Comment, analysis and other offerings from Monday’s FT,
Wolfgang Munchau: Van Rompuy is the right man for the job
It is so easy to get exasperated with the European Union — its lack of ambition,
Breaking pre-market news on Monday,
- Heritage Oil-Genel merger terminated, Heritage issues letter of intent to sell its Ugandan assets to Eni for $1.3bn - statement.
- Lloyds Banking Group says it has accepted offers to exchange £8.8bn of non-US securities - statement.
Demands for higher capital at financial companies and a growing risk of national protectionism will act as a drag on the real economy, warns John Tiner, former head of the Financial Services Authority.
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.
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 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,
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.
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.
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.
Restructuring. Re-tranching. Re-remics. Repeat?
FDIC, the regulator in charge of insuring US bank deposits, has given banks the ability to restructure commercial real estate (CRE) loans to creditworthy borrowers,
On FT Alphaville Thursday morning,
- Minsky and the next gold mania.
- Brazil nuts? A new capital control.
- UK banks still not lending.
- The Reckitt-Colgate rumour in pics.
- A Hershey CDS update.
Markets live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:15 on 19 Nov 2009. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT (NH) Miles Johnson, FT (MJ) NH:good morning NH:and welcome to Markets Live
The Bank of England’s just-released trends in lending report offers some interesting statistics and charts, as ever.
Here’s a selection of some of the data points that caught FT Alphaville’s eye.
First,
It’s making headlines, so here’s what all the gold at $6,300 fuss is about.
Selected highlights of the latest ‘Popular Delusions’ note from Société Générale’s Dylan Grice:
Central bank hoarding of gold in 1970 ushered in the famous gold bull market.
Elsewhere on Thursday,
- SocGen on how to prepare for the global economic collapse.
- “Is gold going to $6,300?”
- 2009 vs 1982 stock market rallies.
- Kass on the quant bubble.
- Krugman on the unintended consequences of the AIG bailout.
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Thursday’s FT,
John Gapper: How to reinvent China’s growth
Qingdao, where the FT Chinese website this week held its annual forum, is a good place from which to see the changes taking place in China because it is,
Standard & Poor’s is to quit Australia’s retail market following a decision last week by ASIC, the nation’s securities regulator, to strengthen oversight of credit rating agencies by making them more accountable for the advice they provide.
Bad loans at Allied Irish Banks this year will be €1bn ($1.5bn) more than previously estimated, it announced on Wednesday, although the lender said most of these bad loans were in a portfolio that is likely to be bought by the country’s “bad bank”,
Guy Hands, head of UK buy-out group Terra Firma, has warned that unless governments push banks to restructure $7,000bn of leveraged loans due to mature by 2014, the US and Europe could face the “Japanese problem” of zero growth.
Gavan Nolan of Markit wrote this CDS report
European credit indices tightened slightly today, a creditable performance given the volatility in equity markets. The Markit iTraxx Europe index was about 1bp tighter at 82bp,
What ties the SIGTARP report, Goldman Sachs CDOs and the mounting concern that is US commercial real estate altogether?
The most recent breakdown of the Federal Reserve’s Maiden Lane III portfolio. That is,
Markets live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:19 on 18 Nov 2009. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT (NH) Bryce Elder (BE) NH:good morning NH:it’s 11.03am
Insurance - and particularly life insurance - has become one of Asia’s hotbeds for M&A activity. Here are just some of the deals or bids reported in the last month or so alone:
The biggest - and as yet unresolved - bid is the unsolicited A$11bn ($10.2bn) bid by Axa and Australia’s AMP on November 9 for Axa’s majority-owned Asian business,
It’s over.
As the FT revealed overnight, ITV has finally found a chairman: failed MP former Asda and Energis boss Archie Norman.
And the broadcaster is making the most of Norman’s CV, with a detailed biography in Wednesday’s press release:
In further signs of the financing pressure facing the shipping industry, DryShips , an Athens-based commodity-focused operator owned by Greek shipping tycoon George Economou, announced late on Tuesday it had signed a waiver agreement with Deutsche Schiffsbank on $117.5m of outstanding debt.
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