Bank Bailout | featured news

A report to be released Thursday questions the Bush administration’s decision to rescue “a company that apparently posed no systemic risk to the financial system.”

Sixteen months after they were seized to prevent collapse, companies remain wards of the state, running a tab that has now exceeded $125 billion.

Members of a government committee questioned whether the support that Citigroup received could pose future risks for the financial system.

British insurer Prudential PLC said Monday it will buy the Asian unit of bailed out American International Group Inc. in a deal worth $35.5 billion that will allow AIG to pay back some of the money it owes U.S. taxpayers....

The one man Berkshire Hathaway Risk Committee and Chief Risk Officer, 79 year old Warren Buffett, says that directors of major banks are "derelict" if they don't "insist that [their] CEO bear full responsibility for risk control. If he's incapable of handling that job, he should look for other employment. And if he fails at it -- with the government thereupon required to step in with funds or guarantees -- the financial consequences for him and the board should be severe."

American International Group and federal overseers have decided to scrap a plan to use cash flows from life-insurance policies to repay $8.5 billion in federal aid as the market recovery has opened up other options.

GMAC plans to return to the stock markets with an IPO in the next two years, in a move aimed at gradually exiting from government help and eventually repaying its rescue aid.

JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon pulled in a roughly $17 million bonus in restricted stock and options for 2009, making him one of the best-paid banking chiefs around.

Two Democratic senators on Thursday proposed legislation that would impose a one-time tax on bonuses paid to executives of companies bailed out with taxpayer money.

American International Group plans Wednesday to pay another round of employee bonuses worth about $100 million, said several people familiar with the matter.