Business Bankruptcies: 2011 Will Likely Follow 2010 Lower

Wells Fargo agrees to modify California ARM loans
Wells Fargo Bank has agreed to make $2 billion in loan modifications for California Homeowners with risky pay-option, adjustable-rate Mortgages that Wells purchased from other banks, and to pay $32 million to 15,000 borrowers who had similar loans and lost their homes to Foreclosure, according to an agreement with the California Attorney General's office. "Customers were offered adjustable-rate loans with payments that mushroomed to amounts that ultimately thousands of borrowers could not aff...

New Jersey warns foreclosure fiends
New Jersey has fired a shot across the Banking Industry's bow. The state's Supreme Court ordered the biggest lenders to prove they are acting lawfully in processing Foreclosures. While that only seems like common sense, Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner told the Wall Street Journal he believes this is the first case in which the state courts have placed that particular ball where it belongs, in the Bankers' court. Time for a Mortgage rule makeover? "It's important that the judiciary ens...

Will The Housing Market Continue To Decline?
. The quick answer to the headline of this article seems to be yes. The volume of housing that is in Mortgage trouble is rising as prices drop in vulnerable markets around the country. There isn't a sufficient floor of buyers in those markets to stop further declines and Foreclosure sales that appear to be on the horizon. It depends on the market. For example, the recent Case-Shiller 20 cities report shows that coastal California has had a positive trend: Los Angeles +4.4%; San Diego +5.0%, and ...

California Coastal Communities Files Consensual Plan of Reorganization to Exit from Bankruptcy
The Company is hopeful that it will obtain Bankruptcy Court approval of its Plan by February 28, 2011 and emerge from bankruptcy shortly thereafter; however, there can be no assurance that the Company will meet this date.  The Chapter 11 Cases are being jointly administered in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California.   The Company is a residential land development and homebuilding company operating in Southern California.  The Company's principal ...

MGM emerges from bankruptcy after raising $500 million, considers NBC's Jeff Gaspin for final board seat
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's long nightmare is over. The studio, which 18 months ago began seeking a way to escape a crippling Debt load that reached $5 billion, has exited Bankruptcy with new owners and new chief executives. MGM's reorganization plan that wiped out its debt, handed over virtually all of its equity to creditors and installed Spyglass Entertainment chiefs Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum as CEOs was approved by a New York Bankruptcy court three weeks ago. However, the comp...

Twin River stake purchased
A subsidiary of the New York private-equity company that owns the Harrah’s casino firm has notified Rhode Island it has purchased a share of the Twin River slot parlor in Lincoln. Louis A. DeQuattro, a Deputy Director and legal counsel for the State Department of Business Regulation, confirmed this morning that an arm of Apollo Global Management — Apollo Twin River Holdings LP — notified the agency Dec. 7 that it proposes to acquire more than a 5-percent stake in Twin River, th...

Assessed value of Colorado property declines
The assessed value of property in Colorado declined this year and is expected to do so again next year — marking the first decline since the state's Real Estate troubles in the 1980s and spelling more financial woes for the state. Lawmakers facing an expected Budget shortfall of up to $1 billion for the 2011-12 Fiscal Year must now come up with another $140 million for schools. That's because the state is required to cover lost local property-tax collections for education. A drop in Oil an...

Assessed value of Colorado property declines
The assessed value of property in Colorado declined this year and is expected to do so again next year — marking the first decline since the state's Real Estate troubles in the 1980s and spelling more financial woes for the state. Lawmakers facing an expected Budget shortfall of up to $1 billion for the 2011-12 Fiscal Year must now come up with another $140 million for schools. That's because the state is required to cover lost local property-tax collections for education. A drop in Oil an...

Top 10 Business Stories of 2010
For the third year running, business and finance dominated much of the news. The year started with Ben Bernanke, Time Magazine’s Man of 2009, being confirmed to another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. It ended with Mark Madoff, Bernie Madoff’s eldest son, hanging himself, and with Time naming another business figure, Mark Zuckerberg, age twenty-six, as its Man of 2010. In between, a lot of stuff happened, and Keynes rolled over in his grave. Here, in no particular order, are...

