Banking, Finance & Services

Dozens of highly paid international lawyers are pocketing millions of dollars in fees from multinational corporations to sue governments in secretive arbitration tribunals for profits they claim to be owed under international investment treaties, according to a new report from Corporate Europe Observatory and Transnational Institute. Read More

Federal prosecutors are suing Bank of America for selling fraudulent loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored mortgage finance companies. The government alleged that the multinational sold over $1 billion in bad mortgages that led to numerous foreclosures. Read More

Seven Irish banks are being investigated by the Central Bank of Ireland for selling consumers insurance policies that they did not need. Tens of thousands of Irish consumers could get as much as €3,000 ($3,900) each in refunds. Read More

Spain will inject emergency capital into the country's biggest ailing bank, Bankia, as it puts into place reforms to allow loss-making banks to receive eurozone bailout money. Read More

Kim Seung-youn, the CEO of the Hanwha group in South Korea, has been sentenced to four years in prison and fined $4.5 million. The jail time marks an unusual departure for the Korean judiciary who typically issue suspended sentences when prominent business bosses are found guilty. Read More

Seven international banks have been served with subpoenas over the global interest setting scandal. Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS - have been asked to provide relevant "documents and communications" to the New York attorney-general. Read More

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has agreed to pay a total of $60.2 million in penalties to U.S. government regulators to settle documented charges of bribery in eight countries: Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Serbia. Read More

Kenichi Watanabe and Takumi Shibata, the CEO and chief operating officer of Nomura, have resigned over several recent insider trading scandals at the Japanese multinational conglomerate. The revelations are the latest in a series of events that have shone a welcome spotlight on seamier side of the financial industry. Read More

HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, has been accused of laundering money for Mexican drug cartels. At a hearing conducted by the U.S. Senate earlier this week, David Bagley, HSBC's head of compliance, apologized and resigned. Read More

BlackRock and Two Sigma Investments - both major hedge funds - have been conducting regular private surveys of brokers for wealthy clients. The practice has raised red flags because of Morgan Stanley's role in the Facebook stock market flotation, as well as insider trading scandals at Goldman Sachs. Read More