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bkkandrew · 30-05-2008, 12:17 AM

Back to Bradford & Bingley. Closed down a further 7% today to 90.25. I wonder if the queues outside branches will start tomorrow...

bkkandrew · 31-05-2008, 05:24 AM

^Now at 88p, just 6p from the rights issue price, which is now bound to fail. UBS and Citi now have to split the £300M bill. Meanwhile, B&B will 'merge' with The Crock...

bkkandrew · 02-06-2008, 03:38 PM

As predicted:

SHARES SUSPENDED

http://www.londonstockexchange.com/LSECWS/IFSPages/MarketNewsPopup.aspx?id=1856932&source=RNS

TPG Capital (”TPG”), a leading global private investment firm, has agreed to invest approximately £179 million and become a major strategic investor owning 23% of the Company upon completion - A Restructured Rights Issue will raise approximately £258 million and, together with TPG’s investment, will raise additional capital of approximately £400 million, net of expenses. All shares will be issued at an offer price of 55 pence per share

- Difficult economic conditions have led to a decline in net interest margin and increasing arrears. Underlying profits for the first four months of the year amounted to £56 million compared to £108 million in 2007. The trading update highlights a more cautious outlook for the year

- Steven Crawshaw has stepped down as Group Chief Executive with immediate effect as a result of serious illness. Chairman Rod Kent has become Executive Chairman

(My comment): Crawhaw's illness appears to angina attacks, no wonder, as his bank goes bust!

Hope you all got your money out, I did give you about 3-months notice!

bkkandrew · 02-06-2008, 03:44 PM

Oh and don't be fooled by this latest 'bad money after good' 'investment'. The new rights issue price has been reset to 55p (from 82p, which was doomed to failure as the shares slid). Current share price after the shares began trading again is 64p - down over 27% on Friday's close!

bkkandrew · 21-06-2008, 04:58 AM

Feds arrest two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers

by The Associated Press Thursday June 19, 2008, 8:19 AM

Federal authorities said two former Bear Stearns managers have surrendered in New York City to face criminal charges in the wake of the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.

Daniel Acker/Bloomberg NewsRalph Cioffi, former manager at Bear Stearns, is escorted by police officers to federal court in Brooklyn borough of New York today.

Authorities in Brooklyn are expected to give details later Thursday on the case against Ralph Cioffi, of Tenafly and Matthew Tanin, of Manhattan, who are ex-managers of Bear Stearns hedge funds that collapsed last year.

Officials told The Associated Press that the former executives are suspected of misleading investors about the risky subprime mortgage market. They have been the target of the yearlong probe.

Justin Lane/EPAMatthew Tannin, a former Bear Stearns hedge fund manager, is escorted by law enforcement officials after being arrested in New York today.
Tannin's attorney has declined to comment and Cioffi's attorney has not responded to a phone message.

Last month, Bear Stearns shareholders approved JPMorgan Chase's $2.2 billion buyout at about $10 a share. Back in January 2007, before mortgage defaults began clobbering banks and draining demand from the debt markets, Bear Stearns had traded at $171 a share.

Butterfly · 21-06-2008, 08:48 AM

not sure where we are heading with all this, hedge funds have always been "dodgy", not sure why the arrests now, they could have done it before the meltdown, frauds outside the subprime mess were already committed,

bkkandrew · 25-06-2008, 04:17 PM

I alluded to the fact that B&B were rescued to prevent GMAC going bust. Their troubles still, however, rumble on:

Quote:

GMAC's $60 Billion Deal Loses Traction as Cash Burns (Update1)

By Ari Levy and Caroline Salas

June 24 (Bloomberg) -- The 300 bankers gathered at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel last month faced a stark choice: Accept Sam Ramsey's plea to restructure $60 billion of GMAC LLC's debt or risk pushing the lending arm of General Motors Corp., the largest U.S. automaker, to the brink of insolvency.

