What the Finance

The number of US businesses bankruptcy filings has risen as much as 49% in April compared to a year earlier. According to statistical data that was compiled by Jupiter eSources LLC, the business bankruptcy filings soared to 5,713 during April. The total number of bankruptcy filings, including those filed by individuals amounted to a total [...]

UBS AG Chief Executive Officer Marcel Rohner confirmed analysts’ fears today that UBS, the largest Swiss bank will put its investment banking business on a much tighter leash. UBS will ‘no longer aim to offer everything to everyone in investment banking” Rohner told investors at the annual shareholder meeting in Basel today.
UBS has about $3 [...]

Just when the dollar showed some signs of recovery, it was hit by a South Korean bomb. The dollar’s vulnerability was highly underscored by the announcement of South Korean’s National Pension Fund that would no longer buy US treasuries as yields were too low.
The Fund also announced that it is now looking to diversify its [...]

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the largest underwriter of mortgage-backed bonds is struggling to cope with the economic slowdown, and thus is eliminating 5% of its total employees.

A report released on March 7 by the Labor Department showed that job cuts continued in February for the second straight month. This month’s loss, the biggest in five years, has cost 63,000 their jobs.
Funnily enough, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.8% from 4.9%, which clearly shows that the labor force is shrinking, as people [...]

January housing statistics for the state of California were recently released by the California Association of Realtors (CAR).
During January, California existing single-family home sales declined by 30% from one year earlier and prices fell by 22% (except an area close to a major metro station).
Results for the month continue a deteriorating trend since the credit [...]

Bear Stearns announced an extra 800 cut in its mortgage employees. The overall number of redundancies has risen to� 1,400 - 10% of previous year’s head count.

Despite the rumours yesterday that Deutsche Bank was going to report a massive loss, the bank came out this morning with a surprisingly good set of numbers.
A few headline numbers:

Pre-tax profit up 5% - year over year -, it now stands at €8.7 billions
Revenues have risen by 2%, and now stand at €30.8 billions
Costs have [...]

General Motors’ stock fell 54 cents, and now stands at $26.58. The world’s biggest automaker blamed rising costs in North America and a loss at its partially owned GMAC finance unit, for the fourth quarter’s loss of $722 millions.

Credit Suisse Group, Switzerland’s second biggest bank, announced that fourth quarter profit fell as much as 72%.