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Reuters blog archive
from Unstructured Finance:
While you were sleeping (the China ISM number came out)
By Katya Wachtel
For Omega Advisors' Steve Einhorn, the window of sleep-able hours is narrowing.
"One needs to know whats going on around the world. I turn in around midnight so I can monitor what's going on in China and Japan," Einhorn, vice chairman at Leon Cooperman's $7billion fund, said at the Reuters Global Investment Summit last week. "A decade ago, did I and most others focus on what's going on in China? No. Now we wait for the November manufacturing index for China to come out. The day is longer because of that. I am up around 6 in the morning; I review what has gone on overnight in Asia and in Europe. I spend an hour in front of the machine at home, going through data and news releases" before he's out the door.
This was undoubtedly the most common refrain when we asked some of Wall Street's savviest money managers and investors how they begin their day, and with what must-read literature, during the week-long summit.
Jeff Kronthal, who was the head of Global Credit, Real Estate and Structured Products at Merrill Lynch and now runs investment firm KLS Diversified, is in the office no later than 7 am for that very reason. "The world is working," he said, and even though he manages 40 people now instead of 3,500, "there is so much going on overseas, that you need to know what's going on in Europe, what the China numbers were" before it is possible to begin the day. "When I started at Solomon Brothers, it didn't really matter what went on overseas," Kronthal, who worked at Solomon for a decade until July 1988, said on Tuesday.
"You can tell by the bags under my eyes I agree with that sentiment," said Teresa Heitsenrether, who runs JP Morgan's Prime Brokerage. "It's a 24/7 type of proposition."
from Bethany McLean:
Case against Bear and JPMorgan provides little cheer
Last week, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is the co-chairman of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group – which President Obama formed earlier this year to investigate who was responsible for the misconduct that led to the financial crisis – filed a complaint against JPMorgan Chase. The complaint, which seeks an unspecified amount in damages (but says that investors lost $22.5 billion), alleges widespread wrongdoing at Bear Stearns in the run-up to the financial crisis. JPMorgan Chase, of course, acquired Bear in 2008. Apparently, this is just the beginning of a Schneiderman onslaught. “We do expect this to be a matter of very significant liability, and there are others to come that will also reflect the same quantum of damages,” Schneiderman said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We’re looking at tens of billions of dollars, not just by one institution, but by quite a few.”
The prevailing opinion seems to be, Yay! Someone is finally making, or at least trying to make, the banks pay for their sins. But while there is one big positive to the complaint, overall I don’t think there’s any reason to cheer.
from Breakingviews:
Maybe Jamie Dimon wasn’t so clever with Bear
By Antony Currie
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Maybe Jamie Dimon wasn’t so clever with Bear Stearns after all. Back in March 2008, the JPMorgan chief executive looked pretty shrewd picking up the collapsed investment bank on the cheap, even after raising his offer five-fold to $10 a share. Dimon stuffed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with $29 billion of Bear’s worst-looking mortgage assets. Not only did those securities wind up making money, but a new lawsuit filed by New York’s top lawman shows that JPMorgan didn’t cover all its bases.
from Unstructured Finance:
Libore? The real scandal is still CDOs
By Matthew Goldstein
There is an opaque financial market where pricing is determined by a cadre of Wall Street banks and private emails show that behind the scenes many in the market don't even believe in what they are doing.
The Libor price fixing scandal? Sure. But what I'm talking about here is the market for the CDOs, which at the end of the day you can still argue did more harm to the world financial system than the allegations now emerging from the Libor scandal.
from Christopher Whalen:
“Reckless Endangerment” and the unwritten history of Washington
Some disclosures: I review the new book, "Reckless Endangerment: How outsized ambition, greed, and corruption led to economic Armageddon", by Gretchen Morgenson and Josh Rosner, not because both authors are my friends. They are. Nor do I review this book because it concisely summarizes the confluence of public policy and private avarice we all know as the subprime mortgage crisis. It does, and more.
No, I review this book because it names names. Names and more names, one after another, in that prosecutorial serial fashion readers of Morgenson know very well. The kind of relentless recitation of the facts and names meant to allow readers to follow the logical chain of a criminal act to an indictment.
from Funds Hub:
Service providers flag hedge fund health
Fund service providers were back in force at the GAIM hedge funds conference in Monaco this year, a small sign that the industry, while not exactly brimming with confidence, has at least crawled out of the doldrums of 2009.
The service providers including fund auditors, custodians and prime brokers, have drawn in their horns since the early years of the millennium when they were often the main sponsors of cocktails and dinners at large hedge fund events.
from Financial Regulatory Forum:
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
Live coverage of the “The Shadow Banking System” hearing.
from Funds Hub:
Morning line-up: Goldman trader is off, Calpers’ fees, Bear’s ‘no’ to Paulson
Goldman's "fabulous Fab" Tourre is off - Reuters
U.S. pension fund Calpers negotiates private equity fees - Reuters
Lehman was victim of the crisis, Fuld- FT
Bear Stearns rejected deal with Paulson - Guardian
from Breakingviews:
Greek rescue echoes Bear Stearns, sort of
Is Greece a sovereign version of Bear Stearns? The world had better hope not. But it's tempting to draw parallels between an incipient Hellenic bailout and the rescue of Wall Street's biggest outlier.
There are of course huge differences between a smallish investment bank and a Mediterranean state. But the European Union's challenge is remarkably similar to the one Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke faced nearly two years ago: how to help out one of its weakest constituents without encouraging moral hazard and further contagion or complacency.
from Funds Hub:
Morning line up
Hedge fund stories from the past 24 hours from Reuters and elsewhere:
EU move to curb hedge, private equity manager pay - Financial Times
Hedge fund strategies post positive returns in October - Hedgeweek
Ex-head of Santander Swiss hedge arm on Madoff charges - Financial Times
BlueCrest to shift staff to Geneva - Financial Times
