Intesa can afford to speed bad debt cleanup 11 Jan 2018 Italy’s biggest retail bank may sell up to 15 bln euros of sour loans. It looks like a reversal of boss Carlo Messina’s plan to keep bad debts rather than sell them cheaply. But Intesa can take the hit and, with regulators bearing down on dud assets, a quick exit makes sense.
Hudson’s Bay buildings are its real luxury goods 24 Oct 2017 The C$2.2 bln department-store owner is selling Lord & Taylor's New York building for $850 mln to WeWork. It may not satisfy activist Jonathan Litt, who's waging a proxy fight for bolder steps. But with retail in retreat, the firm is conceding it needs to monetize its property.
FirstRand makes punt on post-Brexit housing market 16 Oct 2017 The South African bank has offered 1.1 billion pounds for Britain’s Aldermore. Shares in the mortgage lender had slipped amid concerns about the slowing property market. At 8 times expected 2018 earnings, FirstRand could be getting a bargain – provided bad loans don’t shoot up.
Time isn’t always on Warren Buffett’s side 12 Sep 2017 Berkshire Hathaway’s bid to buy a fifth more of Home Capital was rejected by the Canadian lender’s shareholders. The setback comes weeks after Texas utility Oncor was snatched out from under Buffett's conglomerate. His opportunism is sometimes exposed on closer inspection.
Provident Financial kneecaps cash-greedy investors 22 Aug 2017 The door-to-door lender slashed its profit forecast, ousted its CEO and is under investigation from the UK authorities. Worse still, the dividend yield just fell from 8 percent to zero. Yield-chasing funds had fair warning the company was living beyond its means.
UK bank upstarts are already priced for downturn 17 Aug 2017 Shares in buy-to-let lenders, such as Aldermore, have fallen in the past three months due to fears about the housing market. Even if more loans sour, these newcomers can grow earnings by wresting market share from older high-street peers. The drop in their valuation is overdone.
Wells Fargo drives stagecoach further into mud 15 Jun 2017 The $270 bln lender is being sued for changing bankrupt borrowers’ mortgage terms without consent even as its fake-accounts scandal unfolded. Home loans should've been squeaky clean after earlier missteps, too. The bank now run by Tim Sloan is struggling to get the basics right.
Canada’s subprime trouble is drama, not crisis 8 May 2017 A run on the Home Capital mortgage lender has eerie echoes of 2008. But structural strengths and regulatory awareness mean the Canadian financial system is far sounder than its neighbor's before the crisis. Still, high housing prices and consumer-debt levels are economic risks.
Crisis anniversary offers $30 trln sanity check 7 Feb 2017 That's one estimate of the cost of the financial meltdown that started 10 years ago with HSBC's $1.8 bln subprime mortgage loss. With talk of a regulatory rollback in the air, the anniversary offers a timely reminder that exuberance and loose standards can cause painful damage.
Moody’s offers both crisis coda and timely warning 17 Jan 2017 The firm's $864 million deal with prosecutors closes the door on rating agencies' role in the financial meltdown. Moody's has also pledged to insulate analysts from commercial pressures, a reminder as the credit cycle matures that Wall Street's potential for conflicts endures.
U.S. election resurrects Fannie, Freddie fiasco 22 Nov 2016 Shares of the two bailed-out mortgage agencies have rocketed on hopes the Trump administration might end government oversight. Big political roadblocks remain, though. Letting them keep any profit to prepare for the next crisis would be a simple and smart first step.