January, 2010
Further reading
Elsewhere on Tuesday,
- Bonus Mad Lib!
- Watch that corporate bond rally go.
- Steep yield curve = bank profits. Discuss.
- A foreclosure first in Dubai.
- The AIG bailout: Full story in 2018?
- What type of bear are you?
- Sovereign default,
Pink picks
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Tuesday’s FT,
Gideon Rachman: Bankruptcy could be good for America
Perhaps the most memorable thing said so far by an official in Barack Obama’s administration was the remark by Rahm Emanuel,
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Tuesday,
- Virgin Media to offer £500m equivalent of Senior Secured Notes due 2018 – statement.
- Cadbury publishes further reasons to reject Kraft’s offer – statement.
[Modern Football Finance] PIKing apart the Man Utd refinancing
You have to look hard to find it, but it’s there in the notes on page 30 of the (printed) prospectus — what appears to be a key reason for Manchester United’s £500m senior notes offering and refinancing.
SEC offers Judge Rakoff a Bronx cheer…
This is the second amended SEC complain in the ongoing rumpus over whether Bank of America adequately informed investors over the size of losses at soon-to-be-acquired Merrill Lynch, along with the fact that Merrill executives were about to trouser $5.8bn in bonuses.
Does Hank Greenberg read the news?
Having been CEO of AIG since the 1960s, only to resign in 2005 amidst a major accounting scandal, you could perhaps forgive him if he doesn’t.
Maurice `Hank’ Greenberg spoke with the Wall Street Journal this weekend past,
More fun and games on Aim
Aim-listed shell company Deo Petroleum has featured in a couple of recent Markets Live sessions here on FT Alphaville.
The reasoning behind its multiple appearances: its moon-bound share price, which left a company with just £200,000 of cash valued at more than £15m.
CDS report: Sovereigns wider than corporates?
Gavan Nolan of Markit wrote this CDS report
After a brief pause on Friday normal service was resumed as the credit and equity markets continued to rally. The Markit iTraxx Europe index was about 2bp tighter at 65.5bp,
Norway – BUY
We’ve got an outbreak of hegemony in the world of strategy research.
Andrew Garthwaite, and his global equity research macro team at Credit Suisse, have published a currencies outlook for 2010.
With a vague promise to highlight any areas where his views differ from those of Ray Farris,
[Modern Football Finance] Man Utd edition (updated)
Click to enlarge…
Not the standard 4-4-2 formation is it?
That’s the corporate and financing structure of Manchester United FC.
The diagram comes from the prospectus to the £500m senior secured notes offering launched on Monday morning.
Speculative default rates decrease, Moody’s says
Here’s something to boost Monday’s junk bond-craze.
Moody’s reports that the speculative-grade default rate has decreased for the first time since January 2008. Here’s the relevant bit from the ratings agency’s December default report.
Switzerland, the former bolt-hole?
Neutral, snowy, and tax-lite – Switzerland was supposed to be the destination of choice for outraged City-types and others in the financial sector intent on protecting their bonuses.
Some excited reports even had Goldman Sachs moving its European headquarters from London to somewhere less fiscally challenged,
Talf gaffe at the Fed
Whoops. Here’s something FT Alphaville missed last week.
A major mea culpa from the Federal Reserve on the legacy CMBS portion of its Talf programme.
From the Fed Reserve Bank of New York:
The New York Fed continuously reviews the stress value estimates and recently identified and corrected a methodological error.
Lunch Wrap
On FT Alphaville Monday morning,
- Debt double-Glazering for ManU.
- Crying over hot air natgas.
- The big (banking) boys exit Tokyo.
- Paying the piper in Dubai.
- Secession in the European Union?
- Banks and their book value,
The trillion-dollar ETP market
In case there was any doubt exchange-traded products were developing as the world’s fastest growing asset class, Deutsche Bank — an exchange-traded product issuer — has come out with its first dedicated analysis series observing the degree of the products’ recent ascent.
Unintended consequences, accounting for Basel edition
No adjustment should be applied to remove from the Common Equity component of Tier 1 unrealised gains or losses recognised on the balance sheet.
Thus read the Basel Committee’s recommendations for strengthening the banking sector,
Markets Live transcript 11 Jan 2010
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:16 on 11 Jan 2010. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT Bryce Elder
NH
Hola
NH
and welcome to the start of a new week
A secessionist recession for EU peripherals?
This paper examines the issues of secession and expulsion from the European Union (EU) and Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). It concludes that negotiated withdrawal from the EU would not be legally impossible even prior to the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty .
Crying over hot air
Last week was an interesting one for commodities reporting.
In short, the mainstream press discovered the UK natural gas market. And while it’s very nice that they should care so much about a usually under-reported market (bar end-user price-hikes),
It’s happening, EM banks take on the world
China has had a few big moments along the way — becoming the world’s biggest holder of US government debt, building up the world’s biggest pool of foreign reserves and boasting the world’s biggest bank by some measures.
The big boys move out of Tokyo
We’re wondering if it’s something in the Tokyo water — or perhaps it is all about the strange and increasingly vexing twists and turns of Japan’s new(ish) Hatoyama government. Or maybe it comes down to the old motive for just about everything in the big,
[Modern Football Finance] Debt double-Glazering
On sale today:
Issuer: MU Finance plc.
Sec Type: Senior Secured Notes Distribution: 144A and RegS (no Reg Rights)
Amount: £500,000,000 equiv.
Further reading
Elsewhere on Monday and at the weekend,
- Another bubble? Thanks but we’ve already got one.
- An interesting look at “winner-take-all” stories.
- 10 CEOs on “$1 salaries” – well, sort of.
- The new smart money?
- Lessons from ML’s Bernstein,
Pink picks
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Monday’s FT,
Robert Barbera and Charles Weise: A jobs-rich US recovery?
Only one short year ago, the world was staring depression in the face. Now the economy is recovering but commentators warn of a “jobless recovery” of the kind that followed the last two recessions,
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Monday,
- Heineken buys beer division of Fomento Economico Mexicano SAB for €3.8bn – statement and statement.
- WIBHM acquires Wolseley’s Irish business for €26.5m – statement.
Things that don’t get reported any more…
We’ve pinged an email to the site administrator, but we can report that the SEC’s search function on their website doesn’t work properly.
Try it yourself. Go here and type the word “ponzi” into the search box to the right.
The regulatory muddle in energy markets
John Kemp at Reuters reminded us that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is due to unveil a raft at new rules, with lots of new tricky details on position limits and exemption guidelines for a whole range of market participants.
A Friday payroll fizzle
Post payrolls, yields on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury are falling off a cliff, while S&P 500 futures are gently sliding:
