NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Georgia-based chain of service stations that lost money with a Bear Stearns hedge fund that collapsed in July 2007 has won a $3.4 million arbitration award.

The award by the securities industry arbitration panel is the first ruling in favor of an investor in one of two now defunct Bear hedge funds since a jury acquitted the funds’ former managers of criminal charges in November.

The award suggests that investors who lost $1.6 billion in the collapse of the two highly leveraged funds may still be able to recoup some of their money. The award was made on December 23 and was posted recently on a website maintained by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

The three-member arbitration panel, as is customary, did not offer much of a rationale in its written decision for the award of $3.4 million in damages to Racetrac Petroleum Inc, an Atlanta-based chain of more than 525 gas stations and convenience stores across the U.S. Southeast.

NEW YORK, Feb 9 (Reuters) – A Georgia-based chain of service stations that lost money with a Bear Stearns hedge fund that collapsed in July 2007 has won a $3.4 million arbitration award.

The award by the securities industry arbitration panel is the first ruling in favor of an investor in one of two now defunct Bear hedge funds since a jury acquitted the funds’ former managers of criminal charges in November.

The award suggests that investors who lost $1.6 billion in the collapse of the two highly leveraged funds may still be able to recoup some of their money. The award was made on Dec. 23 and was posted recently on a website maintained by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

The three-member arbitration panel, as is customary, did not offer much of a rationale in its written decision for the award of $3.4 million in damages to Racetrac Petroleum Inc, an Atlanta-based chain of more than 525 gas stations and convenience stores across the U.S. Southeast.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Not all the derivative contracts American International Group Inc <AIG.N> wrote on complex securities backed by now-toxic mortgages have ended up being a disaster.

In fact, dozens of interest rate swaps that AIG put together — for many of the very same troubled collateralized debt obligations that drove the giant insurer to the brink of bankruptcy — are generating “north of $1 billion in value” for the firm, according to people familiar with the deals.

But AIG has been at risk of losing that value ever since the fall of 2008, when the U.S. government stepped in with a massive bailout and the insurer’s once mighty credit rating was slashed.

That’s because the CDOs were written in a way that enabled the managers of those mortgage-related securities to cancel the interest rate swaps with AIG if the insurer’s credit rating fell below a stipulated level.

NEW YORK, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Not all the derivative contracts American International Group Inc <AIG.N> wrote on complex securities backed by now-toxic mortgages have ended up being a disaster.

In fact, dozens of interest rate swaps that AIG put together — for many of the very same troubled collateralized debt obligations that drove the giant insurer to the brink of bankruptcy — are generating “north of $1 billion in value” for the firm, according to people familiar with the deals.

But AIG has been been at risk of losing that value ever since the fall of 2008, when the U.S. government stepped in with a massive bailout and the insurer’s once mighty credit rating was slashed.

That’s because the CDOs were written in a way that enabled the managers of those mortgage-related securities to cancel the interest rate swaps with AIG if the insurer’s credit rating fell below a stipulated level.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A controversial regulatory filing detailing the federal bailout of American International Group Inc <AIG.N> could put the spotlight back on the former executive who headed the division most responsible for the insurer’s near collapse in September 2008.

The five-page filing raises questions about some of Joseph Cassano’s prior statements that AIG had “limited exposure” to the subprime housing market, even though AIG had written insurance contracts on some $62 billion of mortgage-related securities held by 16 big U.S. and European banks.

An unredacted version of the document, which AIG formally made public on Friday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, reveals that 14 percent of the 178 mortgage-related securities AIG had insured were originated by Wall Street banks after 2005.

The combined face value of the 25 securities AIG agreed to insure after 2005 was about $19 billion, or roughly 30 percent of the total face value of the entire portfolio of troubled mortgage-related securities the Federal Reserve of New York assumed in its bailout of AIG.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – BlackRock Inc’s <BLK.N> fourth-quarter earnings more than quadrupled as the world’s biggest asset manager rebounded from the recession and gave investors an indication of the jolt it may get from its move into exchange-traded funds.

The December 1 acquisition of Barclays Global Investors turned BlackRock, historically a fixed-income money management firm, into a leader in exchange-traded funds.

The deal generated more revenue than expected in December, and BlackRock had strong overall fund flows in the quarter, said Jeffrey Hopson, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus & Co.

Fourth-quarter net income rose to $256 million, or $1.62 a share, from $52 million, or 39 cents a share, a year earlier.

NEW YORK, Jan 27 (Reuters) – BlackRock Inc’s <BLK.N> fourth-quarter earnings more than quadrupled as the world’s biggest asset manager rebounded from the recession and gave investors an indication of the jolt it may get from its move into exchange-traded funds.

The Dec. 1 acquisition of Barclays Global Investors turned BlackRock, historically a fixed-income money management firm, into a leader in exchange-traded funds.

The deal generated more revenue than expected in December, and BlackRock had strong overall fund flows in the quarter, said Jeffrey Hopson, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus & Co.

Fourth-quarter net income rose to $256 million, or $1.62 a share, from $52 million, or 39 cents a share, a year earlier.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – BlackRock Inc’s fourth-quarter earnings report gave investors an indication of the jolt the world’s biggest asset manager may get from its move into exchange-traded funds following its December 1 acquisition of Barclays Global Investors.

Net income rose to $256 million, or $1.62 a share, from $52 million, or 39 cents a share, a year earlier.

Excluding special items, BlackRock said profit increased to $2.39 a share from 66 cents. On that basis, the results surpassed the analysts’ average forecast of $2.10, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue rose 45 percent to $1.54 billion, including $278 million in fees generated from BGI in December, the company said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Information about the American International Group bailout that regulators agreed to keep secret may reveal which banks held some of the worst performing mortgage-related securities at the time of the rescue.

Reuters reported Monday that the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a request last May by AIG to keep confidential some portions of a year-old regulatory filing that provided details about the funneling of tens of billions of federal bailout dollars to banks like Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.

The SEC’s order granting confidential treatment to the redacted portion of the filing, known as Schedule A – List of Derivative Transactions, lasts until November 25, 2018.

A close review of the non-redacted portions of the Schedule A exhibit, which the giant insurer filed with the SEC on March 16, reveals the regulatory agency permitted the giant insurer to keep secret any identifying information about the securities a group of 16 big US and European banks sold to Maiden Lane III, an entity set-up by the Federal Reserve of New York in November 2008 as part of the AIG bailout.

NEW YORK, Jan 12 (Reuters) – A lawsuit filed by the ex-wife of Steven A. Cohen, which accused the hedge fund magnate of hiding millions of dollars from her during their divorce proceeding two decades ago, could be dismissed just weeks after it was filed in New York federal court.

Paul Batista, the attorney for the ex-wife, Patricia Cohen, filed the notice to dismiss the lawsuit on Tuesday.

Batista filed a day after lawyers for Cohen, the founder of SAC Capital Advisors, one of the most prominent hedge funds, filed a motion seeking to impose sanctions on the ex-wife and her legal team for filing a frivolous lawsuit.

The motion seeking sanctions had no impact on the decision to dismiss the lawsuit, Batista said. He did it because he learned two weeks ago that Cohen’s ex-wife planned to replace him with another lawyer.