biggest banks

More than two million Americans could benefit from mortgage relief from the nation’s biggest banks, as part of a broad government settlement to be announced as early as Thursday.

Today is the supposed deadline for a group of attorneys general to sign onto a settlement with the nation’s biggest banks, stemming from the foreclosure fraud scandal that broke back in 2010.

The settlement has been in limbo for several months, as a group of AGs believed it gave too much up to the banks in terms of immunity for mortgage misdeeds.

Federal regulators have accused BankAtlantic Bancorp Inc., the parent of one of Florida's biggest banks, and its chief executive of misleading investors about the bank's financial health as its holdings of commercial real estate loans soured in 2007.

The nation’s biggest banks are getting back to the business of writing loans to businesses and consumers after another year of dismal returns from in-house investment trading.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services has lowered its credit ratings for many of the world's largest financial institutions, including the biggest banks in the U.S.

The world's biggest banks - four of them British - have been told to undertake sweeping reforms, or risk failing critical stress tests.

Gainers

• iShares FTSE China 25 Index Fund (NYSE: FXI) up 2.60 percent to $33.54. China stocks making a run today following reports that a state-run investment arm -- Central Huijin Investment Ltd.-- began buying stock of the nation's four biggest banks after a drop in valuations.
  
  The Shanghai Composite Index moved as much as 2.9 percent better on the session.
• Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF (NYSE: MOO) up 0.72 percent to $46.48.

The nation’s biggest banks and mortgage lenders have amassed a glut of foreclosed homes that threatens to deepen the housing slump.

The Federal Reserve is relaxing its hold on some of the nation's biggest banks - permitting them to raise dividends or buy back shares for the first time since the financial crisis in the fall of 2008.

Probes by state attorneys general and other government agencies into banks' foreclosure practices carry the risk of fines and other major costs, according to regulatory filings from three of the country's biggest banks.