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Just who is Donald J. Trump's Prince, and why has he come now to buy into the Plaza Hotel? Prince Walid bin Talal is the Saudi ruling family's most prominent -- and most adventurous -- international investor, with large stakes in Citicorp, Four Seasons Hotels, Fairmont Hotels, Euro Disney and Saks Fifth Avenue, which is controlled by Investcorp of Bahrain.

U.S. banking giant Citigroup Inc. said this week it would charge $15 per month for checking account holders who kept a balance below $6,000. The firm's move comes on the heels of Bank of America's announcement this week that it would charge $5 for most debit card holders and sparked at least one desertion, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. Cheryl Holt of Burbank, Calif., said she was "on my way out the door right now … off to start a new account at my nearest credit union." "Should have done it years before," she added. Holt said she received...

Standard & Poor's President Deven Sharma is leaving the credit-rating firm at the end of the year, according to a person familiar with the matter. The credit-rating firm plans to announce Mr. Sharma's exit on Tuesday before the markets open, the person said. Douglas Peterson, chief operating officer of Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank unit, will succeed Mr. Sharma on Sept. 12, that person said.

HOUSTON -(Dow Jones)- Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said Thursday that Israel should follow U.S. President Barack Obama's recommendation of an independent Palestinian state based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. In an interview with the Fox Business Network, Prince Alwaleed said Obama's plan, which was set out Thursday, was "straight to the point," and that for Israel "to be in peace with the Arab world, it has to abide by the roadmap Obama has established today." The Saudi royal also said that Obama's "wait-and-see" approach towards the revolts that have shaken Egypt, Libya, Syria and...

Due to the growing list of brands disclosing that they have been compromised as a result of this breach, I’m going to go ahead and tag this as a massive breach. And I only expect it to get bigger as more announcements come out from Epsilon customers. Last night we reported on a breach at marketing services provider, Epsilon, the world’s largest permission-based email marketing provider. Initially we wrote that the breach had affected Kroger, the nation's largest traditional grocery retailer. There is a list of companies at the link (but I don't know if that is going to be...

US Politicians Duped By The Brotherhood In the United States, one individual maintained a pretense of "moderation" which would later embarrass the left and the right. According to the testimony of Dr. Michael Waller to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Abdurahman Alamoudi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. A man born in Eritrea in 1951, he arrived in the US in 1979 and became a naturalized US citizen on May 23, 1996. From 1985 onwards he became involved in many Muslim groups. In 1990 he founded the Washington DC-based American Muslim Council (AMC), which Waller states "has...

“I like to call it JIHAD with money because God has ordered us to fight our enemies with our lives and our money,” Sheik Yousuf al-Qaradawi is quoted as saying in the video produced by www.actforamerica.org Shocking evidence is surfacing which points to an ever deepening involvement of U.S. financial institutions in the Shariah Islamic Financial Initiative warns Shariah financial expert Joy Brighton in an important youtube.video every America should view. “Islam, as we know, is part of America” President Barack Obama told his approving audience at the recent White House Ramadan dinner. Brighton tells audiences, “We are selling our...

Drudge Developing: FLASH: CITIGROUP intends to raise salaries by up to 50%; Effort to halt exodus of top traders, bankers... Developing...

Another Sunday night, another ad hoc bank rescue rooted in no discernible principle. U.S. taxpayers, who invested $25 billion in Citigroup last month, will now pour in another $20 billion in exchange for preferred shares paying an 8% dividend. Taxpayers will also help insure $306 billion of Citi's mortgage-backed securities. Citi will cover the first $29 billion in losses on these toxic assets, and then taxpayers will cover 90% of the rest, in exchange for another $7 billion in preferred. Dilution for Citigroup investors? Yesterday's 58% pop in the bank's share price suggests the bailout is a good deal for...

Wachovia, one of America's major banks, has seen its stock price plummet over the last few months and will be purchased either by Citibank for the proverbial song -- a few dollars a share for a stock that sold at more than $50 a share late last year -- or by Wells Fargo at a premium. What brought about the wreckage of Wachovia?

A big bank acquisition and hopes that a Wall Street bailout will pass Congress Friday afternoon pushed stocks higher, outweighing a weak jobs report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which slid almost 350 points in the previous session, recently posted a 206-point gain, trading up 2%, at 10688.66. Investors' mood was boosted by news that Wachovia has agreed to sell itself to Wells Fargo in a $15.4 billion takeover that will require no government assistance, scrapping a federally backed deal with Citigroup. Wachovia shares surged more than 71% in recent action and Wells Fargo rose about 8% while Citi was...

Since it began to give credit ratings to nations in 1917, Moody's has rated the United States triple-A. U.S. Treasury bonds have been seen as the most secure investment on earth. When crises erupt, nervous money seeks out the world's great safe harbor, the United States. That reputation is now in peril.

REFUSES TO PROCESS TRANSACTIONS . . . Citi Merchant Services and First Data Corp. are refusing to process any credit card transactions between federally licensed firearms retailers, distributors and manufacturers -- a move which will severely limit available inventory of firearms and ammunition to military, law enforcement and law-abiding Americans. The first company to be affected by this decision appears to be firearms distributor CDNN Sports Inc."We were contacted recently by First Data/Citi Merchant Services by a June Rivera-Mantilla stating that we were terminated and funds were being seized for selling firearms in a non-face-to-face transaction," said Charlie Crawford, president...

Leading U.S. banks have reportedly been meeting with U.S. Treasury officials about creating an up-to-$100-billion fund to stave off the danger that there could be a fire sale of shaky mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations and other distressed assets following the recent global credit crunch. Such a fire sale could force big banks and hedge funds to write off or write down similar assets, setting off a second wave of the credit crunch that could flood into the broader economy. The talks represent the latest official effort to restore liquidity to credit markets. In August, the Federal Reserve cut interest...

WASHINGTON - Three suspected terrorists on Tuesday were indicted on charges that they targeted financial buildings in New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., in a plot that prompted federal authorities to raise the terrorism threat assessment level in the area last summer. A four-count indictment unsealed Tuesday accuses Dhiran Barot, Nadeem Tarmohammed and Qaisar Shaffi of scouting the New York Stock Exchange and Citicorp Building in New York, the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J., and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in the District of Columbia. The three men, already in custody in England, were charged with three...

Andrew Sullivan Wonders Why Questions Aren’t Being Asked of Clinton’s Treasury Guru Where’s Rubin? You might think that the Treasury secretary who presided over the now-bursting bubble might be a logical subject for some of the discussion out there right now. But: Nuh-huh. Like Waldo in a cartoon, Robert Rubin is somewhat invisible these days, lost in the lazy media impulse to blame whoever’s in power now. But think about it for a minute. Here’s a guy who poured cold water on Alan Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” comments. Along with Phil Gramm, he helped kill legislation to make derivatives more transparent...

NEW YORK - New York's biggest banks defended their dealing with Enron Tuesday at a Congressional hearing, but their own statements indicate what a tangled web they weaved. Their defense--essentially ignorance--seems almost worse than the wrong alleged. At the hearing, Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people ) and J.P. Morgan Chase (nyse: JPM - news - people ) tried to spin themselves as victims of Enron's (otc: ENRNQ - news - people ) duplicity, but Congressional investigators said they were willing victims--who also helped Enron hide their debt from everybody else     More on Enron       ...