• Gallery - A year in subprime turmoil.
• The Endgame For Fannie and Freddie?
• Investment banks and other large financial institutions need to work together and share risk information, according to Philippe Carrel, executive vice president of risk management for Thomson Reuters.
• A prayer group in Washington DC is claiming the credit for the recent sharp drop in the US price of petrol.
• The global financial crisis is set to get worse, with a large US bank likely to collapse in the next few months, a former IMF chief economist has warned.
  

• Bloomberg Podcast: Taleb Says Crisis Continues Until Banks' Management Changes (mp3)
• State Street Global Advisors is growing its Quant Team.
• Barclays may need to write down £1.5 billion more over the next 18 months, analysts at Goldman Sachs said, adding the bank has little room to absorb further losses without the dividend being cut or paid in shares.
• The UK's Financial Services Authority has fined the UK operations of Credit Suisse £5.6 million for breaching FSA Principles two and three by failing to conduct their business with due skill, care and diligence and failing to organize and control their business effectively.
• Is UBS preparing to dump its investment bank?
• Halifax Bank of Scotland is slashing around 100 IT jobs as part of a cost-cutting exercise aimed at reducing duplication between mortgage brands.
• The Alliance & Leicester bank has warned of "significant external risks" to itself if Banco Santander's planned takeover is rejected by shareholders.
• Apollo is chasing over $2 billion for a new fund that will buy troubled loans from European banks. 
• Battered US financial groups will have to refinance billions of dollars in maturing debt over the coming months.
• Several big institutional investors expect to see another major banking collapse.
• HSBC is considering ditching the BlackBerry and adopting Apple's iPhone as its standard staff mobile device, a move that could result in an order for some 200,000 iPhones.
• Fed up with life in investment banking? There is an alternative: consultants are hiring.
• Credit Suisse has received a record £5.6m fine from the UK Financial Services Authority after a scandal in which rogue traders in its investment banking division deliberately mispriced the asset-backed securities they held.
• Merrill Lynch could avoid paying tax in the UK for decades thanks to $29bn (£16bn) of losses made on its toxic investments through its London subsidiary.
• Fortis, the troubled Belgo-Dutch bank, came under pressure from angry shareholders calling for a radical shake-up of its corporate structure.
• Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase have agreed to buy back more than $7bn of securities and pay fines to settle allegations that they misled investors.
• Panmure Gordon, the British stockbroker and investment bank, has announced a large Egyptian bank will buy a share in its business for £3.2m.

Banks and Banking | Market Miscellany | International Markets | UK News | Credit Markets

• Quantitative Finance in a Nutshell.
• Meet Ben Shoval, the Hedge Fund Comic.
• Abnormal Returns: Friday Links.
• The latest chapter in an ongoing dance between hedge funds and media people. 
• A City trader who formerly worked at Long-Term Capital Management has teamed up with a former colleague to launch a new fund in London.
• Meet Richard Pym: A Banker with a reputation for steadying ships
• Two self-regulatory organisations for the US securities industry, NYSE Regulation and the Financial Industry Regulation Authority (FINRA), have announced an agreement with 10 US exchanges to protect investors against insider trading.
• Millionaires are purchasing entire ecosystems around the world and turning them into conservation areas. Their goal? To stop environmental catastrophe.
• Russia's fifth richest man has denied reports that he has bought the world's most expensive home.
• Fitch Ratings has revised its criteria for rating CDOs exposed to project finance loans as part of its ongoing revision of its structured credit criteria.
• Hiscox, the specialist insurer known for insurance policies covering fine art, kidnapping and the Olympics, has dodged the gloom in the financial sector and reported record profits.

