Morgan Stanley and Citigroup settled a dispute Tuesday over the value of the brokerage firm Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, which they jointly own. The deal clears the way for Morgan Stanley to buy Citigroup's 49 percent interest in the broker, giving Morgan Stanley full ownership.
Tax havens are big news in the U.S., but a recent study shows that, when it comes to offshoring cash to dodge taxes, Americans are amateurs. Globally, tax havens are used to hide an estimated $21 trillion, more than the entire U.S. GDP.
Sanford "Sandy" Weill, the tycoon most who built financial conglomerate Citigroup into a massive U.S. commercial and investment bank, said it is time to split up the biggest banks.
Low interest rates may be great for borrowers, but they're terrible for savers. Bank accounts on average are paying around half a percent -- which doesn't even keep up with inflation. What to do? Turn to banks on the Internet.
Wall Street's big banks paid out $156 billion last year in salaries, bonuses, and benefits. Yet while investment bankers' checking accounts were growing, their retirement savings took a massive hit -- and much of the reason can be traced to one common investing mistake.
The ongoing saga of Facebook's post-IPO tumble is a classic, Greek-style tragedy of hubris, epic overreach, and equally epic failure, and the media can't get enough of it -- even though large chunks of it are essentially fictional.
Facebook's first few days as a public company have been a rocky road. Moving ahead, Mark Zuckerberg would do well to recall the lesson of two other iconoclastic company founders: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. The tale of Ben & Jerry bears a bracing similarity to his own.
Not much, and the jokes on you if you think otherwise. As the Facebook IPO makes abundantly clear, ordinary investors need to stop counting on Wall Street to look out for them.
After all the finger pointing over Facebook's rapid share price decline, there is one factor that should have served as warning. Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter, cut earnings estimates in the lead-up to the IPO -- while expanding its size and raising its price.
A "modest contagion" for financial stocks "should allow domestically focused financial stocks to stabilize in the coming weeks," despite the JPMorgan Chase trading mess and the "deteriorating conditions in Europe, according to KBW analyst Fred Cannon.
JPMorgan Chase stock lost more than 8% of its value Friday after the bank, the largest in the United States, revealed a monster $2 billion loss in a trading group that manages the risks the bank takes with its own money.
It's unlikely that random people will just give you the money you need to float you through your ordinary fiscal troubles. But they might make you a loan. Peer-to-peer lending, where borrowers bypass big banks and get loans directly from other individuals, is getting bigger all the time.
Recent stress tests on America's big banks reveal that the financial crisis is far from over. While the "too big to fails" are in better shape than they were in 2008, there's still "room for improvement at virtually every firm."
Over the past couple of weeks, with little fanfare, three small brokerages bit the dust due to a dearth of trading activity on the stock markets and a lack of capital in-house. This may not matter much, but it could be the beginning of a wave of failures on Wall Street.
With the economy still trying to muster a recovery, and unemployment still around 8.5%, any price increases are painful. And just a month into 2012, a spate of headlines points to more hurt ahead. Here are seven ways inflation will be digging into your wallet this year: