Banks

Yesterday the Bank of England released the minutes from the early April meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting.  Although the report indicated that the committee generally sees value in its Funding for Lending Scheme, it didn’t seem too anxious to expand it in the near future. The problem facing the committee is that, so […]

Bank of America argues that their customer strategy is working Bank of America Corporation has announced net income of $2.6 billion, or $0.20 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2013, compared to $653 million, or $0.03 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2012. Revenue, net of interest expense, on a fully […]

Renters now spend an extra four weeks at work paying off their home New Halifax research showed that April 13th was is this year’s Mortgage Freedom Day in the UK; as on the 103rd day of the year new UK homeowners will have finally earned enough to pay off the annual cost of their mortgage. […]

  Banking giant to pay dividends on from April to June The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS) today announced that it has declared dividends on the following series of its non-cumulative preferred stock (represented by depositary shares, each representing a 1/1,000th interest in a share of preferred stock): $229.17 per share of Floating Rate […]

Service being launched in conjuction with the Bank of Ireland The UK Post Office has announced it will enter the current account market during spring 2013 in a move that is set to make it one of the largest providers of financial services on the high street. The current account, which will be provided by […]

Vince the Cable Guy is much more refined than his American cousin, Larry, but he is certainly no less opinionated.  In fact, he has managed to grab quite a few headlines in the last several days as he flexes his muscle as Britain’s Business Secretary in attempts to correct all that he perceives is wrong […]

Three former directors banned from serving as company directors. A UK parliamentary report has argued that leading bank HBOS was an “accident waiting to happen”. The newly released report by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards blamed the banks leaders, including Andy Hornby, Lord Stevenson and Sir James Crosby, for the failures that led to the bank’s 2008...

Faced with a persistent, lagging, deflationary economy, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced in January that he expected the Bank of Japan to become much more aggressive in attacking the problem.  The former Governor of the BOJ, Masaaki Shirakawa’s vision was to bring the economy to a 2% inflation “at the earliest possible time.” I say […]

And so we add Cyprus to the list of Eurozone sovereign debt crisis bailouts. We can also add bail-ins of bank deposits (haircuts on uninsured deposits >€100K) and total bank investor wipe-outs to the list of self-help measures imposed by those holding the bailout purse strings. Politicians can shout all they like about Cyprus (often with mixed messages) being a special case and not...

It’s been just less than two weeks since we last reported on the fiasco that is more popularly know as JP Morgan (LSE:JPM) (NYSE:JPM).  We can’t help it if they keep stepping into one muddy mess after another. CNBC and others have reported that the bank is now under investigations by eight different federal agencies, […]