regionals

AmTrust Financial, a privately held regional bank holding company based in Cleveland, has just filed for bankruptcy. With well over $10 billion in assets, AmTrust Bank is fairly large. The circumstances surrounding its failure are unusual…

After a huge fall off in credit consistent with the fall in nominal GDP, we are seeing credit stabilise at a lower level. Debt to GDP ratios may not be lower, but as GDP is lower, so too is credit in the system.  Yet there is a large…

You are a teacher at a local primary school. Each school day you and some of your colleagues watch over the children at the school playground to make sure all of the children follow the rules and keep their hands to themselves. Your role is…

We are a few weeks into earnings season and it should be abundantly clear that financial institutions are firing on all cylinders.  In fact, financials are leading the broader market for the first time since 1993.  Yet, loan losses have…

The Bloomberg video below makes it seem that Whitney believes the stress tests are a sham. She says the tests are a theoretical exercise whereby banks ask: "what will our earnings power be in two years after we sell off these 'toxic'…

Recently, I posted a Wall Street Journal article that suggested smaller banks and new banking enterprise can supply the lion's share of additional credit needed for the U.S. banking system. While President Obama is off meeting the heads of…

As you know from reading my blog, I am expecting a lot of writedowns from regional banks as real estate loans sour. In fact, I expect a number of bankruptcies because of defaults in commercial real estate where much exposure is hidden.…

As with everything else, the bailout of the U.S. banking system is going to have unintended consequences. One of them seems to be giving exactly those firms that wasted billions of shareholder money a chance to double down. Flush with…

PNC, down only 13% this year-to-date, very good for a bank stock, is acquiring beleaguered Ohio bank NCC for $5.5 billion. The price represents a huge discount to the prevailing market price before open today and NCC was down 34% in early…

Spanish banking giant Banco Santander has pulled through the credit crisis with a much higher profile than ever before. I was initially skeptical that the firm was hiding huge losses at it had exposure in Spain, the UK and the US, all…