BUSINESS BRIEFS
N.Y.'s Cuomo shifts focus to 3 major banks
Associated Press
NEW YORK — New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will intensify his probe into auction-rate securities by focusing on Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG, a person close to the investigation said yesterday.
The banks are the three biggest players in the auction-rate securities market that have not already reached a settlement with Cuomo, who is seeking deals on behalf of regulators and state authorities. Five major Wall Street firms including Citigroup Inc. and Switzerland's UBS AG have agreed to $42 billion in settlements.
For the next phase, Cuomo has directed staff to spend more time gathering facts and talking to the three banks about the sale of the risky securities, said a person inside the attorney general's office who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly about it.
HOUSING MARKET STRUGGLES PERSIST
NEW YORK — Mortgage application volume fell last week to its lowest levels in nearly eight years, the Mortgage Bankers Association said yesterday.
The fall in application volume is the latest sign of a struggling housing market. On Tuesday, a government report showed construction of homes and apartments fell in July to the lowest level in more than 17 years.
And while fewer new homes are being built, fewer customers are also refinancing existing mortgages. A sharp drop in refinance volume in recent weeks has been the leading driver of declining application volume.
GULF EXPLORATION BIDS TOP $487M
WASHINGTON — Energy companies bid hundreds of millions of dollars yesterday to explore for oil and natural gas beneath 1.8 million acres in the western Gulf of Mexico, while looking forward to the possibility of future drilling in federal waters now off-limits.
The results of the first lease sale since offshore drilling emerged as a key campaign issue after gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon only muddied the waters as to how much politics can really influence oil production, and by extension, energy prices.
While firms bid $487.3 million to win the rights to drill 319 tracts of the Gulf, most in deep water, 90 percent of the area put up for sale yesterday did not receive a single bite. Most of the leases purchased came with 10-year terms, unlikely to influence prices now.
GOOD NEWS FOR INDYMAC CLIENTS
WASHINGTON — Thousands of troubled home borrowers with loans from IndyMac Federal Bank will be able to switch to fixed-rate mortgages under a new plan from federal regulators, who seized the bank last month after it became the largest regulated thrift to fail.
Most IndyMac borrowers who are seriously delinquent or in default on their mortgages and can document their situation will be able to switch into loans capped at an interest rate around 6.5 percent, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said yesterday. The average U.S. rate on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages was at 6.52 percent last week, unchanged from the previous two weeks.
VIOXX PAYMENTS BEGIN AUG. 28
TRENTON, N.J. — Partial payments for people claiming the withdrawn painkiller Vioxx caused heart attacks will go out beginning Aug. 28 under the $4.85 billion settlement between drugmaker Merck & Co. and plaintiffs' lawyers, the claims administrator said yesterday.
Those payments will amount to about 40 percent of each plaintiff's estimated total payout, but it's unclear how many people will be getting checks in the first batch going out.
The settlement, meant to end the bulk of personal injury lawsuits against Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck, was reached last November. Merck pulled Vioxx from the market on Sept. 30, 2004, after its own research showed the arthritis pill doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke.
