Unstructured Finance

Don’t get pranked tomorrow. Remember, it’s April Fool’s Day. Here are the latest Weekend Reads as selected by Sam Forgione.

From Fortune:

Hedge fund manager Paul Singer’s hardball approach has benefited Republican candidates as his fund battles in court with nation’s that have defaulted on their debt.

From The Guardian:

Zoe Williams writes about how Stephanie Flanders, the BBC economics editor and a former speechwriter for Tim Geithner, relishes bad news.

From Columbia Journalism Review:

Paul Starobin questions whether financial journalists should accept fees to speak at Wall Street-sponsored events and gets some interesting responses from journos on the receiving end of that largess.

From Institutional Investor:

Loch Adamson asks when will it be the right time for electronic trading platform BATS to get back on the horse after botching its IPO.

By Matthew Goldstein

The shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen in Florida, has evoked a lot of debate about race in America and the nation’s attitudes to what it means to be a minority.

There’s been a good deal written that major media organizations were slow to react to this tragic story, in part because there simply aren’t enough minority voices on staff. This point was highlighted recently in a  story in The New York Times

That said, minorities also are underrepresented in the industry I spend most of my time writing about—Wall Street. And while it’s no secret that there are few minorities in the executives suites on Wall Street—there are not that many women, either—it’s worth taking look at some disturbing statistics.

Here is the latest edition of Weekend Reads courtesy of Sam Forgione. Enjoy.

From Barron’s:

The managers of hedge fund Cassiopeia are teaching a lesson or two on trading volatility.

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

Matthew Philips addresses regulatory efforts to catch up with the glitch mob known as high-frequency traders.

From CFO:

The committee that regulates auditing practices may lend an ear to to alternative suggestions to plan for companies to rotate auditors.

Nordstrom Fail: One sign of Las Vegas' hard times is this failed Nordstrom store and accompanying shopping center that never advanced beyond the skeletal stage.

By Jennifer Ablan

Las Vegas had become the poster child of what many had pegged as the biggest casino during the real-estate boom, all which was engineered by cheap credit and a yearning for owning a piece of the American dream.

The economic toll of the financial crisis swept through towns and communities in terms of home foreclosures, devastated neighborhoods and half-built shopping centers and office complexes.

Here is Sam Forgione’s suggested weekend reads. Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone. The calendar says March but it feels like mid-May in NYC.

From Dealbook:

Recent graduates are becoming disenchanted with Wall Street careers. Kevin Roose interviews a college grad, a recruiter, professor, and former Goldman employee support to make his point.

From Fortune:

Mina Kimes takes a look at James J. Wang, the head of the small and wildly successful OceanStone Fund, who she describes as being spectrally mysterious.

By Katya Wachtel

Goldman Sachs’s own hedge fund product  — like the now defunct Global Alpha — is generally reserved for the checkbooks of the investment bank’s wealth management clients. But not always.

For investors looking to get a piece of a Goldman hedge fund for a discount (and without having to actually be a Goldman private wealth customer) the investment bank is offering one of its commodity-focused hedge funds on a third party platform: CAIS.

CAIS Group, which opened its doors in 2009, already offers its customers an entree to brand name managers including John Paulson’s eponymous hedge fund, and Daniel Loeb’s Third Point.  The platform also includes John Thaler’s JAT Capital — one of 2011′s standout performers — on its shelf.

By Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein

Goldman Sachs’s chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and his likely successor, Gary Cohn, issued a formal response today following a scathing op-ed in the New York Times from Greg Smith, who announced his resignation from the investment firm.

Smith, a banker who worked in Goldman’s equity derivatives group, asserted that several Goldman managing directors had referred to their own clients as “muppets.” In Britain, where Smith is based, “muppet” is used as a derogatory term to describe someone who is regarded as being ignorant.

You can read his list of complaints below.

For their part, Blankfein and Cohn wrote: “We were disappointed to read the assertions made by this individual that do not reflect our values, our culture and how the vast majority of people at Goldman Sachs think about the firm and the work it does on behalf of our clients.”

Virtual offices can be a great cost-saver for a solo attorney, a lone accountant or any other professional who can’t afford the expense  of maintaining a separate support staff to run a business. But these outfits, in which a solo professional gets to essentially rent the services of a receptionist, a secretary and conference space, also can provide cover for bad guys bent on doing mischief.

A case in point is Robert Sucarato, a New Jersey man, who was sentenced Friday to 11 years in a federal prison for using a virtual office as a front for an alleged multi-billion hedge fund that bilked investors out of $1.6 million. A few years ago, when I was at BusinessWeek, I wrote about Sucarato long before federal prosecutors were on his trail. The BW story was called “Suite Scams” and it focused on much more than Sucarato and showed how virtual offices were proving to be a useful tool for Wall Street fraudsters with a slick website and a good marketing pitch.

Former federal prosecutors, back when I talked to them, said they were well aware of how  virtual offices were becoming the hallmarks of scams. But they said there was little  they could do to stop it since the due diligence requirements for virtual office operators are minimal.

Here is Sam Forgione’s suggested weekend reads. And a reminder to our UF readers in the US that daylight savings time begins on Sunday, so set those clocks forward 1 hour.

From The New Yorker:

Nick Paumgarten traversed the restless egos of Davos for a candid look at the event. The story captures the ambivalence many feel toward the well-hyped forum.

From The Atlantic:

Megan McCardle asks how and why companies get complacent, even when they know they’re sinking, using GM and Blockbuster as examples.

View from Goldman Sachs office, Salt Lake City.

By Katya Wachtel and Lauren Tara LaCapra

Al Crutchfield, a 56-year-old cab driver who has spent most of his life in Salt Lake City, does not understand why so many Americans are angry at Goldman Sachs.

“Everyone seems to be so mad at them all the time, but I think it’s a good thing for Salt Lake that Goldman’s expanding here,” he said. “I drive lots of Goldman Sachs employees, so it’s good for my business, and their folks are really nice.”

Across America, and elsewhere, Goldman has often been the target of populist rage against Wall Street greed. But Al Crutchfield’s sentiment is not uncommon in this mountain city, where the investment bank has built up a cadre of back-office, technology, operations and research staff. It is now the investment bank’s fourth largest global operation, as Reuters reported Friday.