NEW YORK (Reuters) – The tempestuous bond markets of the third quarter could result in surprising gains for U.S. banks, but investors are unlikely to be impressed.

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Thursday that about one-fourth of its profit in the quarter resulted from an accounting oddity known as debt valuation adjustments, or DVAs. They are paper gains that occur when investors price more risk into a company’s bonds, leading to a reduction in liabilities.

By Lauren Tara LaCapra

(Reuters) – Fitch Ratings downgraded UBS AG (UBS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) on Thursday and placed seven other U.S. and European banks on credit watch negative, citing challenges in the economy and financial markets, as well as the impact of new regulations.

The ratings agency lowered UBS’s long-term issuer default rating to A from A+.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Since the Occupy Wall Street movement kicked off last month, big banks and their employees seem to have made a point of ignoring it, with some privately writing it off as no more than a badly organized nuisance.

But as the protest has expanded from a few hundred people in a little park in Lower Manhattan to thousands across at least two dozen cities, gaining support from labor unions, celebrities and politicians, it has become harder to ignore.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The head of Morgan Stanley’s (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) wealth management business offered a tempered outlook for profits and staff levels on Tuesday and acknowledged that achieving a 20 percent pretax operating margin depends largely on market conditions.

Greg Fleming, speaking at the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit in New York, said management aims to achieve pretax operating margins in the mid-teens for the wealth management business over the next six to eight quarters.

NEW YORK, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) shares
fell as much as 7.8 percent on Friday because of concerns about
its exposure to European banks.

Shares of the second-largest U.S. investment bank were down
6.7 percent at $14.08, having earlier fell 7.8 percent to an
intraday low of $13.91.

NEW YORK, Sept 29 (Reuters) – Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) has so
far avoided making the job cuts that competitors have planned,
but analysts say the investment bank may have no choice but to
lay off staff if market conditions don’t improve.

Morgan Stanley cut staffing levels early in the crisis, and
was slower to add staff when markets temporarily recovered in
2009 and early 2010. A spokesman this week reiterated comments
that executives have been saying for months: Morgan Stanley is
not planning major layoffs in trading or banking, with limited
cuts already announced for wealth management.

NEW YORK, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc
(GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is shuttering a well-known hedge fund that relies on
computer-driven trading strategies after the portfolio rang up
a hefty loss this year.

Goldman told investors in the roughly $1.6 billion Global
Alpha fund the news on Thursday, one day after it announced a
management shakeup at the fund that had been the crown jewel of
its quantitative trading business. The fund will be closed in
the next few weeks.

By Lauren Tara LaCapra

(Reuters) – Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack, whose sharp elbows and aggressive cost-cutting tactics earned him the nickname “Mack The Knife,” will step down at the end of the year, handing the position to Chief Executive James Gorman.

Gorman, 52, will remain CEO, under a plan set out two years ago when Mack became chairman.

NEW YORK, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s
(GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) shakeup of management at one of its highest-profile
hedge funds comes as the fund’s performance is badly lagging
its competitors.

The Goldman Sachs Global Alpha fund, which relies on
computer-driven strategies, was down 12 percent through August,
according to two people familiar with the returns. The average
quant fund is down less than 1 percent over that period,
according to performance tracking service Hedge Fund Research
Inc.

Sept 14 (Reuters) – Katinka Domotorffy, the head of Goldman
Sachs Group Inc’s (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) quantitative investment strategies
group, will leave the bank at the end of the year, according to
an internal memo, as one of its biggest hedge funds continues
to suffer from weak performance.

Domotorffy is a Goldman veteran who joined the bank in 1998
as a portfolio manager and researcher.