Before we get to my rant, let’s give a quick update on Lehman. The bank had a better day than yesterday, with the stock up a tad more in large part due to supportive words by highly respected investment bank analyst Guy Moszkowski who said that the notion that Lehman would come to the same […]
Read more...This is one of the most irresponsible financial actions I have seen in quite a while. You can argue about the merits of paying dividends when a company is losing money. It’s usually a bad idea, although a defense can be made that if you are going to have to go sell equity, your stock […]
Read more...Lehman managed to escape the same fate as Bear Stearns around the Ides of March partly due to the heroic intervention of the Fed, in part to reporting first quarter profits. A member of the skeptically-minded short cohort described the earnings as a sham, and noted that they depended entirely on counting the increase of […]
Read more...The theory that the recent calm in the financial sector was the eye of the storm, rather than a sign of turbulence clearing for good, seems to be getting support. The stock market reacted badly to the ouster of Wachovia CEO Kennedy Thompson, seeing it as a harbinger of a report of losses for the […]
Read more...Two UK columnists looked at the credit markets, and neither liked what he saw. And they wrote it up more colorfully than most of their American counterparts would have. The first, Nils Pratley of the Guardian, tells us that that the idea that the credit crisis is on the wane is more than a tad […]
Read more...It doesn’t take long to pick up on a news outlet’s quirks. For instance, Bloomberg tries to be out first with stories, yet also provide relevant market details for busy investors. They often compensate for their artlessness via juicy quotes. The New York Times, lacking the staff to report on business comprehensively, looks to leverage […]
Read more...When the consensus was that JP Morgan got a screaming deal in its acquisition of Bear Stearns, I thought it was way too early to make that call. Yes, it certainly looked like the New York bank pulled a master stroke in getting the Fed to eat $29 billion of exposures, guaranteed to be the […]
Read more...I am overdue on a write-up of a great panel discussion hosted by the folks at RGE Monitor (Nouriel Roubini’s blog/news service). It was all fundamentally oriented, so with the coming holiday weekend and lack of new news, you will not be any worse off for my delay (although I am annoyed that I haven’t […]
Read more...Reader Baruch sent us this tidbit from Reuters: Bank Hapoalim, the second largest bank in Israel, sold its entire portfolio of MBS to Pimco for 75 cents on an already-written-dollar (or in this case, shekel). Note that the previous writedowns were at least $90 million on an portfolio valued before the sale at $3.42 billion. […]
Read more...Boy, they must really feel guilty about the Bear deal over at JP Morgan. The Financial Times reports that efforts to find fired Bear employees jobs starts at the top. Jamie Dimon wrote personally to 30 clients so far. While this is obviously a great PR move, and stands in sharp contrast to Vikram Pandit’s […]
Read more...A year ago, I found Gillian Tett, then the Financial Times’ capital markets editor, to be the single most useful financial reporter by a considerable margin. She gave insights into areas that were important but badly neglected elsewhere, such as CDOs, credit default swaps, SIVs, all well before they entered the mainstream lexicon. She was […]
Read more...Reader AK sent me a bit of Christmas in May: three hot-off-the presses reports, one from Morgan Stanley on the credit standing of US and European broker dealers, a Moody’s report on RMBS, and a UBS report on the subprime crisis. The Morgan Stanley report, although the shortest, was in some ways the most informative, […]
Read more...The fulminating over what to do about our miscreant socialized unrepentant and as yet unreconstituted financial services sector continues. Since massive subsidies have been extended in the form of help to the mortgage business and an alphabet soup of Federal Reserve facilities, with nary a demand made of the beneficiaries of this largess, it seems […]
Read more...I get worried when the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf starts adopting Stephen Covey-esque sloganeering, particularly when he goes so far as to call his financial services reform proposal “the seven Cs.” Eeek. Earth to UK: one of the big hidden advantages you have is that the lingua franca is your language. That cloying business jargon […]
Read more...Although we have spoken from time to time about the managerial and cultural failings of the financial services industry, an article today in the Telegraph by Roger Bootle provides a nicely balanced, colorful, and deceptively insightful overview of the issue, while also giving a taste of how the British variant of the problem differs from […]
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