Wrong title!
What the big banks are creating is not a BTC alternative, nor is it against BTC at all. BTC is a cryptocurrency with an open public ledger. The big banks are creating a large distributed record book, but it won't be public (it's only for big banks), and it won't be associated with a cryptocurrency.
I like it. The big banks are doing their thing, and they don't mess around with BTC.
Indeed, they're just planning on using the blockchain internally as their own ledger to reduce costs and improve on efficiency. There might also be other applications.
I've seen similar articles a while back, isn't really something new.
Banks could use bitcoin technology by next year: study (Nov 11, 2015)
Big banks consider using Bitcoin blockchain technology (Sep 17, 2015)
Why Banks Are Testing Bitcoin's Blockchain (Without Bitcoin) (June 1, 2015)