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Jeffrey A. Michael, a finance professor in Stockton, Calif., took a hard look at his city’s bankruptcy this summer and thought he saw a smoking gun: a dubious bond deal that bankers had pushed on Stockton just as the local economy was starting to tank in the spring of 2007, he said.

Barclays has moved quickly to fill the void at the top. The bank Thursday named Antony Jenkins, the head of its retail and business banking unit, to succeed Robert Diamond, who was forced to resign July 3 after the Libor rate-rigging scandal.

Citigroup said on Wednesday that it had agreed to pay $590 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by shareholders who contended that they had been misled about the bank’s exposure to subprime mortgage debt on the eve of the financial crisis.

Here’s something that may (or may not) surprise about you about banks: They’re raking in profits like it’s 2007. It's not such a rosy environment for banks once you cut a little deeper into the numbers. The latest data from the FDIC show banks taking in net income of $34.5 billion in the second quarter of 2012, that’s up $5.9 billion from from the second quarter of 2011.

The Spanish economy is falling deeper into recession and depositors are pulling their money out of the banks, figures published on Tuesday showed, while the country's most economically important region, Catalonia, said it needed a major rescue from Madrid.

A growing number of small and medium-sized banks are merging as shrinking profit margins, tepid loan demand and low interest rates place pressure on their operations. Conditions are unlikely to improve as the Federal Reserve contemplates another round of stimulus that could push rates even lower.

US prosecutors are looking into whether British bank HSBC was involved in laundering money for Mexican drug cartels and moving cash for Saudi Arabian banks with ties to terrorists, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The M&T Bank Corporation has agreed to buy Hudson City Bancorp for $3.7 billion in cash and stock, expanding M&T's reach on the East Coast.

Royal Bank of Scotland is expected to agree a settlement in the next two months with U.S. and UK authorities investigating its role in an interest-rate rigging scandal, according to industry sources, regulatory officials and lawyers familiar with the case.

The Treasury said on Friday it is changing the way Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will repay taxpayers in a move the Obama administration said would accelerate the winding down of the government-owned mortgage financiers.