AIG forced to defend suit over subprime exposure September 27, 2010 A JUDGE yesterday refused to dismiss a securities fraud lawsuit accusing American International Group (AIG)?of misleading investors about its exposure to subprime mortgages, which led to a liquidity crisis and $182.3bn of federal bailouts. The ruling by US district judge Laura Taylor Swain allows the case to go forward and could pave the way for [...]
Spreading risk is crucial if you want to build a stable portfolio December 1, 2010 ONE traditional rule of investing is quite simple. Take your age, subtract it from 100 and invest that percentage of your portfolio in equities and the rest in bonds. When you are young, you have more of your money in stocks, which traditionally perform better over time. As you get older, you move more into [...]
Curbs on loan insurance hit bank sector October 14, 2010 UK lenders are to be banned from selling customers payment protection insurance (PPI) alongside credit products such as personal loans. The Competition Commission yesterday confirmed it will introduce a point-of-sale PPI prohibition as part of a package of reforms designed to make the PPI market more competitive. The decision confirms a provisional ban issued by [...]
The man who is helping investors to take the smartest risk possible November 3, 2010 FOR somebody who has just stepped off a night flight from New York, Michael Thompson is remarkably cheery and animated when we meet in the Canary Wharf offices of Standard and Poor’s (S&P). Perhaps it’s the large coffee he admits to having drunk earlier or maybe it’s because he has become a more regular transatlantic [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING December 5, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES IRISH BANKS FACE LOANS SELL OFF Ireland will have to accelerate the shrinking of its troubled banks’ balance sheets in return for gaining continued access to emergency European funding. According to people briefed on the details of Ireland’s €85bn (£72bn) bail-out by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, the banks will [...]
Wall Street dips on mortgage worries October 14, 2010 BANKS led US stocks lower yesterday as investors fretted a widening foreclosure crisis could undermine the market’s strength over the last five weeks. The S&P 500 has rallied 11.9 per cent since 1 September and volume has picked up from anaemic levels. But the rally could weaken as an index of bank stocks fell nearly [...]
Banks will look more closely at law firms, post-downturn October 26, 2010 RECENT trading results published by a number of the large law firms might suggest they have weathered the economic turmoil pretty well. However, much of this robust performance has been achieved through cost-cutting. This is likely to worry banks and other potential backers of law firms. Difficult trading conditions have put financial management under the [...]
Free banking will soon be a thing of the past October 7, 2010 IN AN environment of persistently low interest rates, it has become increasingly hard to find a free current account that pays any credit interest at all, according to personal finance information website Moneyfacts.co.uk. Its research, which was published earlier this week, showed that 55 per cent of current accounts on the market pay no credit [...]
UniCredit CEO resigns after Libyan crisis September 21, 2010 UniCredit chief executive Alessandro Profumo resigned yesterday, his high-flying tenure at Italy’s biggest bank halted by a row over Libyan shareholders and lagging results. Profumo, Europe’s longest-serving bank chief, had steered UniCredit’s rise from a regional bank to a pan-European player with operations in 22 countries. Analysts say his departure could leave Italy’s most international [...]
How to turn Cameron’s vision of an entrepreneurial decade into a reality November 18, 2010 DAVID Cameron has called on the nation’s “doers-and-grafters, inventors and entrepreneurs” to save us from our troubled finances. He’s not wrong. According to research commissioned by Enterprise UK, a rise of just one per cent in self-employment rates could boost the UK’s GDP by around 1.5 per cent and add approximately £22bn to the UK economy. [...]