Category: Finance

Google Co-Founder, Other Billionaires Are Issued Subpoenas in Lawsuit Over JPMorgan’s Ties to Jeffrey Epstein; Sergey Brin, Thomas Pritzker, Mortimer Zuckerman and Michael Ovitz are asked for information in U.S. Virgin Islands’ civil suit against bank

April 1, 2023 5amResearch No Comments

familiar with the matter.

The subpoenas from the U.S. territory’s attorney general seek any communications and documents related to the bank and Epstein, the people said.

The four men are some of the wealthiest people in the U.S., and it couldn’t be determined why they were being asked for the communications and documents. In civil cases, lawyers can use subpoenas during the discovery process to get information from people who aren’t a party to a lawsuit but could provide evidence related to the case.

The U.S. Virgin Islands sued JPMorgan late last year in a Manhattan federal court, saying the bank facilitated Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking and abuse by allowing the late financier to remain a client and helping him send money to his victims. The civil lawsuit alleges that JPMorgan received referrals of high-value business opportunities from Epstein and turned a blind eye to his activities. The bank has said it didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes and can’t be held liable.

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Chinese businessman Guo Wengui seeks bail in $1 billion fraud case

April 1, 2023April 1, 2023 5amResearch No Comments

Lawyers for a wealthy self-exiled Chinese businessman who developed ties to Trump administration figures including Steve Bannon are seeking bail for him two weeks after his arrest, saying other defendants accused of massive frauds like Bernard Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried were freed on bail.

The lawyers submitted papers in Manhattan federal court, saying Guo Wengui is entitled to bail just as other wealthy defendants have been given the chance to post bail in the past. They also challenged claims by prosecutors that he is a risk to flee, saying he would not leave his wife of 38 years and his daughter as all three seek asylum.

Madoff was free for several months in late 2008 and early 2009 before he was jailed after he pleaded guilty in a multibillion-dollar fraud. He was later sentenced to 150 years in prison and died behind bars.

Bankman-Fried, 31, was arrested in the Bahamas in December in what a prosecutor called one of biggest frauds in American history. He agreed to return to the United States, where he was freed with GPS monitoring on a $250 million personal recognizance bond after pleading not guilty to charges that he oversaw a massive cryptocurrency fraud.

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IMF approves $15.6 billion Ukraine loan, part of $115 billion in global support

April 1, 2023 5amResearch No Comments

The International Monetary Fund said on Friday its executive board approved a four-year $15.6 billion loan program for Ukraine, part of a global $115 billion package to support the country’s economy as it battles Russia’s 13-month-old invasion.

The decision clears the way for an immediate disbursement of about $2.7 billion to Kyiv, and requires Ukraine to carry out ambitious reforms, especially in the energy sector, the Fund said in a statement.

The Extended Fund Facility (EFF) loan is the first major conventional financing program approved by the IMF for a country involved in a large-scale war.

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Apple wins reversal of $502 million VirnetX patent infringement verdict

April 1, 2023April 1, 2023 5amResearch No Comments

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said the verdict could not stand after the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board canceled the virtual private network (VPN) patents VirnetX accused Apple of infringing.

The ruling follows the Federal Circuit’s Thursday decision to affirm a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office tribunal’s finding that the patents were invalid.

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Johnson & Johnson unit loses bid to stay in bankruptcy during Supreme Court appeal

April 1, 2023April 1, 2023 5amResearch No Comments

(Reuters) -A Johnson & Johnson company cannot delay a court order dismissing its bankruptcy, a U.S. court said on Friday, despite the company’s planned Supreme Court appeal to use bankruptcy to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits over its talc products. J&J sought to use the bankruptcy of its subsidiary company, LTL Management, to halt…

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It’s rich for banks to complain about scams and finfluencers

March 30, 2023April 1, 2023 5amResearch No Comments

For decades, the major banks – along with AMP – dominated the financial planning landscape, employing or authorising the vast majority of licensed advisers. The remaining 16,000 providers – most of them independent or privately owned – are insufficient in number to meet the advice needs of the millions of Baby Boomers set to retire in coming years.

And the mountains of red tape the remaining advisers must comply with – thanks largely, it must be said, to the misdeeds of the bank-owned advice providers – have made their services too expensive for most families to afford even if they wanted to.

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Deutsche Bank Stock Tumbles On Contagion Fears

March 24, 2023March 24, 2023 5amResearch No Comments

After a relatively calm week in banking, Deutsche Bank is now making headlines for a falling share price and rising CDS spreads.

In an apparent attempt to show strength, the company announced that it would redeem a bond issue early, but the market had other ideas.

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Wall St falls as bank contagion fears flare up

March 24, 2023 5amResearch No Comments

Shares of major U.S. banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo and Bank of America dropped between 1% and 2% in early trade.

Shares of regional lenders First Republic Bank, PacWest Bancorp, Western Alliance Bancorp and Truist Financial Corp fell between 1% to 5%.

The S&P 500 banking index and the KBW regional banking index, hit their lowest since late 2020 in the previous session, fell 1.6% and 1.2%, respectively.

European banks also came under pressure after a report on a U.S. probe into Credit Suisse and UBS further soured the mood. Their U.S.-listed shares were down about 5.4% and 4.1%, respectively.

U.S. shares of Deutsche Bank fell nearly 10% after the bank’s credit default swaps rose to a four-year high.

U.S. two-year Treasury yields fell sharply to their lowest levels since September on Friday.

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Credit Suisse, UBS facing US Russia-sanctions probe, subpoenas also sent to employees major US banks

March 24, 2023 5amResearch No Comments

Credit Suisse Group AG and UBS Group AG are among the banks under scrutiny in a US Justice Department probe into whether financial professionals helped Russian oligarchs evade sanctions, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Swiss banks were included in a recent wave of subpoenas sent out by the US government, the people said. The information requests were sent before the crisis that engulfed Credit Suisse and resulted in UBS’s proposed takeover of its rival.

Subpoenas also went to employees of some major US banks, two people with knowledge of the inquiries, said.

The Justice Department inquiries are focused on identifying which bank employees dealt with sanctioned clients and how those clients were vetted over the past several years.

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Japan’s Offshore Anxiety: Foreign bonds bank run

March 23, 2023March 24, 2023 5amResearch No Comments

The crisis at Credit Suisse has traders wondering who’s next. Japanese lenders, with their staid depositor bases, look like unlikely targets for bank runs. Yet their collective overseas bond portfolio is in focus.

For years the country’s ultra-low interest rates encouraged deposit-taking institutions, lenders and other investors to borrow yen and buy higher-yielding but relatively safe assets. This helped Japan overtake China as the top foreign owner of U.S. Treasuries in 2019; they owned an estimated $2 trillion of foreign bonds as of last year. On paper the sequence of rate hikes in Western economies make such positions even more profitable.

Yet the rising cost of short-term dollar and euro credit, combined with extreme yen volatility, have made hedging much more expensive. The inversion of the American yield curve makes it unprofitable to borrow short-term dollars and buy long-term Treasuries. Japan Inc was reducing positions well before Silicon Valley Bank imploded.

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