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’The piping out of the Hester
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Jan 30 08:51. Comment.Can’t beat a Sun headline to round off a national bonus neurosis:
(H/T Fleet Street Blues)
Doubtless Labour MPs — who left Stephen Hester crying into his £1.2m base salary as a consequence of threatening a parliamentary vote on the bonus — will be taking the good fight to Bob Diamond of Barclays, More…
Bizarre trade reasoning of the week?
Posted by Lisa Pollack on Jan 27 19:43. Comment.Courtesy of the Credit Strategy team at SocGen on Friday, the following trade idea:
Buy Barclays 5-year senior or sub CDS vs the iTraxx Main: Barclays is one of the largest sellers of CDS on European sovereigns, More…
Go directly to the ECB, do not pass Go, do not collect €200
Posted by Izabella Kaminska on Jan 24 13:37. Comment.Serving at the ECB’s pleasure: billions, if not trillions, of euro-denominated assets pledged as collateral for three years of funding.
And while it’s banged up by being pledged at the central bank… More…
Liquidity support for the UK banks
Posted by Neil Hume on Nov 28 09:59. Comment.Some good news for the battered UK banking sector?
HM Treasury is going to announce special liquidity measures to help Lloyds, Barclays and RBS get through a funding hump in the first quarter of next year. More…
Snap news
Posted by Neil Hume on Nov 11 07:54. Comment.Breaking pre-market news on Friday,
- IAG targeting an operating profit target of €1.5 billion in 2015 — statement.
- H1 results from Richemont top expectations; company confident on outlook — statement. More…
Statement re: worthless equity
Posted by Neil Hume on Nov 07 11:03. Comment.What the hell has happened at DTZ?
A couple of weeks ago the UK property services group was negotiating a takeover with its biggest shareholder. Those talks collapsed, the company put itself up for sale and it’s now worthless. More…
Snap news
Posted by Neil Hume on Oct 31 07:52. Comment.Breaking pre-market news on Monday,
- Total income at Barclays Capital (excluding own credit) down 22 per cent in Q3 — statement.
- Homserve suspends all UK marketing activities in echoes of problems at CPP Group — statement and report. More…
UK banks and recession
Posted by Neil Hume on Oct 18 09:51. Comment.From stress test to recession.
Merrill Lynch has on Tuesday made some savage revisions to its forecasts for UK banks to reflect a more bearish economic outlook.
The usually optimistic Michael Helsby now expects Lloyds Banking Group to make a loss in 2012 and Barclays and RBS to post big year-on-year drops in earnings. More…
Taking the stress test to nine
Posted by Neil Hume on Oct 12 10:59. Comment.We are still to hear from Europe’s Dick Bove on Wednesday’s FT banking exclusive…
(That’s up from seven per cent on Tuesday)
… but we do have the thoughts of Andrew Lim at Espirito Santo and Michael Helsby of Merrill Lynch. More…
ICB – the market reacts
Posted by Neil Hume on Sep 12 10:14. Comment.Compare and contrast.
Selected UK banks on Monday morning:
Selected European banks on Monday morning:
The outperformance of the UK banks is probably not surprising. After huge More…
Snap news
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Sep 02 07:56. Comment.Breaking pre-market news on Friday,
- LSE confirms it’s bidding for a majority stake in LCH.Clearnet – FT, Bloomberg.
- US set to sue over a dozen banks over misrepresentation of mortgage securities – report. More…
ICBaiting
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Sep 01 11:04. Comment.Britain’s biggest banks are set to escape any major restructuring until after the planned 2015 general election, amid a political consensus that they should focus on business lending to sustain the faltering economy … More…
Celebrity knife catching with Lord Sugar
Posted by Neil Hume on Aug 15 16:38. Comment.
In the next episode Donald Trump backs up the truck and buys BofA.
The blame game – UK banks edition
Posted by Neil Hume on Aug 15 15:37. Comment.Thought the recent sell-off in UK banking stocks was due to the eurozone debt crisis, funding jitters or even the downgrade of the USAA+?
Well, you were wrong. It’s all about regulation. Gold plating regulation to be precise. More…
Snap news
Posted by Neil Hume on Aug 02 07:57. Comment.Breaking pre-market news on Tuesday,
- Half year profits at Barclays down by a third; however results beat expectations — statement.
