Hot finance topics

When New Frontier Bank failed in April, regulators failed to find a buyer, forcing the FDIC to absorb the roughly $2 billion in assets that were once owned by the Colorado-based lender.
But what the FDIC may not have anticipated at the time was that the agency would be stuck with a grab-bag of other […]

Japan ordered Citigroup to suspend sale promotions for a month at its retail bank for lax oversight against money laundering, in the struggling U.S. bank’s second brush with Japanese regulators in five years.
The Financial Services Agency said Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) had not developed adequate systems to detect suspicious transactions such as money laundering, […]

Bailed out financial giant Citigroup said Wednesday it is going to the raise base salaries of its employees, although it is not planning to increase their total compensation.
"Retaining and attracting the best talent is very important to the success of Citi and all its stakeholders," said Citigroup, in a statement.
The company insisted that total […]

DETROIT — Chrysler was reborn Wednesday under a new Italian parent, but it can’t shake the shadows of its past: It’s not selling enough cars, its fleet is tilted to trucks and SUVs, and help is more than a year away.
A 42-day stay in bankruptcy court cleansed the company of much of […]

The Bank of England may keep up the pace of bond purchases today as officials weigh whether they are already printing enough money to revive the British economy.
Governor Mervyn King’s forecasts last month showed it needs to spend 125 billion pounds ($207 billion) of newly printed money in U.K. debt markets to fight […]

Prominent hedge fund firm Pequot Capital told investors Wednesday it will shut down because of a reopened government probe into possible insider trading.
"Public disclosures about the continuing investigation have cast a cloud over the firm and have become a source of personal distraction," the firm’s founder Arthur Samberg, long one of the hedge fund […]

More employers are citing the recession for shifting a bigger portion of their health care costs to employees in 2009, an industry report said Monday.
American workers have seen an average increase of 10.6% over the past year in the amount they spend on health care services, according to health care consulting firm Milliman’s fifth […]

U.S. consumer borrowing fell more than expected in March, plunging a record $11.1 billion, a Federal Reserve report showed Thursday.
March consumer credit fell at an annual rate of 5.2% to a total of $2.55 trillion. This was the biggest percentage drop since December 1990.
February’s decrease was revised to $8.1 billion from an originally reported […]

I’m always amazed by the size of the tax refund most Americans get year after year. The average refund was $2,429 last year, up from $2,324 in 2007, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
I’ll lay heavy odds that this year’s refunds will be bigger, thanks to higher contribution limits for IRAs, deductions for […]

European Union nations will on Sunday commit to doing all they can to spur economic growth within EU single market rules, according to a draft document to be discussed by the bloc’s leaders.
The 27-nation group is divided over how to tackle the global financial crisis, which has strained the euro and core EU notions […]