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.
Once Bitten
Nobody knows quite what the landscape for financial services will be after the mayhem of the last three weeks. There is much talk of the investment banking model being dead in the water and swingeing regulation aimed at firmly bolting the door of a horseless stable, but few are ready to hazard at the details.
One aspect on which we have seen almost universal agreement, however, is that investors have cottoned onto the immense risk of bankrolling investments they don’t quite understand. The trend for increasing pension fund investments in alternative strategies starts to look like a busted flush, and you have to question whether demand for the UK’s planned retail funds of hedge funds will sustain the new industry.
Schroders CIO Alan Brown told us this week: “People will be taking a long hard look at complex financial products.”
“If you see a creative investment banker head towards you, you are likely to develop short arms and deep pockets.”
It’s clearly an issue which encourages investors towards the poetic; Colin Melvin, CEO at the equity ownership service at Hermes told a sustainable investment briefing on Wednesday: “What we’ve seen perhaps is a multiplicity or complexity of investment products and services which has grown up in order to maintain unusual profitability of the industry. As you shine a light on it, it will simper off into the dark again.”
And Robert Talbut, CIO of Royal London Asset Management lends further weight to the argument.
He told us: “We see a return to simplicity in products – complexity is out. The absolute return-type product is significantly under threat – clients will be wary of the opacity and prime broking is getting much harder to come by.”
No Laughing Matter
The global financial crisis is no laughing matter for many people, but it has nonetheless resurrected some dreadful puns that were popular back during the Japanese banking fiasco in the 1990s. Doing the rounds by e-mail are the following:
Sumo Bank has gone belly up; Bonsai Bank is cutting its branches; Karaoke Bank is for sale and will go for a song; Samurai Bank is soldiering on; Ninja Bank is in the black; staff at Karate Bank have got the chop; and there is something fishy up at Sushi Bank.
The recent crisis has been less fruitful. Some people started cruelly referring to Northern Rock as Northern Wreck when the British lender was nationalised and analysts have lately been toying with TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Plan. Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch both suggested that TARP could be a TRAP while Goldman Sachs suggested it had been TARPedoed by Congress.
Surely this crisis is big enough to get better than that? Your contributions welcome.
I read his comments. It takes a lot more Guts than ego to publish the truth, when most of the World would rather bury their heads in the sand. The two major parties in the U.S. had better get theirs out of the sand, and correct the mess they’ve made. History has shown what can happen… Remember the Flag with the phrase “Don’t Tread on Me”.
UK economy — too gloomy to chart?
During a briefing in the London office of Societe Generale this week, Alain Bokobza, head of European Equity and Cross Asset strategy, handed out a booklet containing series of charts and graphs to explain the bank’s latest multi asset portfolio for the fourth quarter. As he explained the outlook for the UK economy, a chart on UK growth was discreetly missing from the booklet.
“There’s no chart. It’s too gloomy to print it,” Bokobza told the participants.
Societe Generale sees inflation shooting below the Bank of England’s target of 2 percent over the next two years and has a bullish call on UK stocks as it predicts benchmark interest rates to fall to 3.5 percent in a year’s time from the current 5.0 percent.
Last wisdom from Lehman Brothers
“Dear readers, let us begin this week’s missive by acknowledging its partial incompleteness. For understandable considerations, there are some capital market situations that we cannot discuss. We thank all our readers for their support and look forward to continuing to provide you with timely analysis.”
This is how Lehman Brothers’ strategists began their last ever weekly research note, published on Saturday – only two days before the U.S. investment bank collapsed.
In the 146-page research, Lehman strategists argued that bonds are performing well in September thanks to rising risk aversion and financial institution uncertainties.
“September already shapes up as a splendid month for bonds, thanks to the usual seasonal elevation in risk apprehension accompanied by special amplification through financial institution uncertainties,” wrote strategists at Lehman.
Ironically, Institutional Investor magazine named Lehman Brothers as its top All-America fixed income research team for a ninth straight year on Tuesday.
“September has been a prosperous month for credit risk shorts,” Lehman strategists noted. “With third-quarter earnings for some financials coming out this week and the rest of major corporates over October, with the global economic outlook wilting, and with a hyper-risk sensitive capital market regime in effect, we will maintain our predilection toward short credit exposure.”
Little did they know that their own bank’s collapse would reinforce their argument. Investors dumped risky assets across the board, including equities and credit, sending government bonds sharply higher as Lehman filed for bankruptcy protection and Bank of America agreed to buy another Wall Street giant Merrill Lynch.