``There was not room for slippage,'' said Ramsey, 49, a former Bank of America Corp. executive who joined Detroit-based GMAC in September and became chief risk officer two months later. He pulled it off as banks led by New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. provided GMAC and its Residential Capital LLC mortgage unit with the biggest restructuring package since the credit-market rout began a year ago.

Whether that's enough to ride out the worst housing slump since the Great Depression remains in doubt. Moody's Investors Service cut GMAC's credit rating one level to six rankings below investment-grade last week as ResCap burns through cash after losing $5.3 billion in the past six quarters.

``ResCap presents a very significant risk,'' said Mark Wasden, the lead GMAC analyst at Moody's. ``There is no easy exit from their difficulties right now. We think the company will yet again find itself in need of additional cash.''
Credit-default swap prices give ResCap a 100 percent chance of default within the next five years, based on a JPMorgan model. It was 98 percent before the debt agreement was announced.

Bigger Than Bear

GMAC, started 89 years ago by GM, has 27,000 employees, twice the number that Bear Stearns Cos., the fifth-biggest U.S. securities firm, had when it was rescued in March by JPMorgan. GMAC's $250 billion in assets makes it bigger than Countrywide Financial Corp., the biggest U.S. mortgage company by loans, which is being bought by Bank of America. Investors had speculated that ripple effects from those potential failures could have spread to the rest of the U.S. financial system.

GMAC's latest rescue effort began May 2 at 6:30 a.m. New York time, when ResCap released a statement saying it would offer as little as 80 cents on the dollar to exchange or buy back $14 billion of bonds to delay maturities and reduce debt.

Shortly before 9 a.m., bankers filtered into the Waldorf's Starlight Roof on the 18th floor, where Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians once serenaded New Year's revelers. As attendees sipped coffee and munched pastries, JPMorgan Vice Chairman James Lee kicked off the event. Then it was the turn of GM Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson. Next was Stephen Feinberg, the founder of Cerberus Capital Management LP, who had been instrumental in leading the $7.4 billion purchase of 51 percent of GMAC in 2006.

Oozing Cash

Separated from the automaker, GMAC's credit rating was supposed to rise from junk, which would have lowered borrowing costs. Instead, the ResCap unit was hit by a cash crunch as subprime home loans started to default. The Minneapolis-based housing unit lost more than $4.3 billion last year, contributing to a $2.3 billion loss for GMAC. ResCap's subprime loans totaled $32.8 billion in March, compared with $36.8 billion at the end of 2007, according to a company filing.

The number of Americans in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure rose to the highest in at least three decades during the first quarter, according to data from the Washington-based Mortgage Bankers Association.

``It was when the problems started at ResCap that the GMAC ratings got pulled down,'' said Wasden, the Moody's analyst. ``You could see how, absent ResCap-related problems and some capital-building, they could march up in the speculative-grade ratings profile.''

Not Just Talk

After Feinberg spoke at the Waldorf meeting, it was Alvaro De Molina's turn. De Molina was an executive at Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America until 2006 and was appointed GMAC's chief executive officer in March. Ramsey, a 25-year banking industry veteran, then finished up the morning session with a 20-minute talk.

``It was the first time some of the lenders had the opportunity to see that management did have a plan for continued success,'' said Chad Leat, chairman of Citigroup's Alternative Asset Group in New York, who attended the meeting and led Citigroup's underwriting of the loans. ``It was the first opportunity to hear and see the visible support, not only with words, but also with money from GM and Cerberus.''

Following a 10-minute lunch break, Ramsey, Leat and other executives broke into groups to take more specific questions. The central theme: Keep ResCap afloat long enough to take advantage of an eventual recovery in the housing market after more than 100 mortgage companies closed down, halted operations or sold themselves since the start of 2007. ResCap ranked eighth among U.S. home-lenders last year.

Sales Pitch

``If there was a sales pitch, it was a very simple one: This management team is turning this company around, ResCap specifically,'' Leat said. ``They have a plan and they are going to need liquidity to finance growth. And we're going to give you the following goodies in exchange.''

