European banks

Bank Taps Fund, Raising Jitters in Europe

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Amid renewed fears that the euro-zone crisis could put fresh pressure on short-term funding, an unidentified bank made use of the Federal Reserve’s swap facility via the Swiss National Bank, borrowing $200 million earlier this month. The SNB disclosed that it applied for $200 million of dollar swaps on Aug. 10, at a rate of 1.08%. The funds were paid back on Aug. 18. In a sign of the nervousness sweeping the markets, both UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group, Switzerland’s two largest banks, issued denials Friday … Full article available @: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576518462334049434.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wsj%2Fxml%2Frss%2F3_7011+%28WSJ.com%3A+What%27s+News+US%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Apple is worth as much as all euro zone banks

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LONDON (Reuters) – Technology company Apple is now worth as much as the 32 biggest euro zone banks. That’s the stark result from a steep fall in the share price of banks including Spain’s Santander, France’s BNP Paribas, Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Italy’s Unicredit, compared to a steady rise in Apple’s valuation, according to Thomson Reuters data. Earlier on Friday the DJ STOXX euro zone banks index fell 4 percent, valuing its 32 members at $340 billion. That’s based on the market capitalization of their free-float shares, which for some French banks in particular is less than 100 percent. The … Read more

‘s Banks causes lots of pain for short sellers

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Time and again, Sean Egan and his team at Philadelphia-based Egan-Jones Ratings have made important calls months ahead of their better-known rivals. The firm has won grudging respect for its work on Ambac, CIT, Countrywide, General Motors, IndyMac, Lehman Brothers, MBIA and New Century, all of which encountered big problems after getting poor credit grades from Egan-Jones.  Read the rest of the report by clicking on the link below. A very scary interview with Sean Egan from Barron’s This is a very convincing report and may prove to be true but the short covering on the banks mentioned in this … Read more