The big help has come from selling asset-backed securities, bunches of loans backed by assets like car loans.
Their real problem is that they have mountains of assets (loans) that deliver paltry returns.
Tokyo Star Bank has tried to execute a niche strategy, aiming at consumers both for liabilities (deposits) and assets (loans).
Its ratio of assets (loans and investments) to loss-absorbing equity capital is a fraction over 20 times, down from 50 times in the autumn of 2008, when it was rescued from the brink by taxpayers.
Banks have become increasingly dependent on various forms of secured borrowing, especially in what's known as the repo market, which is where banks swap bonds and other assets for loans from hedge funds and specialist parts of banks (yes there are banks at both ends of this market).
Therefore, when the Fed offsets an increase in one of its assets--loans--with a decrease in another of its assets--Treasury securities--there is no net effect on bank reserves.
The bank is trying to shed "noncore" assets such as loans to people with whom the bank doesn't have an extensive relationship.
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Asset encumbrance is when a bank has to pledge its assets - the loans and investments it has made - to a creditor when borrowing from that creditor.
Peter Morici, professor at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, says we still need a bad bank to sweep away the toxic assets and bad loans.
Add to this picture the drag of continuing losses from toxic assets and souring loans, and it is clear that as an industry, banks are going to find it much tougher to make money than before.
Commercial and real estate loans and assets in Spain have recently been sold on to Perella.
They made loans against assets that were worth less than had been claimed, or that did not even exist.
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Many are still holding assets, particularly whole loans, at unrealistically high values.
It is now plain that most of the money cannot be recovered by selling assets, because the loans were badly set up, and Mexico's bankruptcy law and judicial system are inadequate.
"Until we have an idea what these assets are worth, loans will remain hard to come by, whether they are between businesses or for average Americans, " it said in a statement Tuesday.
Another way in which regulators have tried to keep banks' heads above water is to force them to match a proportion of their risky assets (ie, loans) with capital, in the form of equity or retained earnings.
The loans and assets up for grabs in the large-portfolio deals are admittedly risky, private-equity leaders say, and some deals have been too hairy for investors' taste leading some of the most seasoned firms to walk away after starting due diligence.
If applied by the UK Government - and it may have to apply them quickly, as the Project Verde sale is well under way - that would require Lloyds to make its Project Verde assets much less onerous in capital assets required to back loans.
CDOs are pools of loans and other assets, cut into slices with different risks.
Banking, which figures mightily in this list because loans count as assets, is shifting.
So banks have an incentive to keep to a minimum their ratios of capital to loans (or assets).
Launched in 2007 as a "blank check" operation to make acquisitions, Gerova has gobbled up loans and insurance assets.
That can be a nice business, but the real margin is in making loans, investing assets, insuring assets, or settling transactions.
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"CDO" is a common term for collateralized debt obligation, an investment-grade security backed by a pool of bonds, loans and other assets.
Kingfisher owner Vijay Mallya is struggling to keep the airline afloat and has pledged personal and UB Group assets as collateral against the loans.
Additionally, Wells continues to slough nonperforming loans from its assets.
When the FDIC and regulators went in audited these financial institutions, they found the net worth had been generated by inflared valuations of assets held as collateral for loans.
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Private banks, via the issuance of uncovered money substitutes, which springs from the ability of those banks to pyramid deposits on top of base money when making loans or purchasing assets.
In the simplest terms, a typical bank will have 1, 000 euros of assets in the form of loans, 900 euros of liabilities in the form of borrowed money and 100 euros of equity.
One of the problems is the still-opaque process the banks use to evaluate and mark securities holdings, loans and other assets to market, a process they have to repeat daily because of new accounting rules.
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