Financial Services Industry Archive

One of the largest insurers, Hartford Financial, reported first quarter losses this evening that were well below analysts’ estimates. But you can’t say they didn’t warn you. Those who followed the Hartford, Connecticut-based insurer’s steady drumbeat of bad news braced for what they thought was the worst: a loss of $2.80 a share in “core” or operating...

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E*Trade is the latest company to have been dragged into the stress tests run by U.S. federal bank regulators and has been asked to raise new capital as a result. But unlike the “too-big-to-fail” 19 major financial institutions also undergoing stress tests, the online broker — which doubles as a bank holding company involved in subprime mortgages — doesn’t have...

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Bank of America chief executive Ken Lewis must be kicking himself right now. Less than 12 months ago, he ran a relatively steady-earner on a path to modest expansion. While some commercial banks would be taken down by overextending themselves on subprime loans, Bank of America would survive intact. As a result of that success, he was pressured by the most powerful people in economic...

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It’s no accident that the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the U.S. insurance industry’s regulators, will hold a hearing tomorrow on the use of “credit scoring.” The announcement follows closely on the heels of President Obama’s meeting with the executives of banks that issue credit cards at which he told them to stop gouging customers...

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Once upon a time, American and European banks promised fledgling Chinese ones that as long as they could maintain growth in their rising white-hot economy, cash would never be a problem. Now Chinese banking executives must be wondering why they ever listened to that utopian yarn in the first place. As the credit crisis has consumed the cashflow of financial institutions throughout the U.S. and...

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Just days before the government releases official results of the much-hyped stress tests applied to 19 financial institutions, discussions on which ones will be required to raise capital are still going strong. According to Sir Deryck Maughan, partner and chairman of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Japan who also leads the KKR financial services industry team, as many as three-quarters of the banks...

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(CORRECTED: See below.) For a country famous for its efficiency, Germany’s banking industry is in a tangle. This weekend, a German newspaper published a leaked list from the country’s financial oversight group, BaFin, showing that German banks are sitting on €816 billion (around $1 trillion) of toxic assets. Commerzbank, Germany’s second largest financial institution after...

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The World Health Organization now says that swine flu is a public health emergency with the “potential to cause a pandemic,” so insurance company CEOs should be spending the week trying to answer these questions: “How bad could it get?” and “How will it affect our company?” For health insurers, the risk is more costs, more people taking medication and more...

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Investment bankers have never been famous for their nonconformist ways. But Morgan Stanley is increasingly beginning to look like a very different species to its industry rivals. At the front of the news this week was the clear divergence between Morgan Stanley’s earnings and those of its U.S. rivals such as Citigroup. While the others posted gains for the quarter — albeit...

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Insurer Chubb Corp.’s Chief Executive John Finnegan was in the middle of his first quarter conference call last evening when an analyst posed this question: “Would Chubb buy Hartford Financial’s property and casualty division?” Finnegan’s answer was a less than definite “maybe.” After saying something about “organic growth,” a euphemism for...

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