Oppenheimer Banking seeress Meredith Whitney has more lumps of holiday coal for the banking industry. She's projecting that the U.S. banks, including Citigroup, could see another $44 billion in writedowns and charges in the fourth quarter.
Tags: Banks, Citigroup, Credit Crunch, Meredith Whitney
This is a MUST WATCH!: If you missed Saturday Night Live this weekend, you missed an hilarious spot on skit on the Senate hearings where the auto CEOs, fresh off of their corporate jets, begged hat in hand for a bailout. It's about 8 minutes long.
Tags: Chrysler, Credit Crunch, Ford, GM, Politics
NY Post Page Six sightings: "TREASURY Secretary Hank Paulson – unlike automotive moguls who fly on corporate jets – in first class on an LA-DC American Airlines red-eye"
Tags: Autos, Chrysler, Ford, GM, Henry Paulson, Private jets
We apparently weren't alone in our amazement that Bob Rubin still had a job at Citigroup. This morning the NY Post wonders the same and also takes aim at the board of directors in a pointed cover and editorial entitled: "Negligent Bank board must quit". There's a nice graphic of how the directors have been richly compensated:
Tags: Citigroup, Credit Crunch, Robert Rubin
In addition to our WSJ anatomy lesson on the Morgan Stanley panic shortly after the Lehman Brothers implosion, we're treated to another one: The New Yorker gives us "The Anatomy of a Meltdown". It's a loooooooooong article. We learn a lot more about Ben Bernanke in the piece in which he also admits mistakes during the crisis:
Tags: Ben Bernanke, Credit Crunch, Fed
Just asking: We're watching Maria Bartiromo interview Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, Citigroup's largest investor. The first thing we were struck by was that the Prince was that he was fidgeting with worry beads. Does the Prince normally do that or is he a bit more nervous about his Citigroup investment that he's letting on (despite reaffirming that it's a core investment and his strong support for current management)? He blames the ills on the company squarely on former CEO Chuck Prince. What a swipe he took at him.
Here are charts for the stocks in the recently released 13F for Art Samberg's
Pequot Capital
Tags: 13F Charts, Charts, Hedge funds, Pequot Capital
Here are charts for the stocks in the recently released 13F for Dan Och's OZ Management.
Tags: 13F Charts, Charts, Hedge funds, Och Ziff
It's getting tough all over the city for pretty young gold diggers, used to enjoying the finer things of life thanks to wealthy Wall Streeters who lavished them with all sorts of luxuries. Now many of the men have found themselves unemployed, and forced to radically tighten their belts given their new situations in life. So how are they taking the suddenly shrinking supply of wealthy men? This weekend's Page Six Magazine explores the subject:
Tags: Banking Culture, Culture, Dating, Models
Here are charts for the top 200 stocks (of around 568) in the recently released 13F for
Steve Cohen's SAC Capital. Note that SAC has been said to have closed out
many of its positions and moved largely to cash since the filing was made.
So take it for what it's worth.
Tags: 13F Charts, Charts, Hedge funds, SAC Capital
No one has ever been able to explain to us exactly what former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin does at Citigroup in exchange for that $10-15 million a year compensation he's said to have been receiving. This weekend's NY Times paints a picture suggesting that Rubin was very involved in upping Citi's risk profile which led it to its current sorry state. If that's true, and he was an architect of the money sucking mess known as Citigroup, why isn't he history? Why does he still have a job?
Tags: Citigroup, Credit Crunch, Fed, Robert Rubin
Even though her disgraced, cheating-with-a-hooker husband — Eliot "Client 9" Spitzer — is toxic on Wall Street, Silda Wall Spitzer is not. She's landed a job working with Metropolitan Capital's (and "Fast Money" panelist) Karen Finerman at her hedge fund. She'll be recruiting new investors. Finerman's husband, Lawrence Golub, is reportedly a long time Spitzer buddy and contributor.
Silda can work it out herself – NY Post
You should read the fascinating WSJ article on Morgan Stanley that details what what happened days after Lehman Brothers collapsed. It explores the massive piling on on all fronts that caused the almost fatal death spiral in its stock.
It details who was trading the firm's CDS - including JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Deutsche Bank on the banking side, and King Street Capital, Owl Street Capital on the hedge fund side. There were those who were shorting the stock — including Dan Loeb's Third Point LLC and Millennium Partners. There were those making pitches to hedge funds, to steal prime broker business
away, including JP Morgan (which drew a rebuke from John Mack to Jamie
Dimon), Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and UBS. There were those who were bailing on Morgan's prime brokerage business – including Millenium Partners, Third Point, Owl Creek. And there was the breakdown in the 20 year relationship between famed short seller Jim Chanos after John Mack groused to the SEC and employees, blaming the shorts (many of them MS clients) for attacking his stock. Chanos pulled over $1 billion out of Morgan….
Tags: Credit Crunch, Credit Suisse, Dan Loeb, Izzy Englander, Jamie Dimon, Jim Chanos, John Mack, JPM Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley
The U.S. government will be backstopping around $306 billion of loans & securities, and it'll invest $20 billion from the TARP in exchange for an 8% preferred:
The market has finally gotten the news that it was waiting for, which some consider overdue given the precarious financial landscape. According to CNBC, President Elect Barack Obama has chosen NY Fed President Tim Geithner as his new Treasury Secretary. The official announcement is said to be coming on Monday.
Tags: Credit Crunch, Politics
Here are charts for the stocks in the recently released 13F for GLG Partners:
Tags: 13F Charts, Charts, GLG Partners
Someone, please take away their keys to the liquor cabinet: Citigroup's prospects continue to spiral into the abyss with its stock price in hat
size land and management blaming everyone else, like those evil short
sellers, and rumor mongerors for their ills. Some of their ugliest self inflicted wounds have come from failed forays into buying up hedge funds that have ended in disaster with the firm having to either bail them out or shutter them (including the disastrous buy of now CEO Vikram Pandit's Old Lane). Apparently Citi hasn't learned that it's not so good at these buys, since it's still buying:
Tags: Citigroup, Hedge funds, Toe Tags
Lumps of coal: Bloomberg reports that after BNP Paribas' Q3 profit stumble, investment banking bonuses could drop 70% or more — and in more cases, to the dreaded bagel:
Tags: Bonuses, investment banking
Sandra Manzke, a hedge fund pioneer who founded Tremont Capital Management
and who now runs Maxam Capital Management, is fed up with the state of the hedge
fund business, its apparent decline in ethics and its out of whack fee
structure. "I am appalled and disgusted by the activities of a number of hedge-fund
managers" she said in a letter sent to hundreds of hedge fund
managers. She'd like to see the hedge funds come together as a group as
the " Hedge Fund Investors United Forum", where they set industry
standards. According to the NY Post:
Tags: Fees, Hedge funds
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