• Scammers using the net to hype stocks are being targeted with software that can spot fraudulent trading patterns.
• Dubbed "I Am Rich," an iPhone app is meant as a status symbol for the wealthy. But in reality, it's a scarlet letter for the gullible.
• Meet Kieran Prior: Goldman Sach’s whiz-kid wheeler dealer.
• Aston Martin unseats the Veyron as the World's Most Expensive Car.
• Real Estate related frauds of all kinds.
• Ziegler Capital Management is a boutique investment firm that, under Chief Investment Officer Donald Nesbitt, uses behavior as a portfolio builder.
• Thousands of business-school students in Britain and abroad are being investigated for cheating.
• Times are tough for Wall Street nannies.
• Elephant Powder and Naked Shorting.
• All but one of Europe's largest 10 hedge fund management firms increased the assets they managed in the 12 months to the end of June
• Russia's richest man, Oleg Deripaska, has held talks with General Motors about buying Hummer.
• Not everybody's bottom line has been hit by the credit crunch. John Connolly, global chairman of accountants Deloitte, earned £5.7m last year - £1m more than the year before.

• Humor: Should the World Forgive America's Debt?
• US Health Care: The Real Fiscal Nightmare
• The Spanish government has approved a 20bn euro ($30bn, £15bn) stimulus plan to tackle the cooling economy.
• Liechtenstein, which has been at the centre of an international row over tax evasion, has announced that it will co-operate more fully on tax matters.

Commodities

• Five minutes as an oil trader.
• Commodity hedge-fund traders Brian Hunter, Paul Touradji and Renee Haugerud made money in July as energy, metals and agricultural prices fell the most since 1980.
• The Russian assault on Georgia has injected a specter of doubt into a U.S.-backed oil and natural gas route that had until now seemed safer than almost any other on which the West relies, analysts say.
• Crude prices are falling and commodities are plummeting. Patrick Collinson asks if investors should sell emerging market funds and buy bombed-out banks.
• BHP Billiton has played down fears that the boom which has driven commodity prices to record levels could turn to bust as global growth slows.
• Gold fell to below $800 an ounce for the first time since December 2007 while aluminium prices hit their lowest in some six months. Copper also fell.

Middle East

• Two Gulf Arab sovereign wealth funds are looking to borrow as much as $6.5 billion to help finance expansion, bankers said last Tuesday.
• Morgan Stanley will be allowed to set up a fund to invest in Saudi equities, Saudi Arabia's stock market regulator said, in a move that could attract more foreign investors' to the largest Arab bourse.
• The 11-year old Palestine Securities Exchange, where 37 companies from the West Bank and Gaza Strip trade, plans to sell shares to the public by the end of the year.
• The Government of Dubai will take strict and prompt action against all acts of corruption and bribery wherever they occur in the emirate, Dubai's Public Prosecutor said.

Banks and Banking | Market Miscellany | International Markets | UK News | Credit Markets

• The UK's Financial Services Authority has granted a permanent injunction preventing Treadstone Corporation from illegally promoting and selling shares to UK investors.
• A member of the Bank of England's rate setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has warned that vigilance is needed to stop inflation touching 1970s levels.
• Residents of Aberdeen, located near North Sea oil reserves, are enjoying a prosperity not seen since the 1970s.
• Difficult economic market conditions could continue into 2011, Terry Smith warned last week as Collins Stewart, the stockbroking firm he chairs, reported an 80% drop in first half profits.
• A 235 metre-high skyscraper dubbed "the Cheesegrater" became the latest victim of the economic downturn - architecture as a cash crop.
• Tim Power, a former director of Strada, Belgo and the restaurant group behind The Ivy and Le Caprice, was remanded in custody after a hearing at Southwark crown court in London on multiple charges of insider dealing.
• Students who started university in the UK last year can expect to owe more than £17,500 by the time they leave, according to an annual poll on debt.
• A campaign has been launched to stress to cohabiting partners that they do not have the same rights as married couples if they separate or one of them dies.
• British entrepreneurs are working 50-hour weeks and several are taking less than the UK statutory holiday minimum, according to a survey.
• Investors have been warned to beware of fraudsters targeting former customers of a stockbroking firm that was shut by the Financial Services Authority.

Property

• UK House Price Calculator by Region.
• The chief City regulator has banned its 18th mortgage broker and issued its second big fine as part of a crackdown on home loans fraud.
• Asking prices in London fell 5.3% in August, according to the Rightmove house price survey.
• Will building societies stop lending?
• Repossession orders climb by 24%
• The number of properties up for rent has jumped as people who cannot sell their homes decide to let them instead.