JPMorgan's Lee wrapped up the day at about 3 p.m. Over the next month, with GMAC's future hanging in the balance, Ramsey, de Molina, Lee, Leat and Feinberg hit the phones to make certain the banks understood the terms.

On June 4, GMAC replaced $6 billion of unsecured revolving credit lines, half of which were scheduled to mature this month, with an $11.4 billion secured revolving credit line that matures in three years. It also renewed a one-year $10 billion commercial paper agreement, and ResCap got a one-year extension on $11.6 billion of bank loans.

Citigroup Approves

``Put yourself in the shoes of some of the institutions who are raising capital to address their perceptions of deficiencies, facing markets that are not as liquid as they used to be,'' Ramsey said. ``This is the type of credit that in many cases has to go to the highest approval processes.''

As a lender, Citigroup liked the deal because it was able to swap unsecured commitments for secured ones, Leat said.

Citigroup, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, raised $44.1 billion of capital in the past year after reporting $42.9 billion of writedowns and credit losses from the collapse of the subprime market, data compiled by Bloomberg show. GM has been a client of Citigroup for more than 90 years, and Leat worked on the financing for Cerberus's GMAC purchase.

ResCap got a $3.5 billion two-year credit facility from GMAC, with the first $750 million guaranteed by Cerberus and GM. ResCap needed the loan to finance its bond tender offer, which lured investors holding about $9.5 billion of notes. Bondholders who exchanged their debt for longer-maturity securities are now senior to those who didn't and have a claim on the mortgage- lender's assets.

Hardest Deal

In addition to financing the bond exchange, GMAC and Cerberus agreed to pony up another $2.88 billion of funding for ResCap after the lender fell $2 billion short of meeting its debt obligations this month because it couldn't sell assets to raise cash.

``This was as hard and as complicated as anything I've done and I've been doing this around the clock for 17 years,'' said Timothy Pohl, co-head of the restructuring practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in Chicago, which represented ResCap in the deal. ``There were a lot of legitimate concerns about whether it could possibly be accomplished.''

ResCap must still come up with enough cash to repay $3.5 billion of bonds and the $3.5 billion loan from GMAC in 2010. It may find GM and Cerberus unwilling to continue pouring money into it, according to Wasden at Moody's. ResCap has already returned for capital infusions at least three times in two years.

GMAC's $2 billion of 7.25 percent debt due in 2011 tumbled 5 cents today to 76 cents on the dollar, the lowest price since March according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The notes yield 19 percent.

``This probably does buy them some time to continue to restructure and improve longer-term prospects,'' said Christopher Wolfe, an analyst at Fitch Ratings in New York, which reduced ResCap's debt to D from C after the deal, indicating default. ``It's still a very uncertain story.''

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aFREd.COhlF4&refer=home

bkkandrew · 29-06-2008, 02:38 AM

A great site: Watch banks GO BUST in real time:

http://bankimplode.com/

bkkandrew · 29-06-2008, 05:06 AM

CDO Defaults Reach $220 Billion on Deerfield Failure (Update1)

By Neil Unmack

June 27 (Bloomberg) -- Deerfield Capital Management LLC and Declaration Management & Research LLC pushed the amount of collateralized debt obligations in default to $220 billion, according to Wachovia Corp. analysts.

Downgrades to mortgage bonds and their underlying securities triggered so-called events of default on 200 CDOs since October, including Rosemont, Illinois-based Deerfield's Knollwood CDO Ltd. and Kent Funding II, managed by Declaration in McLean, Virginia, Wachovia analysts wrote yesterday. The total compares with 191 CDOs totaling $212 billion on May 21, according to the bank.

The failures are equivalent to 36 percent of CDOs that include U.S. asset-backed debt sold since 2003, and 19.3 percent of all CDOs, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia said. Losses on the securities that pool assets including subprime mortgages contributed to the almost $400 billion of credit losses and writedowns by banks worldwide in the past year.

