banks

The term deleveraging is one bandied about a lot in the press recently. But, what does it actually mean? De-leveraging is the process by which financial institutions and investors reduce the relative size of their assets to equity ratio.…

This just in from the Globe & Mail via Reuters:Standard & Poor's in a sweeping move Monday that rocked markets cut ratings on a number of major U.S. securities firms including Lehman Brothers Inc. and said outlooks on the large U.S.…

Royal Bank of Canada joins the list of financial institutions sued by clients over the large losses associated with the credit crisis.The Globe & Mail reports:Royal Bank of Canada has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit in New…

This is a story I caught over at Michael Panzner's site this morning. Apparently Paramax, a hedge fund, entered into a swap arrangement with UBS based on the value of a subprime CDO back in February 2007. Under the terms of the swap, the…

The Times reports today that Bradford and Bingley was rescued from the verge of collapse by private equity investors. This follows their report at the weekend on the dismissal of the Chief Executive and the profit warning they have issued.…

Below are only the latest writedown stories from the web as of June 2nd. If you are linking in from DailyKos and looking for the full timeline of writedown news and the credit crisis, visit my credit crisis timeline, the most comprehensive…

The President of the Boston Fed, Eric Rosengren, has in effect said that small and regional banks are at risk in the next wave of writedowns for U.S. financial institutions. He sites construction loan exposure in particular as a place to…

Along with the residential housing bust in Ireland, a commercial real estate (CRE) bust is definitely on the table. According to the newspaper the Irish Independent up to 10 billion euros of writedowns are possible for the Irish property…

This in from the Times today: Bradford & Bingley is in big trouble. They are trying to do a rights issue and issue a profit warning at the same time. Can anyone tell me how one gets shareholders to pony up another 88p to buy a stock…

The risks going forward for financial institutions and their capital base are large and growing. The blog CalculatedRisk has reported on yet another story that should give chills to bankers. This one is very significant: Chapter 7…