Approximately 1 year ago RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) paid $100 billion for ABN Amrobank.
For this amount it could now buy:
Citibank ($22.5 bn)
Morgan Stanley ($10.5 bn)
Goldman Sachs ($21 bn)
Merrill Lynch ($12.3 bn)
Deutsche Bank ($13 bn)
Barclays ($12.7 bn)

And still have $8 billion change......

with which you could pick up
GM
Ford
Chrysler
and the Honda Formula 1 Racing team !

Talk about bad timing !!!

Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley won't pay their CEOs their bonuses this year. Amazingly Merrills Chairman and CEO John Thain had recently suggested that he'd receive a $10million bonus this year ! That has been scrapped.John Mack, Morgan Stanley's CEO will also have to forego his bonus this year.
In other news Swiss Bank, UBS is reported to be cutting a further 4,500 jobs, although a spokesperson said that they do not comment on speculation.
Not surprisingly, there have been big changes in the values of funds across the globe recently. Vanguard has now overtaken Fidelity as the industry's biggest player, with $1.11 trillion in stock, bond and money funds. This is just fractionally ahead of Fidelity.
Thats all for now.......

Shareholders of both Merrill Lynch and Bank of America have voted to merge. It must come as a bitter pill for Merrill Lynch to end up like this. A changed banking landscape is just starting to emerge. Many changes yet to come is my guess.