, we anticipate that future lists of the safest banks in America may include 10 or even 12 banks, rather than seven, because many banks only missed one criteria yet exceeded other hurdles handily. We still are not evaluating the community or single-region banks due to size or single geography risks. That being said, many of those community banks have better ratios than any of the larger safest banks in America.

This is the 24/7 Wall St. list of the seven safest banks in America for 2013 to deposit money into, ranked in order of safety, size by assets, and reach.  Our rank is based on financial stability, size by assets, and by reach.

Portfolio managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler are getting even more entrenched as far as their ability to add to positions. The new Buffett holdings are below.   American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP) was roughly 151.6 million shares, SAME AS last quarter.

Archer Daniels Midland Co. (NYSE: ADM) was listed as a NEW POSITION of 5.95 million shares worth some $163.1 million as of the end of 2012.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (NYSE: BK) appears to be the SAME SIZE at over 19.6 million shares, but that is after gains had been reported in prior quarters.

Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) was more than 400 million shares due to the stock split of 2012, but this is virtually the SAME AS BEFORE.

ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) is the SAME AS BEFORE at 24.1 million shares, but this is lower than in prior quarters.

Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST) was 4,333,363 shares, SAME AS last quarter.

READ ALSO: GE is the Best Conglomerate for Investors in 2013

DaVita Inc. (NYSE: DVA) was already more than a 10% stake, but a new filing shows that Buffett and various entities own a collective 13.6 million shares for a 13.0% stake. This position has grown and grown and is a LARGER STAKE. This stock has risen and risen while Buffett kept adding the position.

Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) was the SAME AS LAST QUARTER at roughly 4 million shares, but this was previously a new position.

DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV) is a LARGER POSITION AGAIN at almost 34 million shares versus 29.555 million shares before that and it had grown another quarter before as well.

Gannett Co. (NYSE: GCI) was 1.74 million, SAME AS BEFORE but decreased in prior quarters.

General Dynamics Corp. (NYSE: GD) is the SAME AS BEFORE at 3.877 million shares.

General Electric Corp. (NYSE: GE) is listed as THE SAME 588,900 shares, but this is still way down from the 5.008 million shares and 7.777 million shares the two prior quarter.