Let’s be honest – the intricacies of the 2,300 page Restoring Financial Stability Act are challenging to digest. Even as a financial public relations professional, the task of tracking the ongoing developments of the financial reform while also developing strategic thought leadership for our spokespeople has been daunting – to say the least. However, the need to work closely with spokespeople to help translate their insights on complex financial issues into comprehensible, interesting and differentiating thought leadership is exactly what makes financial services public relations rewarding.

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Positive commercial real estate stories have been few and far between during the Great Recession. What does the emerging commercial real estate recovery mean for commercial real estate public relations programs?

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Last week, Mashable reported that Twitter has begun beta testing its new offering for businesses – a suite of features designed to support companies using the microblogging platform. Twitter’s clearly looking to further encourage participation by brands in addition to individuals.

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In the B2B world, if small businesses are a target, you must integrate social media strategies into your marketing/communications/PR programs. The fact is that small businesses are chomping at the bit for information. Most small business owners don’t have an established management team, mentor, or group of individuals they can bounce ideas off, commiserate with or do a quick gut-check with.

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The rising popularity of mobile phone applications, the abundance of Smartphones and greater familiarity with text messaging are all factors driving the impressive growth in mobile banking services. Having experienced phenomenal growth outside the US, it seems as with many mobile technology offerings the US is now rapidly catching on. According to research from the Towers Group in 2007 there were 400,000 mobile banking users in the US, rising to around 3.1 million in 2008.

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As PR professionals working with financial services clients, it’s our job to keep an eye on what’s happening in the industry when it comes to social media engagement. Our clients want to know what their competitors are doing, and how they can improve on it. Our marketing and PR colleagues want to know how these strategies are being implemented, and how to work with legal and compliance to get it done. And we want to know what’s coming next, so we can forecast for our clients.

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Many financial communications professionals continue to try and wrap their arms around social media and the relevance to the financial services industry. Many retail banks have been able to use Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media venues as customer service tools to both aggregate and respond to customer complaints. Some have done this phenomenally well and been able to improve their customer service model because of this “real time” customer feedback– like Wells Fargo and USAA, for example (see below for examples). But what about the institutional side of banking – is there an opportunity for social media there? The short answer is yes.

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It’s a busy week in financial services – this week’s roundup highlights the news of the House’s passing of the historic health bill, Bernanke’s comments about the Fed’s oversight of banks, and more FDIC takeovers of community banks.

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This week’s highlights feature news from the private equity sector, findings from Morningstar’s 2010 Target-Date Industry Survey as well as a few items to be on the lookout for that may potentially impact the U.S. markets.

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Welcome to another round-up of the financial news we’re keeping an eye on this week. In addition to a few deals happening here and there – including AIG’s announcement that it will sell its ALICO business to MetLife, and Royal Dutch Shell and PetroChina offering to buy Arrow Energy of Australia – here’s what we’ll be watching (in addition to all of the best- and worst-dressed recaps from the Oscars):

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