A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc bond analyst pleaded guilty on Tuesday to helping lead a far-flung insider trading scheme involving tips about pending mergers and stolen copies of BusinessWeek magazine that netted more than $6.7 million in illicit gains.
U.S. stock indexes tumbled more than 2 percent on Tuesday after Merrill Lynch warned that ailing credit markets will hurt bank profits, while reports showing eroding consumer confidence and falling home prices added to concerns about the economy.
U.S. stocks fell on Monday after data showed the number of unsold homes reached its highest level in more than 15 years in July, adding to concerns about the housing market and consumer spending. Bank shares fell on nagging credit worries after Goldman Sachs slashed its earnings forcast on Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley.
Goldman Sachs is to buy upscale jeweler Tiffany & Co's flagship store in Tokyo for about 37 billion yen ($318 million), a sign that Japan's hot property market is shrugging off global credit concerns.
An end to Wall Street's streak of rising profits in the third quarter is built into investor expectations, but the top brokerages' results will still face scrutiny next month to see just how they value assets bloodied by the summer market meltdown.
Countrywide Financial Corp on Wednesday received a $2 billion injection from Bank of America Corp, helping the largest U.S. mortgage lender shore up its finances as it struggles with a liquidity crunch.
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd, the world's biggest bank by market capitalisation, beat forecasts with a 61.6 percent jump in first-half profit, helped by widening interest margins and fee income growth.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq rose on Tuesday as a signal that the Federal Reserve might cut its benchmark interest rate soon muted persistent concerns about withering credit markets.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges on Monday against Sentinel Management Group Inc, the cash management firm serving the U.S. futures industry that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late on Friday.
A group of major banks meeting in a conference call with U.S. monetary policy officials expressed strong support for the Federal Reserve's move on Friday to bring stability to volatile financial markets by reducing the discount lending rate.
U.S. Treasuries climbed on Tuesday after several Canadian investment trusts had trouble repaying short-term loans, further evidence that a crisis that began in mortgages has led to a wider credit crunch.
Oil prices rose on Tuesday as concerns about a newly formed tropical storm in the Atlantic countered fresh troubles in credit markets.
Five banks, including Citigroup, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., said on Tuesday they were setting up a trading platform for privately offered stocks, seeking to tap the growing market for non-public shares.
Intervention by central banks has staved off a crisis, but investors need to know more about the true state of U.S. mortgage markets before calm can be restored to markets, a top manager at UBS said.
Stocks edged higher on Monday after central banks pumped more cash into the global financial system and a report showed U.S. consumers spent more freely than expected last month.
Investment bank Goldman Sachs Group said on Monday it and outside investors would pour $3 billion of new capital into Goldman's Global Equity Opportunities fund, a long-short quantitative hedge fund hurt by recent market volatility. In the statement, Goldman acknowledged for the first time that market conditions had led to fund losses.
On the heels of a crisis, investment bank shares are looking cheap. Some say it's a great time to buy.
For investors, the subprime crisis is the first real test of will since the Internet stock bust six years ago.
Wall Street economists do not foresee an imminent interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve despite a credit squeeze that is pressuring financial markets and forcing central banks to funnel liquidity into the system.
Reliant Pharmaceuticals Inc. filed with U.S. regulators on Friday to raise up to $400 million in an initial public offering of common stock.
U.S. regulators are scrutinizing the books of some top Wall Street brokers and investment banks for subprime-mortgage losses, according to a report in the online version of the Wall Street Journal.
Stocks tumbled on Thursday, with the Dow and S&P down nearly 3 percent, after a French bank froze three funds that invested in U.S. subprime mortgages, prompting central banks to take steps to calm investors. Evidence the U.S. mortgage market crisis was having a global impact and spreading to other markets hammered financial stocks.
