from MacroScope:
Is that a bailout in your pocket?
There was an awkward moment of tension at the Milken Global Conference in Los Angeles, when a buysider on one panel asked a Wall Street banker whether he had pocketed taxpayers' bailout cash.
The tit-for-tat began when several panelists at the "Outlook for M&A" session began griping about the U.S. government's tax policy, which they said dissuades corporations from bringing overseas profits back home because of punitive taxes.
The panelists – including James Casey, co-head of global debt capital markets for JP Morgan, Anthony Armstrong, an investment banker at Credit Suisse, and Raymond McGuire, global head of corporate and investment banking at Citigroup – predicted that the M&A market might get a big boost if the U.S. were to offer a tax holiday of sorts for repatriated profits.
They also suggested such a move could be a boon for hiring and economic growth: Tilman Fertitta, a panelist who is chairman and CEO of the consumer products company Landry's, said he would certainly feel the incentive to do more deals and invest more at home if he could bring back his overseas profits without being taxed. He even wondered why Mitt Romney and Barack Obama hadn't made such a proposal a key point in their election campaigning.
But just before the executives could launch into a profit repatriation samba, another panelist stopped the music.
Maria Boyazny, CEO of distressed debt investing firm MB Global Partners, pointed out that previous government actions that were supposedly intended to spur the economy had only saved Too Big To Fail banks and bolstered the financial industry's fortunes. ("No offense to anybody on the panel," she said in that but-I'm-going-to-offend-you-anyway tone.)
In the intervening time, she said, corporate America has only gotten richer by cutting jobs and hoarding capital. She then wondered aloud where all the $700 billion in bailout money and trillions of dollars in Federal Reserve stimulus programs had actually gone.
A scar on Bahrain’s financial marketplace
Bahrain’s civil unrest — which had a one-year anniversary this week — has taken a toll on the local economy and left a deep scar on the Gulf state’s aspiration to become an international financial hub.
A new paper from the Sovereign Wealth Fund Initiative, a research programme at Center for Emerging Market Enterprises (CEME) at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, examines how the political instability of 2011 is threatening Bahrain’s efforts in the past 30 years to diversify its economy and develop the financial centre.
Asim Ali from University of Western Ontario and Shatha Al-Aswad, assistant vice president at State Street, argue in the paper that even before the revolt, Bahrain lagged in building the foundations of a truly international hub in the face of competition from Dubai and Qatar.
Unlike DIFC (Dubai International Financial Centre) and QFC (Qatar Financial Centre), Bahrain insists upon local labor; currently 70% of employees in its banking and financial services industry are Bahrainis. Bahrain’s reluctance to hire non-resident talent has made Dubai…an alternative for those investors looking for a centre with more flexible labor practices such as DIFC provide… The constraints – a lack of formalized institutional and regulatory structure, along with an ad hoc business environment, underdeveloped infrastructure, and under-supplied skilled workforce – have negatively affected its growth and potential to become the financial gateway in the Middle East.
Then came the crackdown of protesters.
Its ruling Al-Khalifa family unleashed a ferocious extra-judicial crackdown against the opposition. It appeared the standard axiom of Gulf ruling families – securing legitimacy and counter-acting political opposition through redistribution of oil wealth – was sorely insufficient to address citizens’ grievances. These led not only to international opprobrium of the Bahrain government but also made foreign businesses reconsider Bahrain as a financial center – with many foreign business shifting workers and operations to Dubai… Indeed, confidence in Bahrain as a financial hub took a major blow along with its image as a stable, tolerant and liberal state.
It remains to be seen what impact last year’s pro-democracy uprising will have on the state of Bahrain and its ambition as a regional financial gateway– especially at a time when Dubai (DIFC) and Qatar (QFC) remain serious contenders to become dominant financial centers in the Middle East.
Bahrain had shown perseverance and strength in building its financial center, but democracy efforts and human right violations were able to threaten the hard work of more than 30 years.
Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat, which is leading the country’s efforts to diversify its economy away from the hydrocarbon sector, suffered a series of ratings downgrades last year as a result of sovereign downgrades. Mumtalakat is rated triple-B.
Regulate Us? We’re Hurt.
