Financial Services Industry Archive

Strong market conditions often present great opportunities to raise much-needed capital for both the ambitious and the struggling. But while opportunities for extra liquidity abound, you can get punished for taking the practice to its extreme. Japanese broker Daiwa Securities dropped 12 percent earlier today in Tokyo after it announced it would raise $2.5 billion through its first equity...

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What do you do when your bank is hemorrhaging money at such a speedy rate that you are forced to slash bonuses, driving key employees into the arms of other firms? UBS has come up with a desperate answer to the dilemma: slap the offending rivals with a lawsuit. UBS claims that boutique investment bank Jeffries Group snatched almost its entire health-care investment banking team in a...

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Yes, the rich are different from us. They have better health insurance. And, no matter what program President Obama gets through Congress, that “health gap” is likely to remain. The media circus that followed Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s recent liver transplant highlights this. Those with buying power go to the head of the line when it comes to the basic human desire for survival....

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Does anyone ever have a nice word to say about Citigroup? Not today: the bank’s latest stunt of raising basic salaries has caused irritation in the ranks of the congressional panel overseeing TARP funds. Earlier on Bloomberg, panel member Elizabeth Warren slammed Citi for its pay hikes:   “I just have to say - these guys just don’t seem to get it,” said Warren.  ...

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Prepare for another round of deleveraging. That’s the message going around Wall Street, just as some banks have paid their TARP funds back early. In a typically extensive, dry, and informative piece Tuesday, Howe Barnes Hoeffer & Arnett suggested in Barron’s that banks may need to write down bond losses. For its significance, the passage is worth quoting at some length: Near...

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The gap between banks with TARP funds on their books and those that have paid them back is getting wider by the week. Today, CNN Money reports that the brain drain of investment bankers at Citigroup and Bank of America is beginning to take its toll on the two firms. (In all fairness to the banks however, the article doesn’t explain at all how this is happening, it just points out the...

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Here’s the problem: a likeable and determined elected official takes on an unpopular industry where people are crying out for help because they can’t get insurance, even at skyrocketing rates. Here’s the solution: create a government-run insurer that will provide “last resort” policies for people who can’t get coverage any other way and back it up with...

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While E*Trade might be the stock market’s next “five-bagger,” to get there the online broker may need to do more than just clean up its balance sheet. Friday, I reported here at BNET Finance how E*Trade’s so-far unsuccessful application for $800 million of government TARP aid might actually help the company in the long-run: Arguably, not accepting TARP funds (albeit...

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E*Trade may end up the only major financial services company to make it through the financial crisis without any help from the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. But that won’t be from a lack of trying. In the company’s latest move to shore up as much cash as possible, E*Trade this week sold a higher-than-expected 435 million shares, netting the online broker $478.5...

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President Obama’s oversight plan for the financial sector is probably making the 50 state regulators of the nation’s insurance industry very happy right now. It doesn’t take away any of their authority, especially for smaller insurance companies which like being regulated at the local level. But for the big national companies like Travelers it’s a mixed bag. They wanted...

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