%1

Global regulators will publish a list of 28 too-big-to-fail banks that must hold additional capital, one less than the 29 identified last year, Bloomberg News reported today. The list will be published today in advance of a Nov. 4 meeting in Mexico of finance officials from the world’s biggest economies. The Financial Stability Board last year published a list of 29 banks that should hold more capital than required by other international agreements because of their importance to the global financial system. Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., BNP Paribas SA, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, and HSBC Holdings Plc were provisionally earmarked to face the top level of surcharges, set at 2.5 percent of risk-weighted assets. The most likely bank to drop off the updated list is Dexia SA, the Franco-Belgian lender that is being broken up after losing access to unsecured funding, Karel Lannoo, chief executive officer of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, said last month.

Defunct Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and its affiliates had $14.3 billion in restricted cash on Sept. 30, including $10.9 billion of reserves for claims, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Free cash and investments totaled almost $11 billion, according to a court filing. The claim reserves include $5.8 billion held for disputed amounts, Lehman said. The former investment bank plans two payments to creditors every year. The last payment was Oct. 1. Lehman, which four years after filing the biggest U.S. bankruptcy continues to sell assets to pay creditors, made a first payment of $22.5 billion in April and a second installment of $10.2 billion this month.

JPMorgan is suing Javier Martin-Artajo, the manager who directly supervised Bruno Iksil, the so-called London Whale, according to a lawsuit made public yesterday, the New York Times DealBook blog reported. Iksil gained that now infamous moniker after reports emerged in April that he had built up an outsize position in an obscure corner of the credit markets. That position ultimately proved devastating for the bank, resulting in a $6.2 billion loss. The lawsuit, which was filed in a London court, did not disclose the details of JPMorgan's claims against Martin-Artajo.

Barclays PLC faced a double-barreled assault from U.S. authorities, as the federal energy-market regulator sought a record $435 million in penalties for the bank's alleged manipulation of U.S. electricity markets, and the lender also disclosed that it was facing a U.S. anti-corruption investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The corruption investigation, being conducted by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, focuses on potential violations during the bank's efforts to raise money from Middle Eastern investors in the early days of the financial crisis. Barclays said yesterday that it is investigating the matter itself and cooperating with authorities.

Ally Financial Inc., which is 74 percent owned by the U.S. government, said yesterday that it repaid $2.9 billion of debt it issued under a financial crisis-era guarantee program by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Detroit-based auto lender's move leaves $4.5 billion of debt outstanding that it issued under the FDIC's Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, which was intended to spur bank lending during the crisis. It plans to repay that amount in December.

First Place Financial Corp., the holding company for First Place Bank, filed for chapter 11 protection on Monday, Bloomberg News reported. The company, which listed debts of $64.5 million and assets of $175.3 million in court documents, indicated that it has an agreement to sell assets to Talmer Bancorp Inc. Dimensional Fund Advisers LP was listed in court papers as the only entity holding more than 5 percent of the Warren, Ohio-based company's voting shares and the largest unsecured creditors were company trusts holding subordinated debt.

Nova Financial Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy after its banking unit was closed by regulators, making it the 47th bank to fail in the U.S. this year, Bloomberg news reported today. The chapter 7 petition for the bank holding company listed assets of as much as $100,000 and debt of as much as $50 million. Nova Bank had about $483 million in assets and $432 million in deposits as of June 30, according to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. statement. The Pennsylvania Department of Banking closed Nova Bank on Oct. 26, according to the FDIC, which became the receiver. The FDIC was unable to find another financial institution to take over the banking operations. Nova Bank’s failure will cost the Deposit Insurance Fund about $91.2 million, the FDIC estimated.

The financial professional who is chasing down money for energy investor Delta Petroleum Corp. has filed a lawsuit against investment banking firm Macquarie Capital USA Inc. to take back at least $1.1 million in payments for services that, according to the suit, the company did not need, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported today. According to the lawsuit filed on Thursday by John Young, Macquarie Capital should return the money and stop trying to draw another $8.7 million worth of "success fees" from transactions that the firm's advisers never helped with. Young was put in charge of recovering money for Delta Petroleum when it emerged from bankruptcy as a partner in a joint-venture group on Aug. 31.

CME Group Inc. plans next month to begin paying $2 million to former clients of Peregrine Financial Group, the failed futures brokerage looted for years by its now-jailed founder, Reuters reported yesterday. The payments will go to nearly 200 farmers, ranchers and cooperatives who traded on CME's exchanges. The payouts are CME's first from a fund it established in response to the collapse of MF Global last October, which left a $1.6 billion shortfall in customer funds and shook confidence in an industry where the safety of customer money had long been an article of faith.

Societe Generale SA, Royal Bank of Canada, and Bank of America Corp. are among nine additional banks that were subpoenaed in New York and Connecticut’s probe of alleged manipulation of the London interbank offered rate (Libor), Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The subpoenas, issued by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman starting in August, bring to 16 the total number of banks that have been subpoenaed in the states’ investigation. Schneiderman and Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen are jointly investigating claims that banks rigged the Libor, a worldwide benchmark for borrowing. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has also issued subpoenas to more than a dozen financial institutions, including UBS AG, Deutsche Bank AG and HSBC Holdings Plc.