Selected reads from FT Alphaville this week,
- Weird waterfalls and the synthetic CDO stumper.
- A Minskian roadmap to the next gold mania.
- The Daily Mail discovers contango.
- The Daily Mail re-discovers contango.
Betting on life expectancy, as investors in so-called life settlements do, is fraught with risk - not least that people will live longer than models suggest they will.
Investors in two Deutsche Bank funds — db Kompass Life 1 and 2 – that invested in US life settlements have learnt this lesson to their cost.
Gavan Nolan of Markit wrote this CDS report
The difference between sovereign and corporate CDS spreads in Europe this week reached its smallest level since February as public finances came under increasing scrutiny.
The pixels are flying: Felix Salmon at Reuters on Thursday took a gratuitous swipe at The Business Insider’s Henry Blodget, over the latter’s alleged failure to disclose the details of his past wrangles with the SEC and Eliot Spitzer,
Here’s a Friday mystery. Presenting December ICE dollar index futures as traded on November 20:
So what could that peculiar spike be down to?
We’re not sure. As MarketWatch reports, the exchange is at least on to it:
Alright, blindingly obvious is a tad harsh. But it surprised us that the proposals for improving mortgage underwriting standards made by John Dugan, US comptroller of the currency, were not already in force.
How do you solve the problem of excessive risk-taking and systemic risk?
FDIC chairman Sheila Bair had an idea back in October:
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Ensuring secured creditors face losses when a financial institution fails could help rein in excessive risk-taking and strengthen the financial system,
On Thursday, the Federal Reserve became the latest institution to feel a sudden, aggressive backdraft.
A joint ambush by Republicans and Democrats of the House Financial Services Committee left America’s central bank facing a comprehensive audit of its activities for the first time,
On FT Alphaville Friday morning,
- T-bill terror.
- Day 2 of the Daily Mail tanker outrage!
- Goldman sees a holly, jolly, rally-filled Christmas.
- The GOD (glut of distillate) delusion.
- Japan equities:
Could the world finally be catching on to the distillate glut problem? (Despite the Daily Mail getting completely the wrong end of the stick on the story).
We note even the normally media-shy physical trader Trafigura warned about the matter via Reuters on Thursday:
Markets live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:14 on 20 Nov 2009. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT (NH) Bryce Elder (BE) NH:right NH:it’s 11.03 NH:and time
Duh duh duh!
The yield on some short-term Treasuries, T-bills, turned negative on Thursday. That means that investors are piling into Treasuries to such an extent that they’re now willing to effectively pay the government for the benefit of owning them.
The hate-fest surrounding Japan appears to have “risen to new highs in recent weeks”, says CLSA’s Damien Kestel in his weekly newsletter Bits & Pieces. In fact, he cites the Oxford (American) dictionary’s word of the year,
The hurdles to a Hershey-Cadbury tie-up are by now well aired.
Hershey has a smaller market cap than Cadbury, would need to take on crippling amounts of debt to finance a deal, and the Hershey Charitable Trust would be loath to relinquish control in any new company.
Look who’s happy!
WASHINGTON-November 19, 2009-Commercial Mortgage Securities Association today applauds Reps. John Adler (D-NJ), John Campbell (R-CA), Dennis Moore (D-KS) and Gary Miller (R-CA) for working on an amendment offered by Reps.
It’s day two of the Daily Mail’s campaign against tankers parked off the British coast. In case you missed “how the Daily Mail broke the story yesterday” you might care to check out FT Alphaville’s coverage here.
Because December is traditionally a very good month for European equities.
And the better the year, the better the December, according to the kitten-cuddling bank.
Here’s the basic idea from Goldman Sachs’ European equity strategy team:
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Investing fads and themes by year, 1996 to present.
- Unintended consequences on Wall Street.
- Chart of the day: How the old gold bugs lost control.
- Analyst date night:
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Friday’s FT,
Martin Wolf: Tax the windfall banking bonuses
Windfall taxes are a ghastly idea, writes Wolf. They are a sop to prejudice, a burden on risk-taking and a form of arbitrary confiscation.
On FT Alphaville late Thursday,
- SocGen’s worst-case debt scenario.
- Lloyd and Gary wish wealth on 272 new Goldman MDs.
- ‘A gold rush moment’ for HFT.
- All roads lead to retranching in CRE crunch.
Breaking pre-market news on Friday,
- Gartmore announces intention to list on the LSE - statement.
- Nationwide Building Society posts half-year PBT of £143m - statement.
- Big shareholders ask Goldman Sachs to cut bonuses - WSJ (via Reuters).
Short-term US interest rates turned negative on Thursday as banks stockpiled government securities in order to “window dress” their balance sheets for the year-end, highlighting continuing distortions in the financial system more than a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Birds Eye Foods is being sold by its private equity owners for $1.3bn to Blackstone’s Pinnacle Foods, it was announced on Thursday. The deal, to be funded with $300m in additional equity from Blackstone and $1bn in debt,
KKR, the US buy-out firm run by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, on Thursday reported a Q3 profit of $656.6m in its first results after becoming a publicly listed company, amid a rebound in buy-outs, reports Bloomberg.
Goldman Sachs said it would promote 272 employees to managing director, a title that brings them closer to the coveted partnership and, for many, a bigger slice of the bank’s prized compensation pool. The new class of MDs,
Five private equity groups are among the first-round bidders for Matalan, the privately owned UK discount clothing retailer that is being auctioned with an estimated price tag of about £1.5bn. TPG, Blackstone,
US authorities blocked Minsheng, the Chinese bank, from acquiring a Californian lender in a deal that could have saved almost $300m of taxpayers’ money and $1.4bn from an industry insurance fund, it has emerged.
Goldman Sachs’ programme for US small businesses could help it comply with a law aimed at aiding low-income communities – a sign of demands created by its conversion to a bank holding company last year.
JPMorgan Cazenove on Thursday stressed that it saw scope to make more of the synergies between itself and the UK broker, as it confirmed details of a £1bn takeover deal. JPMorgan is paying 535p a share for Cazenove – 25p in the form of a dividend next month and the rest when the transaction closes early next year.The transaction consummates the joint venture,
A solution to facilitate a Cadbury-Hershey merger and repel Kraft’s $16.6bn hostile bid for the UK confectioner has been outlined in a letter to Cadbury CEO Todd Stitzer from the special situations team at brokerage GFI,
RSS feed