| | | The smaller banks have not seen much litigation. Their business model is simpler - they do no investment bank, nor securitize mortgages and such, so there is really not much to litigate about. For the most part, their bad decision tend to backfire on themselves , by the way of loan losses. This is different with investment banking where knowingly bad paper was sold to other institution (although those should have known better too).
Also note that well managed banks like GS and JPM have seen disproportionally less litigation losses than BAC or C. I think this is because they settled early, were better at disclosure (if a risk is disclosed to an educated buyer, there is no point in litigation) and they have a better culture (less damaging internal emails, probably had better product ), so there is less damage from subpoenas.
I really thought that GS, which was pretty much in the middle of the action in terms of Investment Banking, mortgages, private equity etc, would get hit by big lawsuits, but it hasn't happened, and most likely won't because the statute of limitations has already run out of most things that occurred be 2008/2009. |
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