CDOs repackage assets such as mortgage bonds and other debt into new securities that are then sliced into pieces with different ratings.

About $32 billion of the funds have been wound down or face liquidation. CDOs of asset-backed bonds typically have rules that may force them to sell holdings when ratings of the underlying assets are downgraded below a set level. The triggers, or events of default, allow creditors to liquidate the fund or divert money to repay senior debt at the expense of other investors.

Issuance of asset-backed CDOs has tumbled to less than $1 billion this year from $227 billion in 2007, according JPMorgan Chase & Co. data.

Mortgage-Bond Prices

Liquidations have helped push down prices on subprime and Alt-A mortgage bonds rated lower than AAA, UBS AG analysts wrote in a June 24 report. The expectation that more CDOs will be forced to sell mortgage assets has also contributed to price declines, the analysts said.

The unwinding of CDOs and so-called structured investment vehicles offers ``serious resistance'' to the recent rally among asset-backed bonds, Deutsche Bank AG said in a June 16 report. While older AAA rated subprime-mortgage securities are priced to a ``severe recession,'' the potential for more forced sales makes the debt risky, the report said.

From: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aqMZ6GS5sEcU&refer=home

bkkandrew · 03-07-2008, 05:43 AM

See the FT Alphaville blog today:

FT Alphaville » Blog Archive » Markets live transcript 2 Jul 2008

All going to sh1t. I'm going on holiday next week. Happy Days!

bkkandrew · 03-07-2008, 02:28 PM

IndyMac denies that it's close to collapse

Depositors have been pulling money from the Pasadena-based thrift, whose share price is down 90% this year.

By E. Scott Reckard and Andrea Chang, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

Battling rumors that it may collapse, Pasadena-based IndyMac Bancorp acknowledged Monday that its financial position had deteriorated but described the fears as overblown and said it was working with regulators to improve its "safety and soundness."

IndyMac, a national home lender burned by the mortgage meltdown, went public after depositors lined up at San Gabriel Valley branches starting Friday to pull out their money. Striving to reassure them, the thrift said nearly all their deposits were insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Nonetheless, Elizabeth Brown closed four accounts totaling $200,000 Monday at an Arcadia branch where about 20 customers were lined up at noon, saying: "The only reason I'm panicking is if anything happens, my money is tied up.

Continued at:

IndyMac denies that it's close to collapse - Los Angeles Times

bkkandrew · 03-07-2008, 02:37 PM

No Loans at Mountain 1st Means Bank Credit Drying Up (Update2)

By Mark Pittman

July 2 (Bloomberg) -- Mountain 1st Bank & Trust Co. Chief Executive Officer Greg Gibson forecast 12 percent loan growth for his North Carolina bank this year. Instead, he's spending more time handing out freshly baked cookies than extending credit.

Gibson is ``standing on the brakes'' because Mountain 1st, owned by 1st Financial Services Corp. of Hendersonville, North Carolina, can no longer sell trust-preferred stock to raise capital for loans so customers can buy airplanes or build veterinary clinics, Gibson said in a June 20 telephone interview. The bank, with $650 million in assets, is among more than 8,000 across the U.S. caught for the past six months in the shutdown of the $117 billion market for the securities, a hybrid of debt and equity.

The fallout from the subprime-mortgage collapse is spreading from global lenders such as Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG to local ones, including Lansing, Michigan-based Capitol Bancorp, FirsTier Corp. of Northglenn, Colo. and Mountain 1st, which tempts customers at log cabin-style branches with cookies and coffee. Less capital for such hometown banks may stymie Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's effort to prevent a credit crunch.

``There is no question there is a problem,'' said Chris Cole, senior regulatory counsel for the Independent Community Bankers of America, a Washington-based trade group for about 5,000 lenders. ``Banks need the capital to lend. So that problem of raising capital causes a further slowdown. This inability to raise capital points to a damping of the whole economy.''

