By Saeed Azhar NEW YORK (Reuters) – First Republic Bank’s strategic options are “very challenging” because any potential sale is unlikely without the lender taking big writedowns on its mortgage loan book and securities portfolio, analysts at Fitch Ratings said on Tuesday. “If someone were to acquire them … there’s going to be some big…
By Lisa Pauline Mattackal (Reuters) – What do you get when you cross cryptocurrencies with artificial intelligence? A seemingly sentient bitcoin that codes itself in the style of Japanese haikus? Alas not, though you do get billions of dollars of trading in a new class of crypto tokens. The machine mania sweeping the tech world…
By Luc Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York lawyer pleaded guilty on Tuesday to making $3.8 million in payments to maintain properties that were beneficially owned by Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian billionaire oligarch under U.S. sanctions, court records showed. Robert Wise admitted to receiving wire payments from a shell company controlled by a…
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Short interest in shares of beleaguered First Republic Bank rose by $389.8 million to $945.5 million in the past 30 days, and the bearish positions turned profitable for the month as its shares skidded on Tuesday, data from S3 Partners showed. Shares of First Republic plunged 43% to a record low…
By Hilary Russ and Deborah Mary Sophia (Reuters) -McDonald’s Corp beat Wall Street expectations for quarterly global comparable sales and profit on Tuesday, as more customers visited in every market and from all income groups amid the threat of a recession. Also helped by higher prices for burgers and fries, global comparable sales climbed 12.6%,…
By Sarah N. Lynch and Doina Chiacu WASHINGTON (Reuters) -British American Tobacco Plc has agreed to pay more than $635 million to U.S. authorities after a subsidiary pleaded guilty to charges that it conspired to violate U.S. sanctions by selling tobacco products to North Korea and commit bank fraud, a U.S. court filing and the…
By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of nine Republican senators on Tuesday urged the Biden administration to impose sanctions on Huawei Cloud and other Chinese cloud service providers, citing national security concerns, according to a letter seen by Reuters. The previously unreported letter led by Senator Bill Hagerty to the Commerce, State and…
By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday warned that failure by Congress to raise the government’s debt ceiling – and the resulting default – would trigger an “economic catastrophe” that would send interest rates higher for years to come. Yellen, in remarks prepared for a Washington event with business…
By Tatiana Bautzer NEW YORK (Reuters) -Citigroup Inc’s chairman John Dugan defended the company’s efforts to fix its regulatory problems and bolster its stock at the bank’s annual meeting on Tuesday. “We completely understand” shareholders’ frustration with the share price, he said, after fielding several questions from shareholders on the topic. Investor dissatisfaction is likely…
By Huw Jones LONDON (Reuters) -Anonymity is allowing crypto assets to finance illegal activities, a top U.S. regulatory official said on Tuesday, posing national security risks that must be addressed. Christy Goldsmith Romero, a commissioner at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said cryptocurrencies were being used to finance cybercrime with victimes including individuals, companies,…
