The post-Madoff campaign by US regulators and federal prosecutors to portray themselves as tough on (white collar) crime was dealt a blow on Tuesday, when a jury cleared two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers of all the charges against them.
On FT Alphaville late Tuesday,
- Ambac warns of bankruptcy risk.
- Former Bear Stearns fund managers not guilty of fraud charges, jury finds.
- Fairground financial punditry?
- (Scary) chart du jour:
Two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers accused of misleading investors were found innocent of all charges on Tuesday, marking a blow to the first big effort by US prosecutors to bring a criminal case related to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Those accused of white collar crimes in recent months - including but not limited to the man formerly known as Sir Allen Stanford and one Raj Rajaratnam - probably breathed a sigh of relief on Tuesday,
Markets live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:12 on 28 Oct 2009. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT (NH) Miles Johnson, FT (MJ) NH:hey there NH:this is FT Alphaville
James Surowiecki raises some interesting points in a column in this week’s New Yorker magazine on why big US banks are getting even bigger and more powerful as a result of the financial crisis.
The simple answer is that the combination of a series of banking mergers and the disappearance of competitors such as Lehman Brothers left the surviving institutions in much better shape than before.
Former Bear Stearns hedge fund manager Matthew Tannin won a round during his trial in New York on fraud charges on Monday when a judge ruled the jury cannot see an email in which he wrote about his fears of a “blow up risk”
In case you missed these stories,
- Rajaratnam, others, charged in insider trade case
Billionaire investor Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, and present and former executives of Bear Stearns,
This week on FT Alphaville,
- China’s liquid real estate bubble.
- Where to find value in a liquidity drunk market.
- Citi of questionable accounting and reserve provisioning.
- Gawker’s crowd-sourced Goldman Sachs witchhunt.
Okay, this looks like a big one. The FBI and other US enforcement agencies on Friday moved against an alleged insider dealing ring stretching from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, by way of Bear Stearns,
On FT Alphaville late Monday,
- The perils of corporate email, Bear Stearns edition.
- The media ♥ Jim Rogers.
- Cash-crunched, scandal-hit Dubai.
Overheard in the Long Room,
- Why one buyside guy thinks US equities are a buy.
On Tuesday, former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin will appear in a Brooklyn court on charges they misled investors about the financial prospects of two investment vehicles they ran.
A US federal jury will this week start to hear the first and only criminal case against Wall Street executives arising from the credit crisis. The trial in a Brooklyn, New York courtroom of Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin,
Bedlam Asset Management takes a look at exchange traded funds in its latest market commentary (H/T paver). Specifically, at how — largely because of greed — a sound concept has once again potentially been bastardised by the financial industry.
Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was due to address the House Banking and Financial Services Committee in Washington on Thursday morning.
If his prepared testimony is anything to go by,
The following piece is an FT Alphaville dramatisation of an account by a junior Lehman M&A banker who watched the collapse unfold in 2008. All rights reserved.
You can also listen to this account, as voiced by a member of the FT Editorial team.
FT Alphaville presents a selection of visionary — and not so visionary — quotes from the Lehman crisis.
To start, Dick Fuld, CEO of Lehman, on October 6, 2008:
I’m not sure I would say it was a house of cards .
FT Alphaville goes back to the morning (and afternoon) of September 15. Here’s what the blogs and media were saying as the day’s events unfolded.
The media:
Wilbur Ross: Possibly a Thousand Banks Will Close - CNBC
In an exclusive interview with CNBC.com,
September 15 2009 will mark the one-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ momentous collapse.
The mainstream media are churning out retrospectives, interactive features and video specials in commemoration of the event.
What happens when you get Rick Bookstaber and Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the same room, to talk about one of the most controversial risk measures of the financial crisis?
They (almost) agree.
The two were speaking in front of the US House of Representatives Committee on Science & Technology,
We’ve barely worked out who’s who - and who’s still standing - in the `old’ establishment, and Vanity Fair magazine is already telling us about the movers and shakers in the `new establishment’.
And,
Baaaaaaaaaaaa.
Here’s some perhaps unexpected news from the Fed — the central bank appears to be getting more selective, at least when it comes to Talf legacy CMBS.
According to a release by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,
Markets live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:05 on 26 Aug 2009. Participants in this chat were: Paul Murphy (PM) Neil Hume, FT (NH) PM:Hello there PM:It’s 11.03
What’s this? Obama’s economic adviser and former Fed chairman Paul Volcker wants to regulate money market funds like banks.
Via Bloomberg:
Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) — Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who is an adviser to President Barack Obama,
A fascinating paper is out from the Federal Reserve Board, examining the role of securitisation in the expansion of subprime credit (H/T Alea).
We’ll save you the suspense and tell you the paper’s conclusion straight away:
Trouble is, we don’t know why.
And nor does Bloomberg, judging from the below story. Mind you the preview for tomorrow’s results from the giant vampire squid Goldman is still rather useful:
July 13 (Bloomberg) — Meredith Whitney,
The annual Global Custodian annual survey of prime brokers is out, offering a qualitative, as well as quantitative, assessment of the world’s foremost prime brokerage firms.
The grip of the old order - the Goldman/Morgan “duopoly”
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Friday’s FT,
What is needed for a lasting recovery
Olivier Blanchard, chief economist of the IMF writes: sustained recovery requires decreased domestic US spending and increased domestic spending in China and much of the rest of the world,
The GAIM conference in Monaco - the largest annual gathering of the hedge fund conference circuit - is suffused with an air of quiet caution this year. Even at last year’s conference, after the fall of Bear Stearns,
In one of the biggest real-estate bankruptcies in the current slump, the Extended Stay Hotels chain filed for Chapter 11 protection on Monday, collapsing under the debt from its $8bn top-of-the-market buyout by Lightstone Group in 2007,
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