Andrew Hill
Catcher in the Alps: Caulfield does Davos
By Andrew Hill of Lombard.
We’re privileged to welcome to the World Economic Forum, the distinguished writer and thinker, Professor Holden Caulfield, 76-year-old president and founder of Rye Introspective LLP.
Lombard: FSA pulls its punches on banker pay
Bankers still seem to think they can justify lavish rewards by comparing themselves with top footballers and Hollywood stars. Try again. The Financial Services Authority’s alleged watering down of its proposed pay code is more likely to excite parallels with last week’s extraordinary £40m jewellery heist.
Lombard: The race to the top in banking regulation
“We don’t know much about financial regulation, but we know what we don’t like.” The people have spoken and Lord Turner has listened.
His review could have marked the Financial Services Authority’s chairman out as the supervisor’s supreme hand-wringer,
Lombard: “Public toughening of the FSA’s stance is right”
No more Mr Nice Guy. Hector Sants, chief executive of the UK’s Financial Services Authority, has marked the definitive end of the era of regulator as facilitator.
But if you think the FSA has only just changed course,
Lombard: Psst!
Have you heard? The British government is planning to waive anti-trust rules for a merger between two of the country’s biggest retail banks, and take a majority stake in a third to prevent it going to the wall.
Lombard: On bankers and their bonuses
It is easy to be cynical about bankers’ decisions to waive their bonuses. After all, the tarnished titans of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and UBS made enough during the good years not to have to worry too much about forgoing millions for 2008.
Lombard: Are they in or are they out?
Pension funds, endowments and sovereign wealth funds were all enticed into increasing their investments in private equity and hedge funds when the rising tide was lifting all boats. But as the water level drops,
Lombard: The harsh facts of life for 3i
If 3i is the cautious public face of private equity, then the prospects for the more buccaneering end of the buy-out business cannot be good.
The listed British investment group took a fearful beating when the dotcom bubble deflated.
Lombard: That mystery HBOS counter-bidder
Equity issues, a multi-billion-pound all-share takeover, and now a “mystery counter-bidder”. As Lloyds TSB circulated details yesterday of its government-backed rescue offer for HBOS, its British banking rival,
Lombard: DTCC-LCH
Cometh the hour, cometh the merger. With politicians and regulators on both sides of the Atlantic fretting about the risks that built up in the world financial system – particularly in the pipework that links parties to trades – the takeover of one plumber,
Lombard: The devil is everywhere, but in the detail
Until the end of last week, some bankers and investors were still suggesting the “devil was in the detail” of government-led bank rescue plans. Well, it patently is not. The devil is everywhere but in the detail.
Lombard: Banks face a regulatory revolution
Evolution rather than revolution is the way the British financial sector usually develops. But when revolution comes to the City, it often comes, oddly enough, from government.
For the past 30 years that has meant deregulation – most notably with the Big Bang reform that prompted restructuring of the securities industry in the 1980s.
Lombard: The US bail-out explained
If you owe the bank $10, it’s your problem. If you owe the bank $10m, it’s the bank’s problem.
If you and a million others owe the bank $10 each, it’s still your problem – but it’s also the bank’s problem.
Lombard: Forcing buyout specialists back to basics
Put the bons mots of Guy Hands end to end and they stretch further than the declarations of all other private equity executives put together. Compared with the rest of a notoriously cagey group, Mr Hands – chief executive of UK-based Terra Firma Capital Partners – sings like a canary,
Lombard Live: Lehman, the LSE and Baikal
If still waters run deep, then the London Stock Exchange’s long silence about whether it would plunge into the competition between dark pools of liquidity was evidence of profound thought about the wisdom and implications of such a move.
Lombard: Pre-emption remains the preferred Britsh cure
Rumours of the death of the rights issue are surely exaggerated. This peculiarly European practice – an alternative to the more common US capital-raising technique of placing large chunks of equity with single investors – took a knock on Monday when Bradford & Bingley,
Lombard: Reaching a conclusion at board level
Humble pie is not usually a part of Sir Fred Goodwin’s diet, which may be why the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland left his chairman, Sir Tom McKillop, to eat most of it during Tuesday’s ] presentations about the group’s record rights issue.
Lombard: the perils of collegiate regulation
Governments usually promise not to react precipitately to financial crises. But you can virtually guarantee that even as they sign their pledge, they are simultaneously dusting off sketchy blueprints for all sorts of regulatory intervention to prevent a repeat of politically embarrassing market meltdowns.
Lombard: Misys and ValueAct
ValueAct Capital, the activist investment fund, is a familiar warrior on the US corporate battlefield, less so in the UK. But for the past year and a bit, it has been gradually increasing its presence at Misys,
Lombard: Asymmetry in the bankers’ pay debate
The apparent determination of global banks to do something – anything – to avoid statutory curbs on pay and incentives is both surprising and heartening. Their initiative is also, surely, doomed.
As the editorial in Saturday’s FT pointed out,
Lombard: SWFs could adopt the easy-peasy private equity template
So much turbulent water has passed under the bridge since last year’s fuss in the UK about private equity firms and transparency that the first sighting of an “annual review” – from Bridgepoint Capital,
Lombard: Anglo through the looking glass
Listen to the Anglo American chief executive’s careful explanation of the mining group’s strategy and you might think you were listening to Lewis, not Cynthia Carroll. Like Alice in Wonderland, Ms Carroll sometimes sounds as though she’d like to be bigger,
Lombard: Goldman’s Rock job
It is a sure sign of how far the credibility of Britain’s “tripartite authorities” – the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority – has fallen that the government’s public statements on the nationalisation of Northern Rock give a prominent mention to the plan’s endorsement by Goldman Sachs.
Lombard: The reputational damage has been done. Move on
There are plenty of reasons to worry about the nationalisation of Northern Rock but the new blow it may deal to the UK’s reputation as a centre for financial services is not one of them.
The British government’s decision to wrap the troubled bank in its embrace cannot be positive.
Lombard: Keep one eye on Glencore’s motives in Xstrata talks
Heaven knows the challenge of putting together BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto looks fearsome enough. But these are at least mining companies with headquarters in the same cities, similar dual-listed structures,
Lombard: Hot desking at the FSA
When financial markets turn nasty, banks cut jobs and financial regulators expand. It sounds right and, on the surface, it seems as though that is what has happened at the Financial Services Authority,