banks

Thank goodness someone has some sense. Manhattan Federal District Court Judge Jed Rakoff refused to approve Monday’s Bank of America’s deal with the SEC be cause it may be unfair to the public to accept the settlement. Bank of America was…

Bank of America’s story in the BofA-Merrill saga has always sounded dubious at best.  Ken Lewis has always claimed he was doing what was right by shareholders and America, that Gentle Ben and Hammering Hank coerced him into the Merrill…

Here are the latest FDIC seizures: First State Bank of Altus, Altus, Oklahoma Total assets of $103.4 million and deposits of approximately $98.2 million Estimated cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF): $25.2 million. Integrity…

In truth this is really two failures, but one had six subsidiaries so it counts as seven.  Here are the failures: The first bank is in New York. Waterford Village Bank, Clarence, New York, was closed by the New York State Banking…

Germany never participated in the upswing of the housing bubble. This fact has led German politicians of all stripes to mistakenly believe their banking system was somehow immune to the problems infecting bubble markets like the US or…

Earnings season is upon us and the Swedish banks have begun reporting earnings. Their results have seen huge writedowns that demonstrate large and continued exposure to souring loans in the Baltics. Handelsbanken and Nordea reported…

This just hit the wires. NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT), a leading provider of financing to small businesses and middle market companies, today announced that it entered into a $3 billion loan facility provided by a…

This comes via Brown Brothers Harriman. I have highlighted the parts of particular note. Macroeconomic Update: The economy has slowed along with the rest of the world, as China has become much more dependent on trade as it integrates…

Back in April, I mentioned a story about BTA, a bank in Kazakhstan that had been nationalized by the state in February.  The interesting bit about the story was that interested parties from abroad (including Morgan Stanley) had…

Every country has a problem child or two in the financial services sector. America has Citigroup and Bank of America. Britain has RBS and HBOS/Lloyds.  And Germany has Hypo Real Estate.  I have been chronicling problems at the…