Citigroup, the largest U.S. bank by market value, said on Monday its third-quarter net income will drop 60 percent on losses and writedowns stemming from subprime and leveraged loan woes, fixed income trading, as well as weakness in its consumer business.
Stocks were set to open slightly higher on Monday, helped by optimism about shares' performance in the third quarter, while a profit warning from Citigroup Inc was expected to weigh on the financial sector.
Credit crisis woes hit European stocks on Monday and looked set to at least hold back Wall Street after UBS, Credit Suisse and Citi signalled threats to their bottom lines.
Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse and America's Citicorp added to the ranks of casualties from a global credit crunch on Monday, prompting money market rates to climb on fresh concern about the depth of the crisis.
Swiss bank UBS is expected to warn on Monday that it has written off billions of dollars on fixed-income assets, making it the biggest casualty so far of turmoil in world credit markets, the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal reported.
Is The New China's Investment Agency the Road to Riches?
U.S. stocks finished Friday's trading session with a loss as investors looked to lock in profits gained after the strongest September since 1988.
Gold prices leaped to their highest level since 1980 on Friday, as record weakness in the dollar and early strength in crude oil prices led to gains in precious metals.
Oil rose above $83 a barrel on Friday and closed in on an all-time high as fund buying, spurred by a weak dollar, provided support.
Shares in British reinsurance broker Benfield rose up to 13 percent on Friday after a report it had received an unsuccessful 700 million pound ($1.42 billion) bid approach from Goldman Sachs revived takeover speculation.
Citigroup and Merrill Lynch have bought 5 percent stakes in India's top commodities exchange, valuing it at up to $1.1 billion, or more than the Bombay Stock Exchange which sold stakes earlier this year.
Oil handed back early gains to stand below $83 a barrel on Friday, but stayed within sight of an all-time high as fund buying spurred by a weak dollar provided support.
Shares of Bear Stearns Cos Inc fell 3 percent on Thursday afternoon after a CNBC report downplayed any talks between the investment bank and potential outside investors.
HSBC Holdings, Europe's biggest bank, is entering insurance markets in China and Taiwan as part of its broader strategy to tap the fast-growing Asian region.
Big banks try to gird for crises as a matter of course and investors will soon learn how prepared they were for this summer's credit crunch. Analysts and investors are speculating how badly Citigroup Inc, Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co and smaller rivals may have gotten caught by a flight from risk that caused the value of billions of dollars of mortgages and loans to evaporate.
U.S. workers in 401(k) retirement savings plans tend to select lower-cost mutual funds with below-average turnover, the Investment Company Institute said in a report issued on Tuesday.
Very few U.S. mutual funds put their investors first, and funds from big ones such as Fidelity Investments and Federated Investors lag in governance rankings because of weaker boards or corporate culture, a study found.
A $25 billion takeover of Sallie Mae was on the verge of collapse on Wednesday after the student lender said a consortium does not expect to complete its planned acquisition on the agreed terms.
Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $12.5 million to resolve regulatory charges that it failed to provide arbitration plaintiffs with e-mails it said were destroyed in the September 11, 2001, attacks, when in fact it had saved the e-mails on backup files.
Many of Jun Ogawa's friends frown on his playing the stock market, but he's not bothered. The 68-year-old retiree has built up a nest egg to fund his hobbies -- skiing, cycling and overseas travel -- by investing in domestic stocks using a slice of his retirement payout.
Employees are contributing too little to defined-contribution work pension schemes to support themselves well in retirement, according to a survey by consulting firm Mercer.
Usually, when the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, it's a good time to buy bonds. Folks who had money stashed in bonds this summer, while the stock market was doing its tumultuous thing, are pretty glad they did. And the financial services industry has made it easier than ever to buy individual bonds or baskets of bonds at rock-bottom prices.
