Let’s step into our way-back machine and travel to a distant, more innocent time in the history of American finance: Banking’s been around since the Italians created it 600 or 700 years ago, and basically it is not very complicated…. You give us your money and trust it to us, or we give you our money and trust it to you. We’re eavesdropping on George Schaefer, the...
Financial Services Industry Archive
July 2009
It’s good to be king. Just ask Chubb, who along with Travelers and MetLife is currently atop the insurance heap. It’s an enviable position they share with other financial giants such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Chubb’s second quarter earnings released yesterday were not only a chance to glorify its own position in the market, but an opportunity to trash those who are...
As Shakespeare said in Henry VI, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Death might be more merciful if you believe what Chubb Corp. said at its earnings call yesterday: tort lawyers, the kind that file suits against companies recently blamed for the recession, are being starved out of business. And that’s good news for insurers like Chubb, who provide...
What do you do when you’re faced with the prospect of having to file for bankruptcy by next month? CIT Group has a novel solution: hold your financiers to ransom. The troubled small-business lender, you may remember, struck a deal at the beginning of this week with several hedge funds to provide $3 billion of financing in order for it to stave off the increasingly inevitable Chapter 11...
A rabble-rousing pol from East Texas, accusing the Federal Reserve of fealty to Wall Street, seeks to bring the ostensibly autonomous agency under political control once and for all. Come on down, Ron Paul! Actually, try Wright Patman, circa 1963. The longtime congressman for decades attacked the Fed as a secretive, unaccountable cabal of elites who ignored the interests of average Americans....
Federal initiatives such as the Making Home Affordable program aim to help homeowners keep their property by encouraging banks to renegotiate their mortgages. It isn’t working. Lenders modified loans for less than three percent of delinquent borrowers within a year of their falling behind on payments, according to a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. But the report, which...
Despite an alleged $3 billion rescue by CIT Group’s bondholders of the struggling lender, pundits are chiming in to point out today that the deal may be more of a stalling tactic than a long-term solution to avoid Chapter 11. Over at Reuters, Felix Salmon writes: For one thing, [the deal] leaves the lender with no unpledged assets at all, which is not a position any financial...
It’s official: the financial sector is back on the road to where it was headed before the credit crisis began. That is the message to be gleaned from last week’s stellar earnings reports for Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs. While Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan reported huge second quarter profits from trading and investment banking activities respectively, Citigroup managed to...
Banking is back, green shoots are poking through the permafrost and investors are partying like its 1999. But not so fast. A perfect storm is gathering around the commercial real estate sector that could swamp banks, particularly regional institutions, according to consulting firm Oxford Analytica (registration required) — and it could easily dump all over the U.S. economic recovery....
For Homo Economicus, curled up on his therapist’s couch trying to make sense of it all, the fuss over CIT Group is a Rorschach test. Op-edniks at the WSJ interpret the company’s turmoil as proof of government favoritism, with the feds backing the big and systemically relevant such as Goldman Sachs over smaller, immaterial financial firms like CIT. Some see it as a sign that...
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- AIG: Help Wanted, But Will Anyone Apply?
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- Underrated: S&P, Moody's, Fitch ... and PIMCO
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- Barney Frank Aide Blasts Media Report Alleging Lack of Progress on Financial Reform
- Goldman Sachs, Shareholders Just Can't Get Along
- Geithner: Guilty Until Proven Innocent in AIG Debacle
- ECB President Cautions Interest Rate Hike, But Banks Are Ill-Prepared
- Inside Small Business Lending: Short Q&A With An Industry Chief Executive
- As Income Mobility Falls, American Dream Fades
- Lawmakers Push Bill to Monitor Fed Lending Programs
- Eugene Fama Drinks His Own Brand of Kool-Aid
- Roubini Warns of New Financial Crisis
- Ex-Wells Fargo Loan Officer Details Shady Practices
- Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase are too Late in Moving to Curb Overdraft Fees
- Civil Rights Group Teams With Wells Fargo Despite Charges of Predatory Lending
- State Farm CEO Rust: Effective But Not Greedy
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- As Income Mobility Falls, American Dream Fades
- Creative Destruction and the new Money Trust
- Geithner Deal With Wall Street Over AIG Swaps Cost Taxpayers $13 Billion
- Civil Rights Group Teams With Wells Fargo Despite Charges of Predatory Lending
- Senator Dodd Is Saving Lenders From Themselves
- Citigroup Hit With Huge Credit Loss
- FDIC Chief Sheila Bair to Treasury Brat Geithner: Nyah!
- Private Equity Firms About To Gear Up The Small Banking Sector
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The financial industry meltdown has been the worst since the great depression. BNET Financial provides daily industry trends and news coverage with insights for managers and executives about the major financial services companies in the banking and finance sector. In addition to detailed company profiles, we bring you industry analysis on new mergers, partnerships, financial products, rates, investments, capital, and a host of other critical factors of success in the finance business.