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’Smart bonds or just false Smailes?
Posted by Paul Murphy on Jul 07 15:07. Comment.One quote jumped out from the comprehensive analysis of the securitisation markets by Gillian Tett and Aline Van Duyn on Tuesday:
“The securitisation market is absolutely not dead. My team is busier than it’s ever been,” More…
This SIV shall come again
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jul 07 11:10. Comment.SIVs are dead, declares a Tuesday morning FT story.
About 95 per cent of the $400bn of assets held in the structured investment vehicles at their July 2007 peak, have now been disposed of according to ratings agency Fitch. More…
BarCap told to disclose Lehman information
Posted by Gwen Robinson on Jun 25 05:07. Comment.A UK bankruptcy judge ruled on Wednesday that Barclays Capital must comply with requests for information about its whirlwind acquisition of Lehman Brothers last September from Lehman’s creditors, who claim that BarCap enjoyed a windfall of more than $2bn in the deal. More…
Barclays prime
Posted by Sam Jones on May 29 10:15. Comment.Barclays continues its investment banking offensive.
Barely a week seems to go by these days without one of the senior bods at Barcap chucking the press a bone about the number of new hires the bank will make in the coming weeks/months/year. More…
BarSlap!
Posted by Paul Murphy on May 28 17:10. Comment.Tim Bond, the Barclays Capital strategist, is having none of this bearish pessimism that has gripped markets since Bill Gross said the US could lose its triple A status and Marc Faber invoked the Z-word when discussing the prospects for American inflation. More…
The investment bank is dead, long live the investment bank
Posted by Sam Jones on May 26 10:27. Comment.Fresh from hiring Mark Warham and Matthew Ponsonby from Morgan Stanley and Citigroup as the new co-heads of European M&A at the end of last week, Barclays is further beefing up its M&A advisory arm. Reports Bloomberg: More…
Oh no, now it’s “green acres”
Posted by Paul Murphy on May 11 09:31. Comment.What are they consuming at Barclays Capital? Miracle-Gro?
Last week the firm’s US economics team doubled their Q3 growth forecast for the American economy. Yes, DOUBLED – to 2 per cent, while the Q4 forecast was raised to 3 per cent. More…
Mystic Bob Diamond
Posted by Neil Hume on Apr 16 09:15. Comment.The ebullient BarCap boss has been looking into his crystal ball and guess what, the better than expected earnings reported by Goldman, Wells Fargo aren’t a “one-off” phenomenon.
They will be repeated, More…
Barclays steps up defence
Posted by Gwen Robinson on Mar 19 04:48. Comment.Barclays has stepped up its defence of its structured finance operations, as it seeks to defuse political pressure on its tax planning ahead of its possible participation in the government’s asset protection scheme. More…
Reflections on the Barclays/Lehman deal
Posted by Neil Hume on Sep 17 10:33. Comment.KBWBarclays has announced the purchase of Lehman Brothers’ North American investment banking and capital markets operations for £140m, together with property assets for around £0.8bn, taking the total consideration to c£1bn. More…
‘CEOs provide an attractive alternative to other structured products’
Posted by Paul Murphy on Jul 11 09:51. Comment.Not chief executives. Stupid. Collateralised equity-default obligations – one variety of financial alphabet soup which Barclays Capital reckons might offer a useful replacement for widely discredited CDOs and the like. More…
Covered bonds at Barcap
Posted by Sam Jones on Jul 04 11:33. Comment.A report earlier this week highlighted a somewhat surprising development in the ABS market: issuance up 158% in Q2 this year against Q1.
Now admittedly, we’re working up from the bottom here, so percentages need not indicate such a stunning a recovery in absolute terms. More…
Snap News
Posted by Sam Jones on Jul 02 07:22. Comment.The latest on Wednesday,
- Taylor Wimpey says it has not been able to raise capital – trading statement
- Balfour Beatty says trading continues to be strong, order book increased to £11.8bn – H1 More…
Monoline impact, UK banks edition
Posted by Sam Jones on Jun 06 11:39. Comment.A useful note out from Panmure in the wake of MBIA and Ambac’s downgrade last night. The most important point being:
Is this already priced-in? No.
As FT Alphaville earlier noted, though, it’s not necessarily direct exposures – via CDS counterparty risk for example – that banks are going to be impacted, More…
Boots made for walking, Barcap edition
Posted by Sam Jones on May 22 14:37. Comment.UBS might well be offloading debt at some pretty steep discounts, but it would appear other banks aren’t so desperate. Barcap is understood to be unwilling to sell its hefty portion of Alliance Boots buyout debt. More…
Barclays raid on ABN corporate finance underway
Posted by Paul Murphy on May 13 09:10. Comment.Away from the number-updating at HQ ahead of Thursday’s update, Barclays Capital was on the warpath on Tuesday, hiring a pride of corporate financiers from ABN Amro.
