Financial Services Industry Archive

Grilling the chiefs – Eight of the biggest CEO names in banking, including Goldman Sach’s Lloyd C. Blankfein, Citigroup’s Vikram S. Pandit and Bank of America’s Kenneth D. Lewis, will testify before the House Financial Services Committee today. Likely questions include how they spent $160 billion in bailout money, a looming credit card crisis and hedge fund dealing....

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When Harry Markopolos testified before Congress last week about his investigation of Bernie Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme, it came as a welcome relief after the prevarications of regulators struggling to explain away how they had missed an apparent a $50 billion fraud. His straightforward account minced no words. Whistleblower Markopolos is the real thing. An accountant and...

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When Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest bank and one of the biggest banks in the world, reported its first annual loss since it was cobbled back together after World War II, the reverberations were felt globally. Global banks are now so interlinked through credit swaps and other instruments that a loss anywhere along the chain can cause problems. While the $5 billion loss for the year seems...

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Executives of financial service companies are not getting the message that their customers are confused and alienated, according to a new survey by Cohn & Wolfe, a marketing consulting firm. “Communication is key as are transparency and accountability but we’re not seeing it at the top,” Matt Wolfrom, head of Cohn & Wolfe’s North American practice, told me....

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Today, the state of Florida receives the records of more than one million State Farm Mutual policy holders it will use to decide if — and how — it wants to hurt the giant insurer for bailing out of its property insurance lines in the Sunshine State. The battle between the nation’s largest home insurer and Florida’s Republican governor Charlie Crist — who has gone...

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Federal financial relief appears to be coming back full circle now that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner seems ready to propose the creation of a “bad bank.” Better make that an “aggregator bank.” The latest twist is that Geithner hopes to get around the complex problem of valuing bad assets that would be bought up by making the “aggregator” bank a kind of...

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Property and casualty (P&C) insurers — companies like Allstate, Travelers and Chubb — have been hurt by the recession but are far from down and out, according to a recent speech by Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute. In fact, business insurers may get a boost from the expected passage of the Obama stimulus program, Hartwig said. The huge...

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Geithner to announce new bailout plans Monday — What could be the next major turn in the bailout story is expected Monday when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announces new details. On the table are tighter restrictions for bailed-out banks and using the Federal Reserve instead of a new “bad bank” to buy up toxic debt. [Source: The Wall Street Journal] Bush’s...

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A “chicken and egg” conundrum is plaguing credit markets. While banks that get federal bailout money are faulted for not using the funds to make loans to kickstart the economy, hamstrung corporations are not seeking loans. A Federal Reserve study shows that 60 percent of loan officers at banks surveyed said that as of January, middle and large firms aren’t seeking more...

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Leading bankers, notably Jamie Dimon CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., are not happy with the Obama Administration’s upcoming rules that could limit bank chiefs to compensation of about $500,000. It is easy to understand why. President Barack Obama’s team is expected to announce later today possibly-draconian executive compensation limits in the runup to what is expected to be a...

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