Bloomberg (07/10/08); Shen, Linda
According to data from KBW Inc. analyst Melissa Roberts, U.S. banks are merging at the slowest clip in at least 15 years as the mortgage-market crisis depletes capital and makes lenders wary of acquiring firms bogged down with troubled loans. A bank that puts itself up for sale invites speculation "that bank must be about to crumble," says Sandler O'Neill and Partners LP analyst Kevin Fitzsimmons. In May, savings and loans allocated a record $7.6 billion to cover bad loans after home prices skidded 15.3 percent in April from the same month a year earlier, reports S&P/Case-Shiller. That was the steepest price decline since the group started collecting such data.
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