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Business Capital has secured an $8.5 million DIP loan for Pacific Steel Casting, one of the largest independent steel casting companies in the U.S. that makes carbon, low-alloy and stainless steel castings for U.S. and international customers, largely for heavy-duty trucks and construction equipment, ABLAdvisor.com reported yesterday. PSC, a major employer based in Berkeley, Calif., since 1934, is in its fourth generation of ownership. The company recently filed for chapter 11 protection to enable it to restructure its liabilities and remain in operation.

Mortgage lenders are beginning to ease the restrictive lending standards enacted after the housing boom turned to bust, a sign of their rising confidence in the housing market, the Wall Street Journal reported today. While standards remain tight by historical measures, lenders have started to accept lower credit scores and to reduce down-payment requirements. One such lender is TD Bank, Toronto-Dominion Bank's U.S. unit, which on Friday began accepting down payments as low as 3 percent through an initiative called "Right Step," geared toward first-time buyers and low- and moderate-income buyers. TD initially launched the program last year with a 5 percent down payment. It keeps the product on its books and doesn't charge for insurance. Borrowers also don't need to put down any of their own cash if a family, state or nonprofit group provides a down-payment gift.

Bank of America Corp. and the New York Stock Exchange were among dozens of exchanges, brokerages and traders sued over high-frequency trading by the city of Providence, R.I., over claims they rigged securities markets to divert billions of dollars from buyers and sellers of shares, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. Scrutiny of high-frequency trading and whether it gives some investors unfair advantage intensified this year amid government probes and the March 31 publication of “Flash Boys” by Michael Lewis. The lawsuit filed yesterday is one of the first by an institutional investor since U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in March promised Congress a full investigation into whether high-frequency traders violated laws against trading on inside information. One defendant in Providence’s complaint, Virtu Financial Inc., a high-frequency trader that delayed its initial public offering, has received inquiries from the office of New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman. Schneiderman announced last month that he’s investigating high-frequency traders.

The trustee unwinding Peregrine Financial Group cut a deal to pay 30 cents on the dollar to a former foreign exchange customer, a settlement he hopes to apply to thousands of other customers, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Trustee Ira Bodenstein in a court filing on Wednesday said that forex customer ASM Capital agreed to drop litigation related to its claims and accept the settlement. Bodenstein said he's willing to strike similar settlements with other former forex and over-the-counter metals customers of the defunct brokerage.

The Federal Reserve's New York office indicated to Citigroup Inc. that the bank would have more time to fix certain "stress test" planning problems before Fed officials in Washington, D.C., last month gave it a failing grade, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The divergent messages from different parts of the Fed were a major reason why Citigroup executives were taken aback when the bank's capital plan, which included dividend increases and more stock buybacks, was rejected on March 26. The surprise move sent Citigroup stock reeling, and the bank will likely miss a key profitability goal for next year because of the rejection. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York had agreed to give Citigroup a 2015 deadline to address a series of shortcomings identified by the regulator in the wake of the 2013 test, according to sources. The third-largest U.S. bank by assets last year passed the Fed's annual stress tests of large banks' financial health.

Bank of America Corp. said today that it settled mortgage-backed securities claims with the monoline insurer Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. (FGIC), the Wall Street Journal reported today. The bank said that it had settled seven of the nine trust settlements and expected to pay a total of about $950 million. The bank also said that the expenses were covered by legal reserves. Legal expenses pushed Bank of America to a first-quarter loss. The bank said it had a $6 billion litigation expense for the quarter, up from $2.2 billion in the same period a year ago. Of that, about $3.6 billion was related to the bank's settlement last month with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where the bank agreed to pay some $9.5 billion to settle accusations that it had misled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about the quality of mortgage-backed securities it was selling. The bank had previously estimated that the FHFA settlement would cut earnings by about $3.7 billion before taxes. The bank has now settled with four of the five monoline insurers that had sued the bank over mortgage-backed securities.

The banks being sued by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in a long-simmering derivatives fight say that Lehman is seeking an "undue advantage" in the litigation by prohibiting the banks from seeking a dismissal without first receiving class-action status, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In bankruptcy court filing on Monday, lawyers for 77 banks and other entities said that Lehman's bid to put the brakes on their bid to dismiss the lawsuit was unfair, and that receiving approval for class-action status should be a "secondary" matter. Lehman affiliates Lehman Brothers Special Financing Inc. and Lehman Brothers Financial Products Inc. in September 2010 sued the banks to recover funds the investment bank says were wrongly transferred to credit-default swap counterparties after it filed for bankruptcy protection. The swaps contained “flip clauses” that give investors priority over a counterparty that defaults.

Canadian payday loan provider Cash Store Financial Services Inc. said yesterday that it will seek protection from creditors as it faces liquidity problems resulting from the suspension of its right to offer loans in the province of Ontario, Reuters reported yesterday. In February, the Edmonton, Alberta-based company said that it was voluntarily delisting its shares from the New York Stock Exchange as its share price had plummeted and it could not meet the exchange's listing requirements. Last month, Cash Store said that it was in talks with some of its creditors to address near-term liquidity issues that arose after its right to offer loans in Ontario, Canada's most populous province, was suspended. The company's share price has fallen nearly 98 percent over the last two years and its Toronto-listed shares closed on Friday at 14 Canadian cents.

The owners of 1,700 below-market apartments in New York City have struck a deal with their lenders and the state attorney general's office to rescue the portfolio from foreclosure and bring in new management, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The so-called Three Borough Pool was the largest portfolio to face financial problems since a number of owners of low-cost apartments ran into trouble around the time of the recession, and its difficulties drew the attention of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The unusual settlement with the owners will provide each tenant with a $600 a month rent rebate — to compensate them for illegal fees and overcharges — and require the owner to resolve all building code violations within a year.

A growing number of payday lenders say that they are being persecuted by banks at the behest of federal regulators, the Washington Post reported today. Already under siege by the Obama administration for flouting state laws, payday lenders now face a more subtle but potentially devastating assault from banks threatening to cut off their access to the financial system unless they stop offering the high-interest, small-dollar loans. Republicans in Congress say the administration is abusing its regulatory powers to shut down legitimate businesses. Last August, 31 GOP lawmakers accused the Department of Justice and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. of “intimidating” banks and payment processors to “terminate business relationships with lawful lenders.” Last month, in a hearing before a Senate Banking subcommittee on consumer protection, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) complained that several payday lenders in his home state had been dumped by their banks in recent months.