10-Fold Growth

So-called community banks and larger lenders have sold trust-preferred securities, known as TruPS, for about a dozen years. Collateralized debt obligations became the biggest buyers, generating enough demand to expand the market 10-fold, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. index data. The CDOs packaged the shares and sliced them into pieces with varying credit ratings.

Community banks such as FirsTier were too small to attract insurance companies or mutual funds and sold the securities to CDOs instead, in issues of $10 million or $20 million at a time, according to Fitch Ratings analyst Nathan Flanders.

The market was upended after mortgage foreclosures reached a record high of 2.47 percent for all loans in the U.S., starting a credit-market meltdown that sent investors fleeing to safer government securities.

As the preferred market seized up, the Standard & Poor's Small Cap Regional Banks Index has fallen 34 percent this year, leaving banks unable to sell common stock without diluting existing shareholders. Cut off from fresh capital, some lenders may file for bankruptcy, according to ICBA's Cole.

Continued here:

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive

Butterfly · 03-07-2008, 03:13 PM

Bank run is never good news,

but most are local state banks, so not really national disaster, actually it is contained,

nothing to see, next

bkkandrew · 03-07-2008, 03:25 PM

^Unless you have an account with them....

Butterfly · 03-07-2008, 03:33 PM

^ FDIC ? ever heard of them ?

bkkandrew · 03-07-2008, 03:36 PM

^Indeed. I am sure that is something that all people ache to do every day as a leisure activity, file an FDIC claim.

02-06-2008, 03:38 PM	#223 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	As predicted: SHARES SUSPENDED http://www.londonstockexchange.com/LSECWS/IFSPages/MarketNewsPopup.aspx?id=1856932&source=RNS TPG Capital (”TPG”), a leading global private investment firm, has agreed to invest approximately £179 million and become a major strategic investor owning 23% of the Company upon completion - A Restructured Rights Issue will raise approximately £258 million and, together with TPG’s investment, will raise additional capital of approximately £400 million, net of expenses. All shares will be issued at an offer price of 55 pence per share - Difficult economic conditions have led to a decline in net interest margin and increasing arrears. Underlying profits for the first four months of the year amounted to £56 million compared to £108 million in 2007. The trading update highlights a more cautious outlook for the year - Steven Crawshaw has stepped down as Group Chief Executive with immediate effect as a result of serious illness. Chairman Rod Kent has become Executive Chairman (My comment): Crawhaw's illness appears to angina attacks, no wonder, as his bank goes bust! Hope you all got your money out, I did give you about 3-months notice! __________________ The future of TeakDoor: To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. A funny thing happened today - Ant trolls, stalks, prevokes and generally upsets approximately 15 members of the board, yet Noodles goes to jail. Perhaps it was a dream... To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

21-06-2008, 04:58 AM	#225 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	Bear Sterns Managers Arrested - how many more will follow? Feds arrest two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers by The Associated Press Thursday June 19, 2008, 8:19 AM Federal authorities said two former Bear Stearns managers have surrendered in New York City to face criminal charges in the wake of the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. Daniel Acker/Bloomberg NewsRalph Cioffi, former manager at Bear Stearns, is escorted by police officers to federal court in Brooklyn borough of New York today. Authorities in Brooklyn are expected to give details later Thursday on the case against Ralph Cioffi, of Tenafly and Matthew Tanin, of Manhattan, who are ex-managers of Bear Stearns hedge funds that collapsed last year. Officials told The Associated Press that the former executives are suspected of misleading investors about the risky subprime mortgage market. They have been the target of the yearlong probe. Justin Lane/EPAMatthew Tannin, a former Bear Stearns hedge fund manager, is escorted by law enforcement officials after being arrested in New York today. Tannin's attorney has declined to comment and Cioffi's attorney has not responded to a phone message. Last month, Bear Stearns shareholders approved JPMorgan Chase's $2.2 billion buyout at about $10 a share. Back in January 2007, before mortgage defaults began clobbering banks and draining demand from the debt markets, Bear Stearns had traded at $171 a share.

