September, 2009
Kodak turns to KKR for funds
KKR will buy up to $400m of senior secured notes in Eastman Kodak, reports the FT. The troubled US photography company is raising as much as $300m in convertible debt through a private placement, part of which will go to repurchasing earlier debt.
Cuomo subpoenas BofA directors
Andrew Cuomo, New York attorney-general, has issued subpoenas to one current and four former board members of Bank of America to testify about BofA’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch. In a widening of his probe,
Cadbury raises pressure on Kraft
Cadbury’s chief executive Todd Stitzer delivered a bullish assessment of the UK confectioner’s business strategy to investors on Wednesday, emphasising its growth prospects in emerging markets as it resists Kraft’s £10.2bn takeover approach.
Sinopharm’s HK IPO hits limit
Sinopharm Group, China’s largest drug distributor, has raised the maximum HK$8.73bn ($1.13bn) sought in a Hong Kong IPO after investors applied for almost 600 times the stock available to them, reports Bloomberg.
Carlyle sells Taiwan pay-TV business
Taiwan Mobile has agreed to acquire one of the island’s top pay-TV operators from Carlyle Group, in a $1bn cash and stock deal. The takeover of Kbro, which requires regulatory approval, will create Taiwan’s largest provider of phone,
Nama to take on Irish bank debts
The Irish state will pay €54bn ($79bn) to take over bank debt worth €77bn to cleanse the sector’s toxic assets, Brian Lenihan, the finance minister, said on Wednesday as he opened the second reading on the bill establishing the National Asset Management Agency.
SEC, FSA to share hedge-fund data
UK and US regulators took a step towards co-ordinated global financial regulation on Wednesday as they agreed to ask hedge fund managers to report a common set of data to both countries. The deal is part of a larger effort to share information and co-ordinate regulation and enforcement between the two countries,
Singapore eyes tighter fund rules
Singapore’s central bank is consulting hedge fund executives on ways to tighten the regulatory regime for the state’s burgeoning alternative investment industry. Industry executives believe the informal talks could pave the way for fresh legislation governing the sector,
Funding to boost Twitter, report
Twitter is closing a round of funding that will value the company known for its 140-character, blog comments at $1bn, according to tech news site TechCrunch, reports Reuters. The company will raise around $50m after a February round of funding led by Benchmark capital valued Twitter at around $250m,
Oil groups confirm big find
Anadarko, the US oil group, and partners Woodside of Australia, Repsol of Spain and Tullow Oil of the UK, on Wednesday confirmed the discovery of an offshore oil region from Sierra Leone to Ghana, in which they expect to find more huge oil fields in the next five years.
Overnight markets: Year’s high
Asian stocks rose to a one-year high on Thursday, led by mining companies, after commodity prices jumped amid optimism about global economic growth. Futures on the S&P500 were little changed after the gauge climbed 1.5% on Wednesday on a stronger-than-expected 0.8% rise in August US factory output.
SEC discovers that financial innovation is risky
Well, not quite. But they have (belatedly) “announced a new division of risk, strategy and financial innovation”, of which Professor Henry Hu will be director.
Hu’s qualifications? According to the press release,
Dmitry Medvedev: Russian bear
It’s only 2009, but already the (somewhat obtuse) campaigns for the 2012 Russian presidency by Putin and Medvedev are well underway, as the the following piece in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday made clear:
CDS report: The rally powers on, driven by optimism around economic recovery
Markit’s Gavan Nolan wrote this CDS report
Markit CDS indices broke new ground today as the rally showed no sign of abating. The Markit iTraxx Europe index was trading around 81.5bp, its tightest level this year and its most bullish reading since June 2008.
Deutsche Boerse/LSE? Don’t hold your breath
Intense speculation that Deutsche Boerse might once again express an interest in buying the London Stock Exchange ricocheted around equity markets on Wednesday, sending shares in the LSE up more than 10 per cent at one stage late afternoon,
No HFT in small-caps? Puh-lease…
US Senator Edward Kaufman brought high frequency trading (HFT) back to into the spotlight this week when he took to the Senate floor on Monday. He argued the practice gave certain participants an unfair advantage in the market and urged Congress to tighten rules on the different types of electronic trading that facilitated the process.
What being like the yen actually means for QE currencies
Dollar doomsayers were probably out in force on Wednesday.
Early in the session, the dollar index fell to its lowest level in almost a year, while the dollar hit its lowest level against the euro since December 2008.
Let them eat equity tranches
A curious proposal for securitisation reform has appeared in BIS’s latest quarterly review.
The argument, so it goes, is that securitisation didn’t do so well in the recent financial crisis — structured financial products weren’t immune (or even that well protected) from losses in underlying collateral.
Lunch Wrap
On FT Alphaville Wednesday morning,
- UK unemployment at highest rate since 1996.
- The technical end of the recession doesn’t mean much.
-`There’s no free lunch in credit anymore.’
- The IRS will save commercial real estate.
Markets live transcript 16 Sep 2009
Markets live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:12 on 16 Sep 2009. Participants in this chat were: Bryce Elder (BE) Miles Johnson, FT (MJ) Paul Murphy (PM) BE:Welcome to Markets Live
UK unemployment at highest rate since 1996
From the UK Office of National Statistics on Wednesday:
That’s a UK unemployment rate of 7.9 per cent in August, up 0.7 per cent on the previous three months — slightly less than the 8 per cent rate anticipated by the market.
The technical end of the recession doesn’t mean much
Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics and NY Times blogger, believes there is a big difference between the technical end of the recession, which has probably happened, and anything resembling satisfactory performance.
`There’s no free lunch in credit anymore’
So say Deutsche Bank credit analysts Jim Reid and Nick Burns.
They’re looking into credit markets in a note out on Wednesday, and specifically whether the markets have normalised since the start of the credit crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers one year ago.
The IRS will save commercial real estate
Guess who’s just got a tax break?
Remics – the real estate mortgage investment conduits used to pool and securitise residential and commercial mortgages.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/
Further reading
Elsewhere on Wednesday,
- Ghost towns and Ireland’s property gamble.
- The long and short of Naftogaz.
- “I have developed a minor obsession with natural gas.”
- The dash for trash in Tier 1 bonds.
Pink picks
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Wednesday’s FT,
Martin Wolf: Do not learn wrong lessons from Lehman’s fall
“If the price of oil stabilises, I believe we can weather the financial crisis at limited cost in terms of real activity.”