TD Bank to buy Chrysler Financial
Washington— A Canadian bank will purchase Michigan-based auto lender Chrysler Financial in a $6.3 billion deal — a move that gives the auto lender a second lease on life. TD Bank Group said today it is buying the Farmington Hills-based lender from Cerberus Capital Management LP, the New York private equity firm that acquired Chrysler Financial and Chrysler LLC from Daimler AG in 2007. The company will drop the Chrysler Financial brand early next year once the deal is approved by U.S...

Wells Fargo 'pick-a-pay' settlement - $2 billion
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Wells Fargo, in a settlement with California's Attorney General announced Monday, agreed to provide $2 billion worth of loan modifications to nearly 15,000 Homeowners. Under the deal, the bank is also paying a total of $32 million to borrowers who lost their homes to Foreclosure, according to the AG. Email Print Comment Attorney General Jerry Brown said Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) will offer modifications to 14,900 homeowners, who have so-called "pick-a-pay&q...;

Checkmate | BofA, GMAC, Chase, Wells, Citi, Onewest Face N.J. Foreclosure Freeze
KABOOM! BofA, GMAC, Chase, Wells, Citi, Onewest Face N.J. Foreclosure Freeze This is coming in from multiple fronts... Chink in the Armor The State Supreme Court of NJ has ordered a halt to all foreclosure in the state of NJ. This is most excellent news for the reason you may not realize: NJ is owned by the Wall St. Bankers. Remember the movie Copland about a town in NJ owned and run by a bunch of NYC cops? Guess who used to be Governor of NJ? Corzine. Guess what his job was before he became G...

Mortgage lenders ordered to appear in NJ court - National Business - MiamiHerald.com
Newark, N.J. -- Six lenders who have combined to file nearly 30,000 Foreclosure actions in New Jersey this year face the possible suspension of their operations next month under a court order announced Monday by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. The action follows a report submitted to the Supreme Court that, citing depositions and court filings in other states, paints a picture of systemic abuses in the filing of foreclosures that include so-called "robo-signing," in which emp...

Mortgage lenders ordered to appear in NJ court
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - Six lenders who have combined to file nearly 30,000 Foreclosure actions in New Jersey this year face the possible suspension of their operations next month under a court order announced Monday by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. The action follows a report submitted to the Supreme Court that, citing depositions and court filings in other states, paints a picture of systemic abuses in the filing of foreclosures that include so-called "robo-signing," in which e...

NJ Top Court May Block Foreclosures
TRENTON, N.J. (CBS 2) — New Jersey’s highest court was threatening to block six major lenders, suspected of irregularities, from foreclosing on most Homeowners. Those lenders, which include Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citibank, will have to appear in court next month and defend their Foreclosure practices. The Chief Justice of New Jersey’s Supreme Court said the court has become increasingly concerned about the accuracy and reliability of documents submitted to the office o...

Wells Fargo Agrees to $2 Billion in Loan Modifications
Source: Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. agreed to provide loan modifications worth more than $2 billion to California Homeowners who have “pick-a-pay” loans, California Attorney General Jerry Brown said. Wells Fargo, the largest U.S. home lender, also will pay $32 million to borrowers whose homes were lost in Foreclosure, Brown said today in a statement. Pick-a-pay, or pay option adjustable-rate Mortgage loans, allowed borrowers to make payments at various levels, according to Brown. The highest l..

Federal Reserve Blocks New Foreclosure Regulations
WASHINGTON -- Top policymakers at the Federal Reserve are fighting efforts to rein in widely reported bank abuses, sparking an inter-agency feud with the FDIC and the Treasury Department. The Fed, along with the more bank-friendly Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is resisting moves to craft rules cracking down on banks that charge illegal fees and carry out improper Foreclosures. The FDIC supports such rules, according to an FDIC official involved in the dispute. The new regulations ...