29-06-2008, 05:06 AM	#229 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	Wachovia lose $220BN. Best look down the sofa then... CDO Defaults Reach $220 Billion on Deerfield Failure (Update1) By Neil Unmack June 27 (Bloomberg) -- Deerfield Capital Management LLC and Declaration Management & Research LLC pushed the amount of collateralized debt obligations in default to $220 billion, according to Wachovia Corp. analysts. Downgrades to mortgage bonds and their underlying securities triggered so-called events of default on 200 CDOs since October, including Rosemont, Illinois-based Deerfield's Knollwood CDO Ltd. and Kent Funding II, managed by Declaration in McLean, Virginia, Wachovia analysts wrote yesterday. The total compares with 191 CDOs totaling $212 billion on May 21, according to the bank. The failures are equivalent to 36 percent of CDOs that include U.S. asset-backed debt sold since 2003, and 19.3 percent of all CDOs, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia said. Losses on the securities that pool assets including subprime mortgages contributed to the almost $400 billion of credit losses and writedowns by banks worldwide in the past year. CDOs repackage assets such as mortgage bonds and other debt into new securities that are then sliced into pieces with different ratings. About $32 billion of the funds have been wound down or face liquidation. CDOs of asset-backed bonds typically have rules that may force them to sell holdings when ratings of the underlying assets are downgraded below a set level. The triggers, or events of default, allow creditors to liquidate the fund or divert money to repay senior debt at the expense of other investors. Issuance of asset-backed CDOs has tumbled to less than $1 billion this year from $227 billion in 2007, according JPMorgan Chase & Co. data. Mortgage-Bond Prices Liquidations have helped push down prices on subprime and Alt-A mortgage bonds rated lower than AAA, UBS AG analysts wrote in a June 24 report. The expectation that more CDOs will be forced to sell mortgage assets has also contributed to price declines, the analysts said. The unwinding of CDOs and so-called structured investment vehicles offers ``serious resistance'' to the recent rally among asset-backed bonds, Deutsche Bank AG said in a June 16 report. While older AAA rated subprime-mortgage securities are priced to a ``severe recession,'' the potential for more forced sales makes the debt risky, the report said. From: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aqMZ6GS5sEcU&refer=home

03-07-2008, 05:43 AM	#230 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	Interesting markeks today. HBO hammered, B&B battered and bruised & GM gushing money! See the FT Alphaville blog today: FT Alphaville » Blog Archive » Markets live transcript 2 Jul 2008 All going to sh1t. I'm going on holiday next week. Happy Days!

03-07-2008, 02:28 PM	#231 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	Run on IndyMac Bancorp IndyMac denies that it's close to collapse Depositors have been pulling money from the Pasadena-based thrift, whose share price is down 90% this year. By E. Scott Reckard and Andrea Chang, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers Battling rumors that it may collapse, Pasadena-based IndyMac Bancorp acknowledged Monday that its financial position had deteriorated but described the fears as overblown and said it was working with regulators to improve its "safety and soundness." IndyMac, a national home lender burned by the mortgage meltdown, went public after depositors lined up at San Gabriel Valley branches starting Friday to pull out their money. Striving to reassure them, the thrift said nearly all their deposits were insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Nonetheless, Elizabeth Brown closed four accounts totaling $200,000 Monday at an Arcadia branch where about 20 customers were lined up at noon, saying: "The only reason I'm panicking is if anything happens, my money is tied up. Continued at: IndyMac denies that it's close to collapse - Los Angeles Times

30-05-2008, 12:17 AM	#221 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	Back to Bradford & Bingley. Closed down a further 7% today to 90.25. I wonder if the queues outside branches will start tomorrow...

31-05-2008, 05:24 AM	#222 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	^Now at 88p, just 6p from the rights issue price, which is now bound to fail. UBS and Citi now have to split the £300M bill. Meanwhile, B&B will 'merge' with The Crock...

