bank

Yesterday we reported something disturbing: a small regional bank, BOK Financial, announced that it had underestimated its exposure to energy loans, or rather loan, issued by just one company, and as a result its  previously forecasted provision for credit losses of $3.5 million to $8.5 million would be insufficient, and due to the unexpected loan impairment it would have to take a dramatic $22.5 million in credit losses." As a result BOKF stock crashed and is now trading at levels not seen since 2010.

Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,

Portugal’s Rickety Banking System

After the unseemly bankruptcy of the Espirito Santo Group and the associated bank, then Portugal’s second biggest (likely a result of not praying enough, see: “Big Portuguese Bank Gets Into Trouble” and “Fears Over Banco Espirito Santo Escalate” for the gory details), Portugal’s state-run deposit insurance fund basically ran out of money.

Rapper ‘Blac Youngsta’ was detained outside an Atlanta bank after withdrawing $200,000 on Friday. In a case of mistaken identity, the Georgia Wells Fargo bank confused him with a suspected check fraudster. The 25-year-old millionaire said they targeted him because he was black and rich and didn’t fit their stereotype. NY Daily News reports: Sam Benson, who goes by the stage name Blac Youngsta, says he’s a millionaire and he definitely had enough socked away to withdraw $200,000 to buy a new luxury sedan.

To some it is the independent and impartial Swiss National Bank; to others it is the world's biggest hedge fund with $584 billion in assets or about the same as the Swiss GDP, whose former chief suddenly resigned in 2012 following a family FX trading scandal.

Whatever it is, the SNB had an abysmal year: first and foremost it was its terrible bet on maintaining a EURCHF floor which imploded almost exactly a year ago, when the bank was forced to scrap its attempts to keep the Swiss Franc weak, in the process suffering tens of billions in losses.

Back in June 2013, when Deutsche Bank opened a gold vault in Singapore which could hold up to 200 metric tons, the German bank was euphoric about the prospects for storing physical gold: "Gold has traditionally been stored in London, Zurich and New York, but there is a serious shift in dynamics going on as the global financial crisis continues to evolve," Mark Smallwood, Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management's head of wealth planning in the Asia-Pacific region, told The Wall Street Journal.