Struggling lender CIT Group made headlines when it announced a little more than a month ago that it would extend the contract of CEO Jeffrey Peek until September 2, 2010. Today, the company, a commercial lender that gives funding to around 1 million small and medium-sized businesses, announced that Peek will resign from his post as chief executive at the end of the year.
The news comes two weeks after the company announced a massive restructuring plan that will most likely involve either a pre-packaged bankruptcy or an enormous debt swap effort in order to get the lender back on its feet …read more

Despite the emergence of signs that the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has started abating, the number of mortgages that have gone delinquent or that have ended in foreclosure is rising. The current level of delinquencies and foreclosures marks the worst situation in at least forty years, even as the government continues to extend help to borrowers.
 
While the original problem facing borrowers originated from risky subprime loans, the same culprit for starting the economic crisis, the Mortgage Bankers Association has now stated that more borrowers are being driven into delinquency by rising unemployment of unemployment. The economy will …read more

Credit card giant American Express has reported a $337 million profit in its second quarter, which marks a 48 percent decrease in profits from the same time last year, when the company earned $660 million in profits. American Express has blamed its relative underperformance on its move to pay off some of the money that it received from the government bailout.
 
According to American Express, the company’s profits, excluding the costs involved in paying back at least some of the money the company received as part of the TARP program, are actually three times higher than what they reported. Analyst predictions, …read more

CIT Group Inc., on the verge of bankruptcy, has been feverishly negotiating a bout of rescue financing with bondholders in order to avoid having to dip into bankruptcy. Fortunately for CIT, the business lender has secured $3 billion from its bondholders in rescue financing, which does not completely remove the threat of bankruptcy but goes a long way toward preventing it.
 
According to inside sources, the bondholder group is expected to provide the money over a 2 ½ year period. CIT’s board had a meeting today to discuss the terms of the loan, and if everything goes well in the meeting, …read more