Financial Services Industry Archive

In May, there are three themes which have persisted: the replacement of the greenback as the world’s reserve currency, the threat of skyrocketing inflation, and the devaluing of U.S. creditworthiness. Curiously, while there’s been no sign that any of these conditions are erupting into fully-fledged long-term trends, speculation that they will has only become more intense. This...

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First prize for the most useless product invention in the financial crisis goes to Dow Jones. Dow Jones announced Wednesday that it was unveiling the Economic Stimulus Index, an index of 50 stocks which have a minimum average daily trading volume of $5 million, and which are expected to receive stimulus dollars from this year’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “The American...

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Just when you thought the stress-test mayhem was over, it’s come back to bite the big banks in their balance sheets. Federal Reserve officials are now demanding banks use a maximum of 5 percent of their future revenue to satisfy the billions they were asked to come up with in May, according to The Wall Street Journal. Previously, some banks, such as Bank of America, were planning on...

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The “green shoots” debate is getting more and more interesting as the days go by. This week is as full of as much good news as the last one was bad news. In fact, it’s fair to say that there’s now some compelling evidence that some sort of economic recovery is getting underway. On the path to recovery however, there are still some hefty roadblocks standing in the way....

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There’s no other way to cut it: home prices are falling. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t buyers in the market: young couples are scrambling in areas to get bargain-priced foreclosed homes. The question is: which matters more? Normally, home sales matter a lot more than home prices. But when the housing market is in the kind of turmoil that it is these days, home sales...

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Now big banks will be forced to pay higher insurance premiums than smaller ones in order to guarantee deposits. Banks will be required to pay a one-time cost of 5 cents per $100 of assets vs. a previously mandated cost of 20 cents per every $100 of deposits. That benefits smaller banks with less assets vs. their deposit bases considerably. The one-time charge was introduced as an increasing...

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Of all the different areas of consumer finance, to many none is more emotive than credit cards. New legislation introduced last week to curb credit card issuers from “abusive” practices such as slapping late-paying customers with ultra-high fees was therefore, received with much fanfare. Basically, the new laws will prevent credit card issuers from jacking up fees at the last...

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As market sentiment has picked up this year, there have been a wide range of organizations, from big banks to language educators, looking to raise money on the open market via everything from initial public offerings to corporate bond issuances.   In the coming week investors may see the most significant round of public capital raising yet. State-owned housing giant Freddie Mac is expected to...

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What a gloomy week for regional banks. But as the bankruptcies are getting bigger, opportunities for private equity investors are getting better.   Earlier this week, I reported here at BNET how Federal Reserve officials were pondering the approval of bids such as that of a consortium including private equity giants Carlyle Capital and Blackstone Group to buy ailing Florida lender BankUnited...

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In an industry based on big deals which garner outsize fees and commissions, executive compensation is at the heart of the business. It’s no surprise therefore that compensation-related dilemmas are lighting up like fireflies in the financial industry right now. At the beginning of the year, firms witnessed an exodus of top bankers across the board, as high-level executives sought out...

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