WikiLeaks & Data Dumps: Weekly Financial Recap
NEW YORK (
) -- Financial stocks seesawed this week.
The big buzz of the week,
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
, saw it shares teeter after
reports came out that Julian Assange's WikiLeaks Web site
is releasing damaging information that in Assange's words could "take down a bank or two." Shares of Bank of America stumbled on Tuesday after the report came out.
Watch
TheStreet
reporters Maria Woehr and Laurie Kulikowski discuss in this week's
Bank Stock Buzz whether WikiLeaks
has a case.
|
Foreign banks came under the spotlight this week as the
Federal Reserve
released documents showing which banks took bailout money
, as part of a court order related to a lawsuit by
Bloomberg
.
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Banks including
Royal Bank of Scotland
(RBS) - Get Report
,
Barclays
(BCS) - Get Report
, Dresdner and
Society Generale
borrowed heavily from the Fed's Term Auction Facility (TAF) during the initial days of the financial crisis, the report showed.
Both
State Street
(STT) - Get Report
and Barclays
, just in time for the holiday season.
State Street said that it plans to let go of 1,400 positions, or 5% of its workforce, over the next year as part of a company-wide restructuring plan.
Barclays confirmed this week that it plans to fire several hundred employees in the next three months after a decline in investment banking revenue.
Two online brokers saw shares surge early in the week after each announced plans to return capital to shareholders in the form of special dividends.
OptionsXpress
(OXPS)
said Monday that its board of directors authorized a dividend of $4.50 per share ($259 million in total) payable to shareholders later this month.
Interactive Brokers
(IBKR) - Get Report
also plans to return of $1 billion to shareholders in the form of a $1.79 per share dividend this month.
-- Written by Laurie Kulikowski in New York.
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