BMO ditches its very own Brian Hunter(s), loses more than you think it did

Posted by Keith Hahn, May 17, 2007, 10:05am

bank of montreal.jpg We already knew Bank of Montreal lost a bunch of money on natural gas trading, as the bank revealed to investors in late April that it had pretax commodity trading losses between C$350mm-C$450mm. This estimate turned out to be juuuuuust a bit outside, as BMO revealed today that pretax losses were actually C$680mm. Whoops. Fortunately, there were a few Hunter-esque figures to take the fall, from the Wall Street Journal:

The Canadian bank known as Bank of Montreal also said that two unnamed employees in the commodities-trading operations were placed on leave. They are no longer with the company. Oversight of the business has also changed, and new traders have been added to help reduce the portfolio's risk.

The bank blamed (not oil prices and an unseasonably cold April for once) a quickly moving market combined with liquidity issues and historically low volatility.

A reader also just sent bonus figures for BMO based upon information from a former staffer ($90k/$110k/$130k), placing it at the bottom of the bonus barrel along with Lehman and Piper Jaffray so far.

Send those projected bonus numbers to: tips at dealbreaker dot com

BMO Raises Amount of Losses From Energy Trading [Wall Street Journal]

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Comments

Posted by blingbling, May 17, 2007 11:36AM

$CAD or $US is the question.

Posted by KH, May 17, 2007 11:41AM

$CAD. I put the "C" before the $, not sure if that's standard notation but that's the notation the WSJ uses.

-KH

Posted by OilGasFutures.Com, May 17, 2007 11:46AM

i just read somewhere: "when they start selling bonds to meet margin calls it's game over" or something like that-----it's tough situation to be caught over leveraged, as the big boys know if the position is too large you can even be right on the market direction and still get whacked----tread carefully

Posted by blingbling, May 17, 2007 12:31PM

FX charts tend to show CAD/USD - so I might have been wrong to include the dollar sign at all.

Posted by , May 17, 2007 1:54PM

Standard notation is "$350MM Cdn"

Posted by chris, May 17, 2007 3:27PM

I think most people, after careful analysis and contemplation, would come to the conclusion that, in this context, C$ meant Canadian dollars. However, to avoid confusing some readers, please write out Canadian dollars in full and provide a United States of America dollar equivalent figure.

Posted by Bulging Bracket, May 17, 2007 4:16PM

C$1 = $0.91 US

You'll see C$/AUS$/NZ$ used interchangably with $x CDN, AUS, NZ.

Given real estate and other prices in Toronto, banker income goes much farther. The tax rates are nearly the same as in NYC and it's a much better proposition if you're renting. No mortgage deduction, but you can get a top-end condo within 3 blocks of the office for $400/foot or get a house 15 minutes from the office in the best neighborhood for $400-500/foot that includes a garage, backyard...

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