- BNP Paribas takes provision of €534m for Greek debt; announces second quarter results — statement. More…
UK banks and the stress test
Posted by Neil Hume on Jul 18 10:42. Comment.Barclays sounded reasonably chipper when the stress test results were released late on Friday afternoon.
- BARC SAYS THROUGHOUT THE STRESSED PERIOD BARCLAYS REMAINS PROFITABLE AND ITS CAPITAL RESOURCES INCREASE. More…
Where’s the biggest Italian exposure?
Posted by Neil Hume on Jul 12 11:06. Comment.Competition time.
Which European banks have the greatest exposure to Italy?
Give up?
Here’s the answer, via Collins Stewart.
By contrast, our Buy-rated BNP Paribas and Barclays have substantial exposures to Italy overall. More…
And the winning SPR bids are…
Posted by Izabella Kaminska on Jul 05 09:45. Comment.Presenting, the SPR Awards summary, via the US Department of Energy.
It’s a vivid account of who bought what in last month’s emergency $30m barrel oil release:
Nothing too surprising. Mostly, More…
Barclays and the VZZ implosion [updated]
Posted by Izabella Kaminska on Jul 04 10:30. Comment.(*Please see below for response from Barclays.)
It was launched with a loud fanfare from Barclays about being an enhanced antidote to the decaying effect of the Vix future roll.
But last week something happened which many who were invested in the product had overlooked. More…
Marcus Agius – Right or wrong? [updated]
Posted by Neil Hume on Jul 04 10:14. Comment.The current depressed share prices of Western banks reflect the nervousness and uncertainty of investors as to where the final decisions in this extended round of regulatory reform will end up. More capital may reduce the probability of a bank failing but it can never reduce this probability to zero. More…
Banco Diamante Mediterráneo
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Jun 07 14:56. Comment.Definitely, Barclays is bullishness in Spain. Himself CEO of the company, Bob Diamond , has been recognized, and several sources familiar with the situation confirmed that the British bank is considering comprehensively the status of CAM [Caja del Mediterraneo] and has asked for some type of guarantee to the Bank of Spain to be with her. More…
Whoops! Ring-fencing retail banks could backfire
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jun 06 15:10. Comment.Regulatory snafu anyone?
The UK’s Independent Banking Commission (IBC) recommended in April that banks start ‘ring-fencing’ their retail operations so that large banks are able to fail without endangering depositors. More…
The Spanish acquisition
Posted by Neil Hume on Jun 02 09:10. Comment.This will probably go down like a cup of cold sick with Barclays investors — an acquisition of a Spanish caja accompanied by a £4bn-£5bn rights issue.
But that is what could be on cards according to Arturo De Frias Marques, More…
Moody’s on Her Majesty’s bail-in
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on May 24 08:32. Comment.No fewer than fourteen UK banks and building societies placed on review for downgrade by Moody’s on Tuesday — plus negative outlooks for Barclays and HSBC:
Bank of Ireland (UK) plc (Baa3/P-3); Co-Operative Bank plc (A2/P-1); More…
Snap news
Posted by Neil Hume on May 09 07:52. Comment.Breaking pre-market news on Monday,
- Barclays takes £1bn provision to cover the costs of miss-selling payment protection insurance (PPI) — statement.
- British Bankers Association drops PPI appeal — statement. More…
A little Protium light
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Apr 28 16:56. Comment.For no reason other than to have it out in the open somewhere -presenting the financial filings of C12 Capital Management LLP:
It’s controlled by C12 Capital Management Holding Ltd – as in the guardians of Protium, More…
Protium’s acid reflux [updated]
Posted by Neil Hume on Apr 28 10:18. Comment.Plenty of column inches on Thursday are devoted to the wind up of Protium, the Cayman Islands-based vehicle created by Barclays to warehouse a portfolio of highly toxic credit market assets.
According to the FT, More…
Protium’s coming home
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Apr 27 09:39. Comment.Eighteen months, $6.39bn of toxic assets, a $12bn loan and a pandaemonium of accounting shenanigans later…
…We’ll ask again, what exactly was the point?
Protium is coming home. That’ll be the arm’s-length accounting trick to shift rubbish assets away from Barclays’ trading book in late 2009 into an independently run, More…
Barclays disappoints
Posted by Neil Hume on Apr 27 09:20. Comment.Barclays has kicked off the first quarter reporting season for the UK banking sector on Wednesday.
But its trading update hasn’t gone down too well in the City of London.
That’s because headline revenues were lower than expected, More…