JPMorgan Chase has moved to ease the burden of struggling US homeowners and avoid taking over thousands of houses, revealing plans to renegotiate $70bn of mortgages and freeze foreclosures for up to three months

US bankruptcy laws award special treatment to holders of certain derivatives and other financial contracts that may have yielded unintended consequences during the financial crisis

Lehman’s fate might have been different had regulators predicted that its bankruptcy would cause a deep credit freeze and force them to pump billions of dollars into troubled markets

Wall Street unwittingly created one of the catalysts for the collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG by backing new bankruptcy rules that were aimed at insulating banks from the failure of a big client, lawyers and bankers say

The unfolding credit crisis has taken its toll on corporate America’s finance chiefs, whose confidence in both the economy and their own companies’ outlook plunged in the past quarter, according to a survey

Company’s ritual of announcing its new class continued despite economic downturn, however, the new partners will not benefit as they have in the past

Share prices in Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs climbed steeply, erasing sharp drops in morning trading and bringing a positive end to a day of wild volatility on Wall Street

The US bank’s move to buy securities comes after convulsions in credit markets, including the collapse of Lehman Brothers, prompted worried investors to withdraw a net $46bn from their accounts