The popular image of Wall Street institutions involve swagger: the ability to absorb the competition’s blows, taking no prisoners, raking in the money… until it seems like the government could force them to rein in their excesses. It’s at that point that Wall Street’s tough guys suddenly sound wounded.
In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, an article about the derivatives legislation being considered in Washington has this comment from Bank of America spokesman James Mahoney—the bank is “concerned that we won’t be able to provide our customers with financial products they need to manage risk and grow and that foreign banks will step in and take that business.”
There are several layers of bruised egos at work here – the assertion that America’s economic future is imperiled by the regulation of derivatives, and the boogeyman specter of a “foreign bank” that will take over. Add the obligatory reference to customers (which recalls the braying from various corners about how the threat to BP’s dividends are really an attack on “pensioners” and “retirees”), and there’s a lot of guilt being laid on in the statement.
Our question: Is Bank of America right? Every time the government gets ready to regulate any business, members of those communities warn of doom, apocalypse, you name it, and start using buzzwords like “risk appetite” and “free markets,” no matter how stifling those things can be if left completely unchecked.
Kevin Flynn of Avalon Asset Management put it well in his commentary this past weekend: “Talk of regulating any derivatives market, and the players immediately get on the phone to the press and politicians, feeding them lurid tales of vanishing liquidity and withering markets, killing all hope of economic recovery.”
Are we at such a pivotal moment on Capitol Hill? Or did Chicken Little just open a checking account at Bank of America?
To put it simply: Paul Volcker is right.
If we don’t have the kahonas to rein in the banks right now after all that has happened, then we might as well tell them to just go ahead and do what ever they want. We’ll just keep on picking up the pieces when they fall and pass the cost along to our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and …
Act now or forever hold your (b)-piece, Obama
It appears the penny has finally dropped in Washington.
Bank bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, has unveiled a report that outlines the perilous state of the U.S. commercial mortgage sector, which left unaided could spark “economic damage that could touch the lives of nearly every American”.
The Havard Law School Professor and her panel colleagues are talking the kind of apocalyptic language that may just shock the White House and its star policy advisers into facing problems banks have now rather simply obsess about those they may or may not encounter in the future.
The global banking system may well need some kind of Volcker-esque guidelines to curb the next generation of excessive risk-takers but critics say Obama is putting the cart before the horse in his efforts to haul the economy back on track.
Certainly, the U.S. government has toiled long and hard to stabilise the U.S. housing market, like propping up Fannie and Freddie and their dysfunctional offspring, but the subprime mess has distracted attentions from the toxic commercial market, where the clean-up task is no less important.
Warren reckons there is about $1.4 trillion worth of outstanding commercial real estate loans in the U.S that will need to be refinanced before 2014, and about half of them are already “underwater,” an industry term that refers to loans larger than the property’s current value.
But some believe bank brains are wasting too much time figuring out how the so-called “Volcker rule” might affect their operations and future profitability, instead of getting their arms around the real estate loans that could snap their institutions in two long before the anti-risk measures even take hold.
has it ever occured to people that the Obama administration is not there to fix anything ? just asking
Bosch Boss Bashes Bloated Bank Bonuses
Everyone complains about fat banker bonuses, but Bosch Chief Executive Franz Fehrenbach is taking the debate to a new level. The head of the world’s biggest car parts maker is going to review ties with its financiers and may break off business with those that pay excessive bonuses, he told reporters. “We find it irresponsible if some big banks more or less go back to business as usual before the crisis despite what we have gone through,” he said. He cited HSBC and JP Morgan as positive examples of good corporate behaviour. Of course it’s easier to be picky when you are unlisted and generate huge cash flow.
from DealZone:
R.I.P. Salomon Brothers
It's official: Salomon Brothers has been completely picked apart.
Citigroup's agreement to sell Phibro, its profitable but controversial commodity trading business, to Occidental Petroleum today puts the finishing touches on a slow erosion of a once-dominant bond trading and investment banking firm.
When Sandy Weill (pictured left) staged his 1998 coup -- combining Citicorp and Travelers, Salomon Brothers was a strong albeit humbled investment banking and trading force. Yet little by little, a succession of financial crises, Wall Street fashion and regulatory intervention has whittled away at the once-dominant firm.
Not long after the Citigroup was formed, proprietary fixed income trading -- once the domain of John Meriwether, was shut down after the Asian debt crisis fueled losses that Weill could not stomach.