The burden of vacant buildings
Milwaukee native George Kelling's now-famous "broken windows" theory of crime fighting contends that a single broken window sends a signal to criminals that the entire neighborhood welcomes lawlessness. If that is the message sent to criminals by a broken window, imagine the impact when an entire house is vacant, ignored and abandoned. The Milwaukee Common Council has the opportunity Tuesday to stabilize neighborhoods by holding inattentive, non-compliant owners of vacant properties ...

Netflix CEO Applauds Hedge Fund Managers Call, Balls To Short Company, Would Still Appreciate If Hed Refrain From Doing So
Late last week, Hedge Fund manager Whitney Tilson sent out a detailed analysis of why his fund is short Netflix, which caught the eye of the company’s CEO, Reed Hastings. What’d Hastings think of the call? First off, he agrees you could make money shorting this thing. “It is possible that one could make money shorting Netflix today,” CEO Reed Hastings, whose movie-rental company has moved to online delivery from DVDs, wrote in a posting on the Seeking Alpha website. Having said...

Canada's TD Bank bets $6 billion on U.S. auto lending
Toronto (Reuters) - Toronto-Dominion Bank is buying Chrysler Financial for $6.3 billion, the second time in a week that a Canadian lender has placed a big bet on the U.S. Economic Recovery. Tuesday's cash deal, which includes about $400 million in goodwill, will make Canada's No. 2 bank one of North America's biggest bank-owned auto lenders. The bank won't issue any stock to fund its purchase from Cerberus Capital Management, a feature that helped push TD shares up nearly 4 percent. "The TD Ban...

What "Really" Causes Bankruptcy
A lot of what your friend says about Bankruptcy clients having taken on risks they couldn't handle is true. However, I DO feel sorry for most of my clients who have taken on too much risk, because almost always, they did it without realizing that was what they were doing. Nobody wants to be taking lessons in financial management from Bankruptcy filers, but the fact that someone made poor financial decisions doesn't really speak to whether one should "feel sorry" for them. For the record, I have ...

Hungary expected to approve Bill critics say will muzzle press - The Irish Times - Tue, Dec 21, 2010
HUNGARY’S PARLIAMENT was last night debating a Controversial Bill that domestic and international critics say would dramatically increase state control over the media and muzzle the press. The Legislation was expected to be approved by parliament, where the conservative government enjoys a two-thirds majority, despite repeated appeals from prominent Hungarian editors and European media watchdogs. The new law would allow a government-controlled council to fine any media outlet, including we...

Chrysler finance sold for $6.3bn
Canada's Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) has agreed a deal to buy Chrysler Financial from Private Equity firm Cerberus Capital Management for $6.3bn (£4.1bn). The price includes $5.9bn for the company's assets and $400m of goodwill. TD boss Ed Clark said the deal would make the combined firm one of the "top five auto lenders" in the US. Chrysler Financial is the former Lending arm of the US carmaker that was bailed out by the US government last year and is now owned by Italy&...

Canada's TD Bank to buy Chrysler Financial for $6.3 bln
Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) said Tuesday it will buy Chrysler Financial Corp. for 6.3 billion US dollars in cash, part of a major expansion of Canadian banking behemoths into the United States. The deal comes just days after the Bank of Montreal (BMO) doubled its stake in the US banking market with the purchase of Marshall & Ilsley for 4.1 billion in stock. TD Bank is already one of the 10 largest banks operating in the United States, with some 6.5 million customers and 1,250 branches in 15 state...

Euro Becomes Increasingly Popular Choice to Fund Carry Trades
By Stephen L. Bernard The euro’s struggles could become more pronounced in coming months as traders increasingly use the beleaguered currency to fund so-called “carry trades.” That may sound surprising, given the yen and The Dollar’s singular appeal as currencies is that they cost next to nothing to borrow. But the euro is perceived to be so vulnerable to further declines on the foreign exchange market that big market participants are zeroing in on trades to bet against...