Banking News

Anglo Irish Bank was one if Ireland's profitable banks - when times were good. And it had a share price record that, like most European banks, went up much more than it went down. What better bet, then, than to, in effect, buy its own shares. It might have worked but for the global financial crisis....

Utah's SunFirst Bank has been closed by regulators but some USD15 million in customer accounts has been frozen by prosecutors investigating allegations of involvement in facilitating payments for online gambling within the USA.

The Bank of New York Mellon (which likes to be called BNY Mellon but that's not as funny as BoNYM, so we're sticking with that) says that the claims in a civil (mark: civil) lawsuit filed by the New York Attorney General (AGNY) are "flat out wrong."

When former Lloyds of London chairman Peter Levene raised the capital to start a new UK bank last year, there were a number of commercial hurdles to be overcome. Getting customers is one, building a branch network is the other. Usually, banks build a customer base and add branches as required. NBNK;s plans sound a bit like the old cart and horses adage.

There are some disturbing parallels between the case of UBS "rogue trader" Kweku Adoboli and the man who sank Barings, Nick Leeson.

The Financial Supervisory Service of Korea has released figures showing that Korean banks are, on the Basel test, the healthiest they ever have been.

When Temple-Inland, a packaging and building products company in the USA spun off its Guaranty Bank subsidiary in 2009, the bank was "loooted" and left in a parlous state, say the liquidators who have issued proceedings against Temple-Inland and several of its related companies, former officers and some executives who were still in post at the time the bank collapsed.

The US Treasury has taken a chunk of "preferred stock" in small New Hampshire bank Centrix in return for USD24.5 million.

Capitol Bancorp Limited has entered into a definitive agreement under which all of the outstanding shares of Bank of the Northwest, which is majority owned by Capitol Bancorp and certain of its affiliates, will be acquired by way of an all-cash takeover by an affiliate of AmericanWest Bank,

Brenda Hurtado liked her job: she liked handling money. It made her all warm and fuzzy. She liked to hold it. It made her feel secure. She liked to keep it in her pocket. It made her feel powerful. And luckily, her job in a bank meant she could get to do all of those things, even though her salary did not support it. Or so the USA's FBI alleges.