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In memoriam - Sam Jones, an FT Alphaville competition

Our colleague Sam Jones is leaving us to take up the glamorous role of FT hedge fund correspondent.

We’re honouring him with a competition. Rules below.

FT Alphaville Sam Jones memorial competition

Bubbles…

. . . and before you ask that isn’t a reference to the late Michael Jackson’s pet chimp, but China’s latest runaway IPO.

From FT.com:

Bawang International, a Chinese herbal shampoo maker, shined on its market debut in Hong Kong on Friday, More…

Further reading

Elsewhere on Friday,

- So much for those ‘green shoots’.

- How to read US employment figures.

- Smells like deflation.

- How AIG FP brought down the world.

- Statistics and basketball for beginners. More…

Snap news

Breaking pre-market news on Friday,

- Bank of Ireland sees impairment charges of €6bn in 3yrs to 2011 - statement.

- Friends Provident completes demerger of stake of in F&C Asset Management - statement. More…

Ruth Madoff stripped of property

US marshals on Thursday seized the luxury $7m New York City penthouse apartment of imprisoned fraudster Bernard Madoff and his wife, Ruth, reports Reuters. Mrs Madoff was present when agents took possession of the four-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s East Side under court orders. More…

Ex-IKB chief faces charges

Germany could soon see its first trial related to the financial crisis, after prosecutors charged Stefan Ortseifen, the former chief executive of stricken lender IKB. Prosecutors in Düsseldorf said they had charged Ortseifen – who led the mid-sized corporate lender until its near-collapse in the summer of 2007 – with manipulating the share price and breach of trust.

StanChart names Peace chairman

John Peace, who has been appointed chairman at Standard Chartered, the emerging markets bank, is to receive £650,000 a year plus a further £500,000 in shares that will vest over the next three years. More…

TCI posts fourth year of consecutive growth…

Almost.

Totemic UK hedge fund manager and activist investor par excellence, The Children’s Investment Fund Management, run by Christopher Hohn, has indeed posted its fourth consecutive year of double-digit growth: More…

[The Stanford Series] Sir Allen’s request to unfreeze funds for legal fees denied

US District judge David Godbey, who is presiding over the civil case brought by the SEC against Sir Allen Stanford, has denied the Texan businessman’s petition for the court to partially rescind a freeze on his assets. More…

Swine flu hits Citi

Capitalist pigs.

There we said it.

——————

From DealBreaker:

To: Employees on the 4th floor of 390 Greenwich St.

From: Citi Health Services

Sent: Wed Jul 01 13:18:27 2009

Subject: More…

PVM rogue broker update

We have confirmation of the PVM rogue broker story via an e-mailed statement from the company to the wires.

The flashes from Dow Jones read:

*DJ PVM Oil: Victim Of Unauthorized Oil Trading Tuesday
*DJ PVM Oil: More…

http://www.franktimis.co.uk/ - “a master entrepreneur”

This is Frank Timis.

And if you thought he was just some two bit share promoter on London’s junior casino market, with a couple of convictions for possession of heroin, you’d be wrong. How do we know this? Because we have been reading Frank’s website. More…

Taleb vs Tavakoli, a post-it update

The spat between Janet Tavakoli and Nassim Nicholas Taleb refuses to go away.

The Black Swan man has updated his notes to the copy of the GQ profile posted on his website:

Those having a hard time keeping up should read the links below, More…

RBS chief to defer part of package

Stephen Hester, the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, is to defer part of his controversial £9.6m pay package for an extra two years after bowing to pressure from investors. Hester, who is paid a £1.2m base salary, More…

SABMiller in black empowerment move

SABMiller, the international brewer, on Wednesday announced one of South Africa’s biggest black empowerment deals, disclosing plans to sell a R6bn ($750m) chunk of its local subsidiary to employees, a charitable foundation and store owners who sell the company’s products. More…

California declares fiscal emergency

California, which is teetering on the brink of fiscal collapse, has printed the first batch of about 30,000 IOUs to be issued to people awaiting income tax rebates on Thursday unless Arnold Schwarzenegger, More…

Arnold Schwarzenegger declares “fiscal emergency” in California

California’s governer declared a state of “fiscal emergency” after lawmakers failed to agree on a budget plan by the deadline on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

From Reuters:

California’s lawmakers failed to agree on a balanced budget by the start of its new fiscal year on Wednesday, More…

More dollar deliberations

Wednesday’s dollar dive  (as illustrated below by the movements of the dollar index) is, according to some reports, being put down to yet more rather non-dollar friendly signals from China.

Specifically, More…

[The Stanford Series] Stanford CFO James Davis “intends to plead guilty”, laywer says

James Davis, the former chief financial officer of Stanford Financial Group and who is facing charges related to an alleged $7bn fraud at the group, intends to plead guilty to the three charges against him, More…

Smarter than your average undergrad?

Dealbreaker points to an Institutional Investor story on a 23-year-old financial wunderkind Merritt Graves - who is managing a $4.7m equity long-short fund while nominally attending college in California. More…

The retrospective Buiter

Willem Buiter, former member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee, economist and FT ‘Maverecon’ blogger on Wednesday looked back through his voluminous works and commented thus (our emphasis): More…

Lex: Lloyds Banking Group

Whoever becomes the new chairman of Lloyds, the first thing he should do is get rid of the chief executive, Eric Daniels.
The current arrangement , which allows Mr Daniels to escape his share of responsibility, More…

Goldman again

Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article on Goldman Sachs has been making tidal-sized waves in the blogosphere for the past week.

That’s unsurprising given that it begins with the following unnerving paragraph: More…

Prudent decisions in central banking, revisited

We were yesterday reminded of the true Golden Era in central banking, circa 2006. A time when, freed from the dull chore that was setting interest rates, the main pressures on a Bank of England employee’s schedule were questions such as: More…

Clubbable miners

And so to the Melbourne Mining Club on Monday evening, where Xstrata’s Mick Davis was telling us how he was once the youngest cricketing umpire in South Africa,  explaining along the way the “intellectual purity” More…

Amor fati, Greg Hutchings

Greg Hutchings was, they still say, the “epitome” of the 80s entrepreneur.

He joined engineering co Tomkins in 1984 to lead the firm — in classic-corporate raider style — to a 350 per cent outperformance of its sector over the next seven years. More…

Snap news

Breaking pre-market news on Wednesday,

- Tesco is a “potential bidder” for Northern Rock — Times.

- Cattles terminates employment of six senior execs after independent review — statement.

- Greg Hutchings to step down from Lupus following negotiation of new banking arrangements — statement. More…

Bischoff poised to chair Lloyds

Sir Win Bischoff, former chairman of Citigroup, is being lined up as the next chairman of Lloyds Banking Group. The veteran British banker, who stepped down from Citi in February, has been asked by UK Financial Investments - the body that manages the government’s bank stakes - to help Lloyds integrate HBOS, More…

Kroes threatens UK bank break-ups

Lloyds Banking Group could be forced to sell its Halifax or Bank of Scotland branch networks to comply with EU anti-trust rules, Neelie Kroes, EU competition commissioner, warned Tuesday. Kroes, who also described RBS as “highly dangerous” to Europe’s single market, More…

JPMorgan winds down Brysam fund

JPMorgan Chase is winding down Brysam Global Partners,  a $600m-plus private equity fund launched in 2007 with its funds by former Citigroup executives Robert Willumstad and Marjorie Magner. The likely closure is a sign the crisis is forcing banks to be more conservative with their capital.