Ford: With General Motors&rsquo; Chapter 11 filing, Ford Motor stands alone among Detroit&rsquo;s Big Three in dodging a shareholder-crushing government bailout. If the car market continues to slide, that may be a short-lived accolade. If not, it&rsquo;s a testament to the carmaker&rsquo;s hard work, smart financial planning and competent management.

Unrewarded virtue

Business Standard

JPMorgan deserves a little more love from its shareholders. Granted, its fourth-quarter earnings weren&rsquo;t great. But overall, JPMorgan is in a solid position. And yet its stock languishes at around three-quarters of book value. It&rsquo;s time for investors to overcome their fear.

Unrequited

Ford&rsquo;s profit fender-bender isn&rsquo;t as bad as it looks. Coming up short of Wall Street&rsquo;s fourth-quarter estimates dinged the auto maker&rsquo;s shares, which fell as much as six per cent on Friday morning before recovering a bit. It&rsquo;s another reminder the Detroit auto maker is not as pristine as shareholders at times blindly assumed it was just a year or so ago. But Ford&rsquo;s also in better shape than recent scrapes suggest.

Hold your horsepower

Citigroup is stealing at least one march on its rivals &ndash; in governance. Back in December 2007, the megabank was one of the first US financial firms to split the role of chairman and chief executive. At the time, the decision was more expedient than exemplary: The bank had no suitable successor and was discovering billions of dollars of losses on mortgage-related investments on its books. Now that Citi is getting back on its feet, the board rightly resisted peer pressure to reunite the titles.

Two heads wins

If only 42 was really the answer to life, the universe and everything. That&rsquo;s how many months Lehman Brothers languished in Chapter 11 protection. The Wall Street firm&rsquo;s failure in September 2008 triggered a global financial meltdown. Sadly, the emergence of its ghost from bankruptcy three-and-a-half years later scarcely offers even symbolic hope that the crisis is truly over.

Hitchhiker's guide to Lehman

The Federal Reserve has found the right balance with its latest round of stress tests of the 19 largest US banks. Unlike its last look under the hood of American finance a year ago, the central bank&rsquo;s regulators this time are giving investors reams of more useful data to help separate the industry&rsquo;s sheep from its goats. And they&rsquo;re acting prudently to ensure capital adequacy in the system.

Stress relief 3.0

Goldman Sachs seems determined to ride roughshod over its shareholders. It&rsquo;s true the bank&rsquo;s stock is close to nudging back above the book value &mdash; a sign that owners are getting more comfortable with the balance sheet and earnings power. But, with its new appointment to lead director, Goldman&rsquo;s management and board are showing a startling disregard for decent corporate governance.

Tin ear, again

Step aside, Jamie Dimon. The JPMorgan chief can usually be relied on for a feisty and fresh letter to his bank&rsquo;s shareholders &mdash; one that has come to be more closely watched than others written by his peers. Even Warren Buffett has showered praise on Dimon&rsquo;s epistles. This year, though, his efforts fall a bit flat. That clears the way for the pen of Robert Wilmers. The boss of regional bank M&amp;T has a take on the state of financial markets that makes it the must-read missive of the season.

New kid on the block

Citi&rsquo;s say-on-pay defeat puts bank bosses and their boards on notice. Some 55 per cent of the mega-bank&rsquo;s shareholders voted against its executive compensation plan on Tuesday. That&rsquo;s a stark change from last year, when virtually all of them approved the bank&rsquo;s payouts. It&rsquo;s a good sign that ballots are starting to be used to send a strong message.

Payback time

All is not lost for Vikram Pandit. While a majority of Citigroup shareholders voted against the chief executive&rsquo;s pay package at this week&rsquo;s annual meeting, there&rsquo;s still a way to incentivise him while also benefiting investors. General Electric, which faced similar unrest over pay last year, offers a good starting point.

Pay it forward

Spare a thought for Daniel Akerson. The chief executive of General Motors just delivered another decent quarter on Thursday. On the same day, however, his former employer, Carlyle Group, went public. The private equity firm&rsquo;s initial public offering wasn&rsquo;t great, pricing below its original range.

Spare a thought for GM boss Dan Akerson

Ford is finally shaken off the last vestiges of its status as a deadbeat company. It has been five-and-a-half years since chairman Bill Ford and his relatives, who between them control 40 per cent of the eponymous automaker&rsquo;s voting stock, agreed to hock virtually all the firm&rsquo;s assets to raise enough cash to fund the firm&rsquo;s turnaround. Now Moody&rsquo;s has helped bring that painful era to an end. The rating firm decided on Tuesday to bump Ford&rsquo;s credit rating back up to investment grade, a month after rival Fitch Ratings did so. That makes two out of three big raters, so that&rsquo;s enough to allow the Motown manufacturer finally to reclaim its most prized possession from the fallen angel pawnshop: the blue oval trademark.

Antony Currie