Will Lehman’s subsidiary’s be dragged into their bankruptcy?, specifically, Aurora Loan Services?
Thou shalt invest wisely?
Merrill Lynch is giving a refresher course on Ten Markets Rules to Remember, created by Bob Farrell, the bank’s former dean of research during his tenure from 1957-2001.
Below are the original rules:
#1: Markets tend to return to the mean over time #2: Excess in one direction will lead to an opposite excess in the other direction #3: There are no new eras, excesses are never permanent #4: Exponentially rapidly rising or falling markets usually go further than you think, but they do not correct by going sideways #5: The public buys the most at the top, the least at the bottom #6: Fear and greed are stronger than long-term resolve #7: Markets are strongest when they are broad, and weakest when they narrow to a handful of blue-chip names #8: Bear markets have three stages: sharp down, reflexive rebound and a drawn-out fundamental downtrend #9: When all experts and forecasts agree, something else is going to happen #10: Bull markets are more fun than bear markets
So what does this mean today?
David Rosenberg, Merrill’s North American economist says: ”Rule #4 could be about the sliding U.S. dollar, as it now revives in mean-reverting fashion (back to Rule #1) .”
Any other thoughts on offer?
Dresdner, Commerzbank — a deal nobody likes?
When stock markets this morning traded the news that Allianz had sold Dresdner Bank to Commerzbank, shares in both companies were down, defying stock market logic. Maybe nobody likes the deal?
Dresdner Kleinwort, the anaemic investment bank that raked up billions of credit write-downs, is not the jewel in the crown Commerzbank was looking for. Commerzbank slashed its own investment bank years ago and has said it will also scale down Dresdner Kleinwort.
Allianz is pulling the plug on bancassurance, a model that some say doesn’t work — though others have succesfully executed it. But the timing seems odd: selling a bank would probably have been a lot easier 18 months ago.
With a 30 percent stake in Commerzbank, it remains exposed to the banking sector in a substantial way. And it will need to put money aside for possible further writedowns.
To the up-side: overbanked Germany will have a second large bank, and a rival to Deutsche. Consolidation in the country is long overdue and the deal with Dresdner is a major step.
Investment bankers may cheer the fact there were some fees to be made in a rare banking deal. Though bankers at Dresdner Kleinwort — whose Kleinwort tag is one of the City’s most venerable — will have little to cheer, with thousands of job cuts announced.
Commerzbank is still the second largest bank in germany, this deal weathered the storm. This banking arrangement will still be here in the end after domestic counterparts like bank of america have faltered in the fray.
It is amazing Dresdner was able to last with all of its write downs on the books.
Fannie, Freddie fanning fears
More stress on its balance sheets is just about the last thing that the banking sector needs. The subprime mortgage crisis has already battered banks, leading to huge losses, scrambles for funding and free-falling banking shares. The S&P index of financial stocks has lost more than 30 percent so far this year. At its worst, the index plunged around 55 percent between a high in May last year and a low in June this year.
Now, after a brief respite, comes more bad news. First, hedge funds still seem to be wedded to betting on further losses. Laurence Fletcher, who writes about hedge funds here at Reuters, notes that more than 6 percent of British banks’ equity is on loan to short sellers.
More worrying yet for banks, however, may be their exposure to embattled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In a report, Societe Generale economists estimate that U.S. commercial banks hold about $1 trillion in Fannie and Freddie debt. That amounts to a whopping 9 percent of the commercial banks’ balance sheets.
Then again, maybe the danger to the banks will simply add pressure on the U.S. government for make sure Fannie and Freddie don’t fail.
UBS: no longer in one piece?
It is now official — Swiss bank UBS has ditched its much-cherished “One Bank” strategy.
The bank said it would split its business in three autonomous units, after taking yet another credit hit and posting a worse-than-expected second-quarter loss.
The news will spark further talk the bank may hive off business units such as its embattled investment bank. UBS in a conference call would not rule out divestments further down the line, though it said it was not now working on such plans.
The bank is already Europe’s biggest victim of the credit crisis. Today, it took another $5.1 billion hit on credit positions, bringing the total to $41 billion. More importantly, it saw hefty outflows out of its wealth management business for rich clients.
The news comes just days after it was forced to buy back billions of dollars worth of auction-rate securities to compensate for client losses in the United States.
In reply, it is now saying it is “repositioning” itself. It is splitting up its business in three separate units. It is calling its wealth management unit — for rich clients — its “core asset”. It says it will continue to invest in wealth management, but does not put equal stress on its investment bank.
These may be small steps, but markets liked the news. UBS shares were more than three percent up in early trading.