The announced team, led by Jitesh Gadhia, More…
Life, death and the current account deficit
Posted by Paul Murphy on Apr 14 09:12. Comment.We shouldn’t get in the way of the existential prose here:
Casual empiricism suggests that life is an imbalance that is ultimately corrected by death. For most of us that correction happens gradually over time, More…
SIV sails away
Posted by Sam Jones on Apr 04 11:58. Comment.KPMG have just announced their appointment as the receivers for Mainsail II – a $5bn SIV run by Solent Capital.
Mainsail breached its mandatory acceleration trigger way back in August last year, a technical default which put the SIV’s commercial paper noteholders in charge of its operation (or at least, More…
Trading today: more VaR, less income
Posted by Helen Thomas on Feb 19 14:59. Comment.How is BarCap like Goldman Sachs? It’s not the set up for a gag.
They both, on the face of it, are survivors of the credit trauma. But their latest numbers reflect that even those who have come through the credit crash with just minor cuts and bruising are finding times ever tougher. More…
All that’s missing at BarCap is a little clarity
Posted by Helen Thomas on Feb 19 09:31. Comment.The house that was built on structured credit appears to have weathered the storm – or at least better than many.
It hasn’t of course come out unscathed. Amid Barclays’ remarkably resilient year-end results, More…
BarCap joins Tchenguiz in gold mine stake
Posted by Helen Thomas on Oct 30 05:12. Comment.Barclays Capital and Robert Tchenguiz have built a stake in an Australian gold-mining company, Resolute Mining, reports the Telegraph. The move is part of an initiative by BarCap to use $1bn of its own More…
Private equity windfall in Saga-AA merger
Posted by Gwen Robinson on Jun 26 05:53. Comment.Saga and the AA announced merger plans on Monday that look set to net their three private equity owners a profit of nearly £2bn on the companies bought three years ago. The tie-up – creating a business worth £6.2bn and employing 11,100 – would aim to build a financial services company combinining Saga’s direct marketing and IT skills with the AA’s 15m membership. More…
Five more banks set to join Project Boat
Posted by Gwen Robinson on Jun 08 05:32. Comment.Project Boat, the consortium set up by a group of banks to compete with Europe’s exchanges in data provision, on Thursday announced that five more large banks had agreed to provide trading data to it, giving it critical mass in the reporting of off-market trades. More…
Banks to launch LiquidityHub in July
Posted by Gwen Robinson on May 08 09:16. Comment.Some of the world’s largest investment banks are seeking to wrest back control over the electronic trading they do with customers by launching a system to distribute bond and derivatives prices to clients, More…
BarCap, VaR and the canary in the commodities mine
Posted by Paul Murphy on Feb 20 14:30. Comment.The rise and rise of BarCap has been well documented. On Tuesday, a 55 per cent jump in pre-tax profits for 2006 helped offset continuing difficulties with bad debts and in the retail bank at Barclays. More…
US Airways rules out new bid for Delta
Posted by Helen Thomas on Jan 31 04:35. Comment.US Airways has ruled out returning with a fresh bid if Delta Air Lines emerges from bankruptcy as a standalone carrier, in a last-ditch attempt to rally creditor support for its hostile offer. Delta’s official creditors’ committee is expected to vote on Wednesday on the merits of the competing plans for the carrier, More…
BarCap treads fine line in repo market
Posted by Helen Thomas on Jan 25 04:15. Comment.Barclays Capital has built a potentially profitable position in one of the most widely traded German securities in the European markets, say bankers. The investment bank is believed to have accumulated a large position in the German Bund maturing in July 2015. More…
The BarCap Dodger lands £40m, reportedly
Posted by Paul Murphy on Jan 19 15:36. Comment.Move aside Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of the bulge-class on Wall Street. According to this week’s edition of The Business, the biggest salary in investment banking has been pocketed in London
Roger Jenkins, More…
Lucky for some
Posted by on Jan 10 04:26. Comment.Advertising the names of new managing directors is a banking ritual of the first weeks of January, notes Lombard. It was certainly hard to miss Barclays Capital’s full page in Tuesday’s FT, with its 72 pictures of the lucky promotees. More…
Some copper charts are scary, some are not
Posted by Paul Murphy on Jan 08 10:31. Comment.Old metals market hands used to say that if every household in China went electric, the world’s known resources of copper would be exhausted. But right it is concern over the sustainability of Chinese demand, More…