April, 2010
[Abacus] Formerly The Greatest Trade Ever
The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History, Gregory Zuckerman
Live now — special Goldman / SEC Markets Live
The SEC has called a special press conference where it’s explaining the charges of subprime fraud it’s filed against Goldman Sachs — we’re discussing it right now as it happens on Markets Live.
Do join us.
[Abacus] Markets Live transcript – Goldman/SEC special – 16 Apr 2010
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 16:28 on 16 Apr 2010. Participants in this chat were: Paul Murphy Izabella Kaminska, FT Joseph Cotterill Tracy Alloway, FT Bryce Elder
PMGood morning from New York
[Abacus] The case involving ABACUS 2007-AC1
Read the SEC’s case against Goldman Sachs and their french credit trader Fabrice Tourre here.
In summary, the SEC alleges, in a civil suit, that Goldman knowingly puffed a synthetic CDO to clients that had been designed to fail.
[Abacus] SEC charges Goldman Sachs with subprime fraud
Flashes coming through now:
*SEC CHARGES GOLDMAN SACHS WITH FRAUD IN CDO TIED TO SUBPRIME
The link to the full SEC release is here.
Goldman Sachs failed to disclose to investors vital information about the CDO,
Is the contango floating storage trade back?
The last couple of months has seen much talk in the oil markets about the unwinding of floating storage positions.
Goldman Sachs was among those who noted that crude was increasingly being moved out of tankers on account of the changing structure of the oil future curve — which had gone from a steep contango a year ago to a near flattening just one month ago.
BAC gains on Merrill’s deterioration in Q1
Here at FT Alphaville, we do like to cover the effects of gains and losses stemming from changes in banks’ own debt quality.
These, as we’ve written before, are known as CVAs: credit value adjustments.
How not to make emerging market calls
Ah, fresh, nubile — though possibly overheating — Brazil. Somewhere an analyst should be keeping a beady eye on political risk, no doubt. But nothing as bad as a military coup.
Especially not when it’s the analyst calling for one.
Bank earning season goes on — BofA’s turn
Bank of America has released its Q1 2010 results, hot on the heels of JP Morgan earlier this week. But, is the news as positive as Jamie Dimon’s?
On first sight, it has at the very least beaten expectations.
A volcanic emission
There was a chap in the audience of this year’s London City debate — claiming to be a vulcanologist — who questioned the whole point of carbon trading schemes given that any savings would be blown out of the window by just one or two major volcanic eruptions in the world.
Markets Live transcript 16 Apr 2010
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 11:28 on 16 Apr 2010. Participants in this chat were: Bryce Elder Izabella Kaminska, FT BEGood morning BEIt’s 11:05 am.
Clearing house swap-downs
Woah, woah, woah. Someone call in a ref. It’s the clash of the clearing houses.
From FT Trading Room:
LCH.Clearnet has accused some of its global rivals of using loose standards to assess the amount of insurance traders must take out against a catastrophic default,
From the annals of international Greek debt management…
. . . Foreign creditors demanded the presence of foreign experts for the monitoring of the economic policy pursued and, especially, of the tax collection and management systems. This demand was seen as a pre-condition for the government to pursue a monetary and fiscal policy,
Pulling the plug on China’s banks. Literally.
Here’s one way to put the brakes on China’s lending boom.
Simply pull the (electricity) plug on banks’ loan operations. From Caixin Online:
Branch loan officers for a major bank were gearing up for a new round of lending in late February when their computer screens suddenly froze.
Forget Club Med, Hungary might be next
Received wisdom has Portugal, or perhaps Spain, entering the sights of evil sovereign debt speculators once everyone really does get bored with Greece.
But Maya Bhandari of Lombard Street Research reckons we should be looking north of Athens,
Further reading
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Greek default: ‘too grisly to contemplate’.
- Meanwhile, in Portugal…
- And in Japan…
- More on the CME’s dodgy Lehman auction.
- Jobless recovery watch.
- Mortgages:
Pink picks
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Friday’s FT,
Gillian Tett: What happens to markets when numbers don’t add up
A few years ago, Tim Johnson, a British academic, was appointed to act as an official public “champion”
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Friday,
- Bank of Ireland says expects to dispose of asset management arm as part of EU restructuring arm – statement.
- Thomas Cook issues €400m, £300m bonds – statement.
New York Times disappears up itself
This is what happens when two “marquee columnists” fall out – a readers’ editor is called in to adjudicate.
I think the right thing to do is to simply acknowledge that, in trying to quickly summarize Krugman’s nuanced position,
The (alleged) minus $50bn man
His name is Alberto Cribiore. He’s a former private equity practitioner and he sat on the board of Merrill Lynch before it was sold to Bank of America.
According to a Fortune piece by House of Cards author William Cohan,
Phone a Philhellenic Fund friend — not
Greece announced on Thursday that it will ask for talks with the IMF and European institutions on the rescue plan they agreed — but did not activate — last weekend.
Is this the fabled activation? Well,
Stop the Chinese steamroller, I want to get off
When your economy grows by almost 12 per cent in a quarter compared to a year ago, surely the question to ask is less if it’s overheating — but rather how much.
In which case, let’s have a look at what analysts said on Thursday about how China can tighten before some nasty asset bubbles pop — across investment and lending,
Putting the ‘E’ into exchange-traded fund in Europe
Happy tenth anniversary, European exchange-traded funds. Prepare for a blow-out.
Blackrock’s ETF division iShares marked this week’s big birthday with the publication of its ETF landscape report, predicting a robust future for ETF asset growth in Europe.
Markets Live transcript 15 Apr 2010
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 11:12 on 15 Apr 2010. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT Bryce Elder NHGood morning NHand welcome to Markets Live
[Ireland's Bad Bank] Operatic structured finance
Like the plot-line of a tragic libretto, Opera Finance CMH ’s good fortune has taken a sudden turn for the worse.
Cue the ballad.
Opera CMH is one of the few commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) deals with significant exposure to Irish real estate — including shopping centres in Dublin.
The return of the “other” Northern Rock
It’s amazing what you can find on the intraweb. Take this cached page from London-based PR Fishburn Hedges on an assignment for buy-to-let mortgage lender Paragon:
The challenge
Paragon raises its funds in the wholesale market,
The Greek debt merry-go-round goes round again
Here we go again.
The 10-year Greek bond – German bund spread widened to 426 basis points on Thursday.
That’s up from 406bps on Wednesday — and nearing an 11-year high:
On the credit default swap front,
The end of the euro
What’s in the water at Morgan Stanley? Its credit and equity strategists are negative on the market and now the bank’s economists are talking about the break up of the euro. And you thought FT Alphaville was bearish.