It seems the loan crisis just won't go away. Bank of America's 3rd quarter profits virtually wiped out today as the sub-prime mortgage crisis extended across all credit markets.Just how much was lost? Well lets just say profits dived to $100 million from $1.43billion. BoA lost $607million in trading losses and a further $527million from structured products asset and mortgaged backed securities. This was worse than expected how much more can the banking industry take? Wamu also had a bad day the Seattle based bank announced it boosted the amount it set aside for loan and lease losses to $967 million, up from $166 million last year, and $372 million in the second quarter. It also increased provisions for loan losses to $323 million from $229 million in the second quarter.
Added to the bad news today the dollar fell again against the euro due to a jump in weekly jobless claims, investors now hoping a further interest cut is in the offing?
The euro was trading at $1.4296, up from $1.4167 late Wednesday. Sterling also was up against the dollar trading at $2.0444 from $2.0379 late Wednesday.
The Fed's policy committee will meet on Oct. 30-31
Look out for Porsche taking over Volkswagen later this month. VW has been in the doldrums for a while now and doing quite badly in the US market especially with the techno -savvy Phaeton other brands under VW are Bugatti, Bentley and Lamborghini. Porsche believe they can turn around VW by closing loss mmarking US plants, and looking at VW's generous wage bill, also non performing luxury brands as mentioned above. VW won't go quietly but the takeover is a question of when, not if.
No comments:
Post a Comment