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Financial Times (UK)
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Jul 28, 08 7:51 PM CDT
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Merrill Lynch announced a surprise stock offering today aimed at raising $8.5 billion for the brokerage, strapped by the mortgage and credit crises, the Financial Times reports. It also said it was writing down a further $5.7 billion in bad debt, and is selling collateralized debt obligations nominally worth $30.6 billion for $6.7 billion.
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New York Times
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Jul 28, 08 5:09 AM CDT
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Reeling from real-estate losses, banks are turning off the credit spigot to loan-seeking businesses, the New York Times reports. The loan reduction means more bad news down the line as money-starved companies begin to cut workers. Banks cut credit nearly 3% over the past year, the most since 2001, according to the Federal Reserve. The shrinking availability has hit companies especially hard as customers facing their own financial struggles horde their pennies.
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Los Angeles Times
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Jul 25, 08 1:15 PM CDT
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Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is in the midst of a reluctant about-face of his economic principles. The Los Angeles Times looks at how Paulson—a former chief executive at Goldman Sachs with a long history of faith in laissez-faire capitalism—has had to become the point man for the Bush administration's decidedly hands-on approach to fixing the nation's economic troubles.
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New York Times
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Jul 23, 08 5:56 AM CDT
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Yesterday's announcements of multibillion-dollar losses at Wachovia and Washington Mutual were only the latest poundings since the credit crisis took hold a year ago. Yet Wall Street, its expectations at rock bottom, cheered the reports because they could have been worse. Shares in WaMu, which posted a $3.3 billion quarterly fall, soared 6.2%. "We are redefining bad," one risk analyst told the New York Times .
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New York Times
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Jul 22, 08 9:58 AM CDT
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New Wachovia CEO Robert Steel moved aggressively to staunch the bank's losses by taking a massive $8.9-billion hit in the second quarter and slashing its dividend to almost nothing, the New York Times reports. Steel had every reason to clean house, but analysts had predicted only a 78 cents-per-share loss. Instead, after $6.1 billion in writedowns, Wachovia lost $4.20 a share.
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Reuters
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Jul 20, 08 5:42 PM CDT
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Henry Paulson sought to reassure Americans today that US banking is "sound" despite a growing list of troubled banks, Reuters reports. He also said the economy will stay slow for months, but expressed confidence that Congress will shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before summer recess. "Congress understands how important these institutions are," he said on Face the Nation .
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Wall Street Journal
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Jul 18, 08 8:32 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Citibank delighted shareholders today by losing a mere $2.5 billion in the second quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports. Analysts had expected much worse from the US’ biggest bank by assets, but Citi beat expectations by reducing writedowns and slashing jobs. The results should prove a counterweight to the ghastly results Merill Lynch reported after markets closed yesterday.
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Bloomberg
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Jul 18, 08 5:29 AM CDT
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Merrill Lynch posted a second-quarter loss of $4.65 billion late yesterday, more than twice the second-quarter loss analysts had expected and one of the worst in the brokerage's history. The firm took a hit of $9.7 billion in credit-market writedowns, reports Bloomberg, on top of some $30 billion in the previous three quarters. Moody's cut Merrill's credit rating on the loss, which exceeded the $1.96-billion loss in the first quarter.
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Wall Street Journal
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Jul 17, 08 3:08 PM CDT
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A UBS executive told a Senate probe today the bank will no longer host accounts for US clients, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Swiss bank is under investigation by the IRS for marketing tax-evasion strategies involving its offshore accounts to wealthy Americans. The Senate panel estimates that the US loses about $100 billion annually due to offshore tax evasion.
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New York Times
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Jul 17, 08 6:33 AM CDT
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Years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, the project to rebuild Ground Zero took another blow as struggling brokerage Merrill Lynch—projected as an anchor tenant for one of four planned office buildings—ended talks with the Port Authority and developer Larry Silverstein, reports the New York Times .
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Reuters
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Jul 14, 08 2:40 PM CDT
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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is looking to sell recently capsized IndyMac as a whole to one healthy bank, an executive told Reuters today. The FDIC took over IndyMac on Friday after nervous customers withdrew more than $1.3B in 11 days. "I don't expect there will be large bank failures," COO John Bovenzi said. "There will be small bank failures."
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Wall Street Journal
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Jul 11, 08 7:03 PM CDT
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As mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae crowded the headlines today, Washington snatched up IndyMac Bank in the second-largest US bank failure in history, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Pasadena, Calif. savings and loan, which owns about $32 billion in assets, saw stocks fall from $45 last year to 28 cents this week as mortgage defaults piled up. It will reopen Monday under federal supervision.
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New York Times
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Jul 8, 08 8:26 AM CDT
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The Federal Reserve will issue new rules next week restricting subprime lending and other exotic loans aimed at borrowers with weak credit, Ben Bernanke said today. He said the Fed is also considering extending the overnight low-cost loan program, which helps big banks in need of quick cash, a sign that the Fed believes the financial crisis will continue into 2009.
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New York Times
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Jul 1, 08 5:20 PM CDT
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UBS must share the names of account holders with prosecutors investigating tax-evasion allegations against the Swiss bank's clients, a federal judge ruled this afternoon. Whether the bank would comply or appeal wasn't known, but UBS said in a statement it "looks forward to working with the IRS to address the summons," the New York Times reports.
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New York Times
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Jul 1, 08 2:43 AM CDT
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The Justice Department is pressing UBS for the names of suspected tax dodgers with secret bank accounts in Switzerland, the New York Times reports. Federal authorities believe the Swiss bank may have helped up to 20,000 Americans stash $20 billion in offshore accounts, evading hundreds of millions in taxes. The investigation threatens to rock the Swiss banking system, which has tightly guarded its secrets since the Middle Ages.
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