The Salomon name disappeared long ago as investment bankers and underwriters were rebranded Citigroup Global Markets.
Now Phibro, the former Philips Brothers that merged with Salomon in the early 1980s, is to be cast off because its energy traders made too much money when the rest of the bank suffered losses and required a $45 billion of taxpayer bailout.
from Summit Notebook:
Tax evaders on the run
By Neil Chatterjee The U.S. has promised it will hunt down tax evaders. And it seems tax evaders are on the run. DBS bank, based in the growing offshore financial centre of Singapore, told Reuters it had been approached by U.S. citizens asking for its private banking services. But when told they would have to sign U.S. tax declaration forms, the potential clients disappeared. Swiss banks also approached DBS on the hope they could offload troublesome U.S. clients to a location that so far has not been reached by the strong arms of Washington or Brussels. DBS said no thanks. In fact many private banks and boutique advisors now seem to be avoiding U.S. clients. Will this spread to other nationalities, as governments invest in tax spies and tax havens invest in white paint? Is this the end of offshore private private banking?
from Summit Notebook:
Geneva is for wealth management
Even for an American who's not wealthy, Geneva has a reputation as a global centre for wealth management - the place the world's rich come to stash their money and (they hope) make it grow.
But you don't necessarily expect it to be so aggressive -- after all, the rich tend to be demure when it comes to their banking.
Imagine one reporter's surprise, then, on arriving in the airport in Geneva and seeing bank ads everywhere. Think of the casino adds in Las Vegas's McCarron Airport or the technology ads in San Jose's Mineta Airport: it's the exactly the same in Geneva, only with wealth managers.
Look left - there's UBS. Look right - there's Julius Baer. Look up in the baggage queue - there's a Swiss bank that emphasises a focus on the Arab world. A complete unscientific guesstimate suggests the display ads in the terminal run about 75 percent wealth management and 25 percent fine watches. (No surprise that every other storefront in the Ville Centre area of Geneva has watches on offer.)
There is one plus to all of the bank ads in the airport for the less wealthy though. Tell your cab driver to head toward their addresses and you're likely to find the city's best cafes.
Terminal problems
If Nigerian banks appear to have suffered disproportionately in the global financial crisis, maybe they have Heathrow Terminal 5 to blame.
Nigerian banks were advertising their services on billboards in Terminal 5 last year, and travelling investors felt it showed the banks were rashly trying to keep up with international investment banks in aiming for a global profile, causing many to sell, a banker specialising in Africa told journalists this morning over breakfast.
“Those adverts were a sign to sell Nigerian banks,” Luca del Conte, executive director in treasury and capital markets at Medicapital Bank said.
“We have about 100 institutional investors, and of 50 funds that we speak to actively, more than half mentioned this. Once capital markets started shaking, funds did not ask any more questions, they just sold.”
Medicapital says the banking sector represents over 60 percent of market capitalisation on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, but daily volumes on the exchange have dwindled to $10-15 million a day, suffering also from a fall in the oil price, compared with $100 million a year ago.
On Bankers and Busing
Bankers are having a rough time of it lately. It is not just that their companies are collapsing beneath them and their bonuses are the subject of global hate and derision. They also have to put up with the barbs of journalists (who are very familiar with being at the bottom of the popularity pile).
The latest example comes from Tim Dowling, scribbling away for Britain’s Guardian newspaper. Mr Dowling has penned a useful primer for bankers who suddenly find themselves living in the real world.
You can read the complete guide by clicking here. But Global Investing’s favourite tip concerns the use of London’s celebrated buses:
“When a bus comes into view, raise your right hand as if you were hailing a taxi. Get on at the front and tell the driver where you are going. He will name a price. Haggling is frowned upon, as is suggesting a route. Buses have no business class as such, but the top deck, if there is one, offers superior views.”
So cruel. So very cruel.
Yes, you just have to wait (forever) for one of these filthy, overcrowded red things to come along.
Then you can see just how bad a service is provided by those who are berating you for what you have done.
PS your average public sector employee has had every form of Public service benefit from the NHS onwards subsidised by your high tax. So next time one of these moaners has a go at you remember, you paid ££££ in tax every year so that they could pay £ in tax.