02-06-2008, 03:44 PM	#224 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	Oh and don't be fooled by this latest 'bad money after good' 'investment'. The new rights issue price has been reset to 55p (from 82p, which was doomed to failure as the shares slid). Current share price after the shares began trading again is 64p - down over 27% on Friday's close!

21-06-2008, 08:48 AM	#226 (permalink)
Butterfly Suspended Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 11,843	not sure where we are heading with all this, hedge funds have always been "dodgy", not sure why the arrests now, they could have done it before the meltdown, frauds outside the subprime mess were already committed,

29-06-2008, 02:38 AM	#228 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	A great site: Watch banks GO BUST in real time: http://bankimplode.com/

03-07-2008, 02:37 PM	#232 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	US Community Banks Cease Lending, Facing Bankruptcy No Loans at Mountain 1st Means Bank Credit Drying Up (Update2) By Mark Pittman July 2 (Bloomberg) -- Mountain 1st Bank & Trust Co. Chief Executive Officer Greg Gibson forecast 12 percent loan growth for his North Carolina bank this year. Instead, he's spending more time handing out freshly baked cookies than extending credit. Gibson is ``standing on the brakes'' because Mountain 1st, owned by 1st Financial Services Corp. of Hendersonville, North Carolina, can no longer sell trust-preferred stock to raise capital for loans so customers can buy airplanes or build veterinary clinics, Gibson said in a June 20 telephone interview. The bank, with $650 million in assets, is among more than 8,000 across the U.S. caught for the past six months in the shutdown of the $117 billion market for the securities, a hybrid of debt and equity. The fallout from the subprime-mortgage collapse is spreading from global lenders such as Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG to local ones, including Lansing, Michigan-based Capitol Bancorp, FirsTier Corp. of Northglenn, Colo. and Mountain 1st, which tempts customers at log cabin-style branches with cookies and coffee. Less capital for such hometown banks may stymie Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's effort to prevent a credit crunch. ``There is no question there is a problem,'' said Chris Cole, senior regulatory counsel for the Independent Community Bankers of America, a Washington-based trade group for about 5,000 lenders. ``Banks need the capital to lend. So that problem of raising capital causes a further slowdown. This inability to raise capital points to a damping of the whole economy.'' 10-Fold Growth So-called community banks and larger lenders have sold trust-preferred securities, known as TruPS, for about a dozen years. Collateralized debt obligations became the biggest buyers, generating enough demand to expand the market 10-fold, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. index data. The CDOs packaged the shares and sliced them into pieces with varying credit ratings. Community banks such as FirsTier were too small to attract insurance companies or mutual funds and sold the securities to CDOs instead, in issues of $10 million or $20 million at a time, according to Fitch Ratings analyst Nathan Flanders. The market was upended after mortgage foreclosures reached a record high of 2.47 percent for all loans in the U.S., starting a credit-market meltdown that sent investors fleeing to safer government securities. As the preferred market seized up, the Standard & Poor's Small Cap Regional Banks Index has fallen 34 percent this year, leaving banks unable to sell common stock without diluting existing shareholders. Cut off from fresh capital, some lenders may file for bankruptcy, according to ICBA's Cole. Continued here: Bloomberg.com: Exclusive

03-07-2008, 03:13 PM	#233 (permalink)
Butterfly Suspended Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 11,843	Bank run is never good news, but most are local state banks, so not really national disaster, actually it is contained, nothing to see, next

03-07-2008, 03:25 PM	#234 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	^Unless you have an account with them....

03-07-2008, 03:33 PM	#235 (permalink)
Butterfly Suspended Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 11,843	^ FDIC ? ever heard of them ?

03-07-2008, 03:36 PM	#236 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133	^Indeed. I am sure that is something that all people ache to do every day as a leisure activity, file an FDIC claim.

04-07-2008, 02:05 PM	#237 (permalink)
bkkandrew Clingin' on... Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: BKK Posts: 4,133