- The Greek government
- One or two French banks
- The Finnish government
- Spanish banks, UK banks, hmm a few banks really
These are just some of the world-class institutions Joseph has managed to annoy with stuff he’s dug up over the years. He joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010.
Joseph likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)
He doesn’t have a finance background.
Dick Bove’s focus is on this?
The ex-Rochdale banking analyst, now at Rafferty, has found a hook in the Bloomberg terminal-snooping story for his latest note: Read more
This is one way to respond to the mess Euroland is in over who should make the calls for recapitalising banks…
The European Banking Authority is delaying its next banking stress test to 2014, to wait for both new asset-quality reviews and the ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism (so is it to wait for Wolfgang Schaeuble?): Read more
The risks here are major embarrassment to the ChX, HMRC, the LBS, you and me, not least if GS withdraw from the Code
‘ChX’ = 
Read more
All-time highs for the S&P 500, the Dow — and Google. The company’s shares hit $916.38 during trading, closing above $915, a 3.3 per cent gain. The S&P 500 rose 0.51 per cent (Reuters).
Elon Musk will buy $100m of stock in his company’s offering. Tesla Motors announced the raising of common shares and convertible notes to repay its loan from the US Department of Energy (Tesla statement). Read more
Quite a lot to ponder really. Members of the IMF’s executive board were set to meet on Wednesday to discuss whether to approve lending to Cyprus, more or less behind closed doors.
But maybe not so much this time. It looks like Stockwatch in Cyprus has obtained a copy of the members’ comments on the Cypriot bailout — a rather high-level internal document to find its way to the public… and it makes for fascinating reading. Read more
Abuse of official secrecy. It’s been one of the more corrosive but — by definition — shadier aspects of the eurozone crisis.
It can take the form of a report on money-laundering in Cyprus. Or the opaque process by which Troika debt sustainability analyses are drawn up. Emergency liquidity assistance to banks, even. Read more
We suggest watching this story…
It looks like EU competition regulators paid some unannounced visits to oil company offices around Europe on Tuesday — note the reason: Read more
US stocks barely budged; the S&P 500 was up 0.07 points to close at 1,633.77 (Reuters).
Bloomberg has been caught in another leak of client data. More than ten thousand confidential trader messages were left online for several years, accessible through a Google search, until taken down on Monday. Bloomberg said it was considering “all potential legal” actions after the apparently accidental leak. It emerged last week that Goldman complained to that the organisation’s journalists were able to track its employees’ activities on data terminals (Financial Times). Read more
Alternatively, what price to taxpayers for political pride.
Spotted in HM Treasury’s collection of responses to the idea of letting Scotland issue its own bonds later this decade — a… wide range of guesses about how they might be priced: Read more
That’s a big (click to enlarge) chart from Moody’s on how they define “shadow banking” in China, via a Q&A comment on the growth of the sector. Read more
This is a speech Ed Miliband made on “stewardship” banking last year… at the Co-op.
This is a speech by George Osborne hailing 2013 as the year we changed British banks, including the planned sale of Lloyds branches to… the Co-op.
Some light securitisation reading on Thursday; actually, more like some general ‘how much of western capitalism might be insolvent, anyway?’ reading.
It’s the UK Supreme Court’s judgment in the the Eurosail case.
Compare (Reuters, March 25):
“It was made clear to our Latvian friends that if they want to join the euro, they should not provide a haven for Russian money exiting Cyprus,” a euro zone central banker said.
Contrast (Mr Kristaps Zakulis — financial regulator, Riga, April 24): Read more
Well, this was fun while it lasted. Now what did it mean?
Click to enlarge the document capping a weird week in the pari passu saga:
It’s an order from the Second Circuit on Thursday, denying an unusual request filed on Monday by the Italian retail investors who count themselves among Argentina’s holdouts.
Although looking back at it, was the unusual or just ahead of the curve? Read more
Stocks edged forward; the S&P 500 rose 0.4 per cent to 1,585.16 as weekly jobless claims improved, and corporate earnings continued to come in ahead of expectations (Reuters).
US bankers have begun to support European peers against Fed plans to impose tighter capital requirements on their US operations. Executives from JPMorgan and Goldman have pressed policymakers on the proposal for foreign banks’ US subsidiaries to hold a minimum level of 7 per cent core capital to risk-weighted assets by 2015. Other US banks fear the rise of “Balkanised” regulation around the world (Financial Times). Liquidity rules proposed by the Fed have also drawn the ire of European banks (New York Times). Read more
There’s been some thought-provoking revisionism floating around about Cyprus lately.
The gist seems to be this: Why not push bank bail-in policy in the eurozone much harder, right into uninsured depositors if need be, if Cyprus has not (yet?) budged most gauges of bank funding from their current calm. And more importantly, when there is a vicious circle to resolve. Read more
Wall Street closed up, fake tweets notwithstanding. The S&P 500 rose 1.04 per cent, ending at 1,578.77. It fell 0.85 per cent in minutes on Tuesday on a hacked, faked Associated Press tweet about explosions at the White House (Reuters).
Apple unveiled “the largest single share repurchase authorization in history”. It added $5obn to its existing stock buyback plan, boosting a now-$100bn programme to return cash to investors by the end of 2015 (Apple capital return statement). Apple also boosted its dividend 15 per cent, to $3.05 per share. “In conjunction with the expanded return of capital program, the Company plans to borrow,” it added, promising details at a later date. Apple will not repatriate offshore cash as part of its plans, executives said in the earnings call. Read more
Sometimes, the courts of England and Wales taketh away when it comes to the law on restructuring bonds and getting debtors out of holes. And other times they giveth.
A landmark decision by the England and Wales Court of Appeal on Monday falls under the latter… Read more
…the UK is a must to avoid. Its Gilts are resting on a bed of nitroglycerine. High debt with the potential to devalue its currency present high risks for bond investors. In addition, its interest rates are already artificially influenced by accounting standards that at one point last year produced long-term real interest rates of 1/2 % and lower. Read more
With its latest submission in this Court, the Republic of Argentina continues its long and consistent pattern of defaulting on its contractual obligations, defying the laws of the United States (which its contracts expressly invoked), and showing contempt for the courts to whose jurisdiction it unreservedly submitted. The government of Argentina plainly believes the rule of law does not apply to it…
Guess that’s a no, then. Read more
File under: Argentina’s battle with its holdouts and the effects thereof on pari passu clauses in sovereign bond contracts elsewhere in the world — with a special crossover to the changing legal status of official lenders in the eurozone crisis.
Spot the difference edition. Read more
Not the full-on collision of the two which initially popped up in Cyprus.
Still, we missed this slapdown by the ECB… directed at Spanish plans for the deposit guarantee fund there to buy out retail investors from illiquid preferred shares and subordinated debt in unlisted banks, when those banks are being restructured. Read more
Fresh off the US Supreme Court’s order list on Monday:
Not far off 1,600 for the S&P 500. The index closed at 1,593.37, a 0.3 per cent gain, following optimistic data on weekly jobless claims (Reuters).
The Bank of Japan will interpret its new inflation target “very flexibly”, its governor Haruhiko Kuroda said, stressing that the central bank’s attempt to double the Japanese money supply would not blow bubbles. “If there is any serious asset market bubble appearing or approaching, of course we will take necessary measures,” Kuroda added (Financial Times). Read more
