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Category Archives: banking
Pandit Skewered
Remember the stupid email with which Vikram Pandit spammed all his customers? Antony Currie has now published a pitch-perfect parody over at BreakingViews, while even getting some serious analysis in at the same time: I have also created some new … Continue reading
Great Ad Slogans Of Our Time: “Jump, Rabbit, Jump!”
I kinda love the new advertising campaign from UniCredit. Here’s the copy from the ad above: Success stories have always started with someone doing things differently and not saying “Maybe”, but “Definitely”. So jump, rabbit, jump! This is the spirit … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Leverage Datapoint of the Day
I’ve somehow managed to avoid so much as mentioning the Clear Channel saga on this blog until now; for some reason I just couldn’t get excited about it. But Heidi Moore gets a good quote in her summing up today … Continue reading
Posted in banking, private equity
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Let Them Eat Bear
Now that’s what I call a power lunch: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke lunched on March 11 with a Who’s Who of Wall Street leaders, including JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon, three days before the central bank rescued … Continue reading
Posted in banking, fiscal and monetary policy, regulation
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Why Citi Can’t Be a Global Universal Bank
Vikram Pandit still needs to do some work on the Vision Thing, I think. His big idea, as unveiled on Friday? Citigroup is – wait for it – a "global universal bank". At this point, he’s perilously close to a … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Citibank Germany: For the Chop?
Apparently Citigroup is considering selling off as much as $400 billion in "non-core assets", including its retail banking operations in Germany. Is Citibank Germany really non-core? It would seem so. I bank with Citi in the US, and on Wednesday … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Bear Fight
Landon Thomas has a wonderful piece, full of color, on the spat between Jimmy Cayne and Ace Greenberg. Boy can these multimillionaires get petty: Told that Mr. Cayne, with whom he worked for four decades, had lost much of his … Continue reading
Posted in banking, leadership
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Citi Never Sleeps
Yes, that is the Citi’s Official everything-old-is-new-again slogan. Here’s a real ad (you’ll have to watch a short ad in order to watch the longer ad for Citi, because, um, this is the internet) followed by a fake ad from … Continue reading
Vikram Pandit, COO of Citigroup
David Enrich has gotten the first interview with Vikram Pandit since Citigroup announced that "substantially all" of the investor’s in Pandit’s Old Lane hedge fund had deserted it. The bad news is that either he didn’t ask about Old Lane, … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Is Bank of America Rethinking Countrywide’s Value?
At some point, whenever somebody is trying to value a financial institution, a term like "tangible equity" or "book value" will start being thrown around. They’re different ways of playing the assets-minus-liabilities game, but that’s where the problems start: if … Continue reading
Vikram Pandit’s Amazing Disappearing Hedge Fund
Eric Dash reports that investors in Vikram Pandit’s Old Lane funds redeemed "substantially all" of their funds when they were given the opportunity in late March. Old Lane, which had $4.5 billion in funds under management last year, is now … Continue reading
Posted in banking, hedge funds, leadership
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Preventing Banks From Getting Too Big To Fail
An intriguing idea from Alexander Campbell: Why should we let banks get "too big to fail?" Why not simply impose exposure limits – not capital requirements, which can be gamed, but hard limits, backed by sanctions – set as a … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Did the CBOT Strongarm Bob Rubin?
Are you in the mood for 4,000 carefully-balanced words on the subject of Bob Rubin and the degree to which he may or may not be responsible for Citigroup’s recent woes? Well, here you go. The article’s good, but it’s … Continue reading
Posted in banking, regulation
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Is There a Need for NYbor?
Are European banks significantly riskier than American banks? Looking at RBS’s decision to raise $24 billion in new capital, it certainly seems that way: the move will take RBS’s tier-one capital from a normal-for-Europe 4.5% up to a normal-for-the-US 6%. … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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How UBS Lost Money on Super-Senior Bonds
Yesterday I speculated that the reason banks got stuck with so many toxic super-senior CDO tranches was that they were unable to sell the things. Turns out, not so much. Check out the UBS report on its subprime losses (pdf … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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RBS: Getting Stronger by Raising Equity
Even by this month’s outsize standards, the $24 billion that RBS is raising in new capital is an absolutely enormous sum. But it’s much more than a replenishment, it’s a significant augmentation: "In the light of developments during March — … Continue reading
How to Make Fake Profits in the CDO Game
Gillian Tett has a good column on the super-senior game, in which she chastises banks for losing sums "larger than the gross domestic product of many countries" by entering into "a humongous, misplaced bet on a carry trade that was … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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Why Private Equity Shops are Recapitalizing Banks
Many banks are raising capital these days; the latest to hit the headlines are Washington Mutual, raising $7 billion from TPG, and National City, which is getting something north of $7 billion from a syndicate led by Corsair Capital. Such … Continue reading
Posted in banking, private equity
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SocGen CEO Finally Resigns
Finally. SocGen CEO Daniel Bouton will officially resign as of May 12, and it seems like SocGen’s head of investment banking, Jean-Pierre Mustier, won’t last much longer either. Bouton will remain as chairman, but my guess is that’s a face-saving … Continue reading
Posted in banking, defenestrations, governance
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Another Horrible Quarter for Citi
Citigroup’s earnings this quarter were horrible. So what’s the reaction? Internally, it seems weak: Citi’s announced the culling of 9,000 jobs, which sounds like a lot until you step back and look at the big picture. As CFO Gary Crittenden … Continue reading
JP Morgan: $6 Billion Capital Raising is “Routine”
Joe Giannone managed to get someone at JP Morgan to try to explain what on earth is going on with their $6 billion issue of preferred stock: The bank declined to comment on the transaction, but our sources at JPMorgan … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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JP Morgan’s Really Weird Capital Raise
File under "WTF?": JPMorgan Chase & Co., hours after saying the credit-market crisis is almost over, made plans to raise $6 billion in its biggest offering of perpetual preferred stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The non-cumulative securities priced … Continue reading
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Merrill’s Six Mistakes
The WSJ has a wonderful narrative today of how Merrill Lynch managed to get so badly hit by the mortgage-bond crisis: apparently it’s going to take even more write-downs in the first quarter, making an unprecedented three successive quarterly losses. … Continue reading
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The Latest Victim of the Credit Crunch: Libor
Carrick Mollenkamp has a worrying piece in the WSJ today about Libor in general, and the much-benchmarked three-month Libor fixing in particular. Jitters have made many banks unwilling to extend loans to each other for more than one week. As … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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Why Wachovia Needs That $7 Billion
Yesterday, I asked why Wachovia needed another $7 billion in fresh equity, and suggested it might be because it overpaid for Golden West Financial and was considering writing down part of the $25.5 billion acquisition cost. There’s a big problem … Continue reading
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