Hot finance topics

A wave of consolidation may sweep through U.S. small business lenders as the beleaguered industry seeks to take advantage of low valuations to combine with rivals or other large companies in a bid to survive.
Once a dominant player in the business development companies (BDC) industry, American Capital Ltd, which recently restructured its debt, may […]

It was part of the corporate lore at Bank of America: Whenever legendary boss Hugh McColl would buy a bank in Florida, Texas, or Georgia in the 1980s and early 1990s, he’d call his trusted lieutenant Ken Lewis to his Charlotte office and order Lewis to fix the new acquisition to fit his revolutionary […]

Ballpark — A mildly pungent jalape

The negotiations over health reform are kicking into high gear. And one of the top issues is whether to make insurance companies pay for some of it.
President Obama in his joint address to Congress Wednesday said that he supports the idea as a way to help fund the cost of reform — which, depending […]

Germany and France enjoyed a shock return to economic growth in the second quarter of the year, data showed on Thursday, ending their recessions earlier than many policymakers and economists had expected.
German gross domestic product rose by 0.3% in the second quarter, bringing an end to the country’s deepest recession since World War Two […]

Mortgage applications fell for the first time in four weeks, driven by a drop in demand for home refinancing loans as interest rates climbed, data from an industry group showed on Wednesday.
Applications for loans to buy a home, an early indicator of sales, were flat. Lack of interest for purchase loans does not bode […]

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. this week lowered its stake in credit ratings provider Moody’s Corp. to 16.98% from 20.4%, the first reported reduction since 2000.
Moody’s shares fell slid $2.57, or 9.7%, to $23.95 in after-hours trading after Berkshire disclosed the sale in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Berkshire said its National Indemnity […]

Getting an electronic health record system in place by 2014? Tough.
Getting hospitals to pay millions now for systems that comply with unknown standards and implement them by October 2010? Yikes!
That’s President Obama’s plan to get a centralized, digital medical record system up and running nationwide in five years.
It’s an ambitious plan, but one […]

The Bank of Japan should consider whether to stop pumping extra cash into the banking system by evaluating trends in corporate financing and the economy, some policy board members said last month.
They said whether to keep buying corporate debt from banks and providing them with unlimited loans after Sept. 30 “should be determined […]

The Bank of Japan should consider whether to stop pumping extra cash into the banking system by evaluating trends in corporate financing and the economy, some policy board members said last month.
They said whether to keep buying corporate debt from banks and providing them with unlimited loans after Sept. 30 “should be determined […]