Banks, Bailouts | featured news

Fannie Mae earned $17.2 billion last year, the biggest annual profit in the U.S. mortgage giant's history, helped by a record fourth quarter.

Cyprus has imposed limits on money transfers and hired extra security guards to prepare for the reopening of its banks, which have been shut for almost two weeks to avoid a run during the country's financial drama.

Europe has spent hundreds of billions of euros rescuing its banks but may have lost an entire generation of young people in the process, the president of the European Parliament said.

Insurer AIG says it will not join a $25bn (£16bn) lawsuit against the US government, which alleges that the terms of its rescue deal were unfair.

A lawsuit claims that the rescue by the government deprived A.I.G.'s shareholders of tens of billions of dollars and took private property for public use without appropriate compensation.

Small banks still owe $11 billion of taxpayer money under TARP, and the government is threatening to unload its stakes in them at big discounts to new investors. Nearly four years after Washington bailed out Wall Street, small banks have yet to repay $11 billion of taxpayer money.

Spain's government said Friday it plans to make its official request for EU aid for its banking sector Monday, as discussions continue on ways to inject European aid funds directly into ailing Spanish banks.

Spain’s borrowing costs soared Tuesday to levels that have sent other euro members into the arms of international lenders, calling into question the viability of a bailout deal for Spain’s banking sector even as other troubled countries were weighing whether they could make similar rescue arrangements.

Europe agreed Saturday to allow Spain to tap a rescue fund of up to (EURO)100 billion ($125 billion) to bail out its troubled banks, which are struggling under the weight of soured real estate loans after a Spanish housing bubble burst. Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said the country will reveal how much money it needs within coming weeks, after audits of its financial sector are completed.

Bank of America NA prevented homeowners from receiving mortgage-loan modifications under a federal program in order to avoid millions of dollars in losses while benefitting from financial incentives for participating in the program, according to a complaint unsealed in federal court Wednesday.