Wachovia Corp. has posted a second-quarter loss of $8.9 billion, slashed its dividend and will cut 10,750 jobs as part of a turnaround plan.
The job cuts are part of an expense-initiative launched in June. The bank will eliminate 6,350 active jobs and 4,400 open positions and contractors as it works to find $1.5 billion [...]

Wachovia (NYSE: WB) shares are trading higher with most other banks after rival Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) posted a second-quarter profit that beat analysts’ expectations. WB reports earnings tomorrow morning before the open and is pretty much in the same boat as BAC, so this, along with other positive earnings from financial stocks last [...]

Financial stocks finished lower Tuesday in a volatile session in which Washington Mutual(WM) skyrocketed and battered mortgage giants Fannie Mae(FNM) and Freddie Mac(FRE) continued to take their lumps.
The government-sponsored mortgage giants were once again a focal point of the market, as Fannie Mae collapsed nearly 30% at one point in trading and Freddie Mac [...]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Merrill Lynch booked its fourth-straight quarterly loss Thursday, this time losing nearly $5 billion, as the nation’s largest brokerage was forced to once again take massive writedowns.
Merrill said it lost $4.9 billion overall. On a continuing operations basis, it lost $4.6 billion, or $4.95 a share, down from a profit of [...]

July 15 (Bloomberg) — Wachovia Corp. fell 7.7 percent after saying it’s “a fundamentally strong and stable company on solid footing.”
Wachovia has $150 billion in liquidity, spokeswoman Christy Phillips Brown said today in an e-mailed statement. The bank attracted $800 million in deposits yesterday and remains well capitalized with more than $50 billion in [...]

NEW YORK (Fortune) — They own or guarantee $5 trillion worth of mortgages­ - nearly half of all the country’s outstanding home loan debt - and they’re crashing. But not everybody is convinced they should be.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are struggling with an investor loss of confidence so great that, while they’re unlikely [...]

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) needs to go to rehab.
Shares are trading near where they were in 1996. Where’d the 12 years of prosperity, acquisitions, and globalization success go? Credit market mayhem and real estate pandemonium make up the bulk of the losses, but there’s more. You don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to realize [...]

One of America’s largest mortgage lenders has collapsed, as the credit crisis grows.
IndyMac Bank is the second largest financial institution to fail in US history.
Regulators feared the California-based bank did not have enough cash to cope after panicked investors withdrew more than $1.3bn in 11 days and seized its assets.
The business will reopen on Monday [...]

Morgan Stanley cut its rating on Bank of America Corp (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research), and lowered its 2008 earnings view for large-cap U.S. banks saying the banks may have to raise additional $51 billion in capital and record further loan losses.
Analyst Betsy Graseck downgraded Bank of America to “underweight” from “equal weight” and said the [...]