As you might’ve noticed, Snoop Dog rang the Opening Bell this morning as part of the NYSE’s second annual Mentoring Madness program. He apparently then stuck around to talk shop with Maria Bartiromo, who made it clear where her allegiances lie (East Coast rappers, particularly Brooklyn-born).
Archive for November 2009
JPMorgan Chase continues to show why not being dependent on government handouts is a good thing. While the federal government got to saddle Bank of America with a sinking Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan gets to buy a bank that actually, you know, makes money.
Jamie Dimon is in talks to finish what he started five years ago, aiming to buy the rest of Cazenove Group. JPMorgan bought half of the bankers to the Queen five years ago as one of Dimon’s first moves. As part of that 2004 deal, JPMorgan got the chance to take over the bank in toto, well, five years later.
JPMorgan has offered £1 billion for the half of Cazenove it doesn’t own. An announcement could come next week.
Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show: Dennis Kneale’s Favorite Holiday Just Around The Corner
By Bess Levin
It’s that time of year again! The Victoria’s Secret Fashion show is this Thursday which means we’re likely in for a week of hearing about Dennis Kneale talking about lingerie. Last year around this time we learned that while some men are uncomfortable with the idea of entering a Secret store, Dennis Kneale loves nothing more than picking out some special pieces of what he’s affectionately dubbed “slut wear” for his “female partners.” Today it was that Dennis wears women’s underwear, though he wouldn’t say which brand, only that it’s not VS.* What other images could we be in store for leading up to the big show? Stay tuned!
*Methinks it may be this line, which probably gave out some items on the house for the free advertising.
Sorkin’s Book May Beat Gasparino’s In Instances of “F*ck” Per Page But It Falls Short In Self-Love
By Bess Levin
As you may have heard, the numbers have been crunched and to some people’s surprise, Andrew Sorkin’s book, Too Big To Fail, bests Charlie Gasparino’s When Mooks Fail for the number of times the word ‘fuck’ is mentioned, overall and per page. Sorkin’s got 20 (.03/page) and CG has 10 (.02/page). To some, this was shocking, given what they think they know of Chaz, though not to those of us who know that a) Gaspo runs a “classy operation” and b) that the auteur was nervous the Pulitzer committee would be skittish about awarding a prize to someone with a filthy mouth.
It’s been a pretty rough couple of years for Citigroup. But a couple of the world’s biggest hedge fund managers seem to think Vikram and Co. have something going.
Paulson & Co. bought up a $1.2 billion stake in Citi during the third quarter, while Renaissance Technologies took a more modest $90 million slice. RenTech has been somewhat schizophrenic about Citi, selling off 21.5 million shares in the second quarter, only to rebuild its stake to–you guessed it–21.5 million shares last quarter.
Renaissance, at least, is a good deal less bullish on our friends at Bank of America. The Long Island quant fund rid itself of almost all of its shares in the soon-to-be-CEO-less firm, which keeps finding ways to make The Worst Job on Wall Street even worse.
So much so, that it’s selling its headquarters and just about every piece of real-estate it owns.
First to go was its New York headquarters on Fifth Avenue, sold last month to an Israeli. Now, HSBC is parting ways (again) with its London headquarters in Canary Wharf, agreeing to sell to South Korea’s National Pension Service.
The bank is still shopping its Hong Kong and Paris buildings.
According to Marc Porter, president of Christie’s in the Americas, last year people were “distracted” by the shit that was hitting the fan and focused on “assessing their own net worth” (rapidly dwindling by the hour!), and not on buying art. Now that the “worst of the financial crisis seems to be over people are once again focusing on collecting,” which is nice. In what must please Tim Geithner and the stripper community to no end, Warhol’s “200 One Dollar Bills” just sold for $43.7 million (more than three times its $12 million high estimate).
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MIT Will Not Be The Only Business School With A Cringe-Worthy Take Off Of “I’m On A Boat” To Speak Of
By Bess Levin
Chicago Booth now has one too.
Earlier: “I’m At MIT Sloan, Racking Up The Mother F*cking Student Loans”
Bank of America Hits Pay Snag In CEO Hunt (WSJ)
The BAC board has identified another reason no one wants to take over for Ken Lewis (i addition to a lack of interest in running a hellhole) and it starts with a ‘K’ ends with a ‘en Feinberg.’
UBS’s Debt Trading May Be Key for Profit Revival (UBS)
“I’d like to see us put more risk on the table and actually trade a bit harder,” said CFO John Cryan, 48. Wealth management clients, who have already withdrawn a net 182.9 billion francs over the 18 months through the end of September, may not halt redemptions until UBS returns to profitability, he added. “The turnaround will have to come from the investment bank,” said Dirk Becker, a Frankfurt-based analyst at Kepler Capital Markets who rates UBS “reduce.” “However, the biggest profits will come from the private bank. The problem is money outflows and there is no serious hope yet that they will stop.”
Paulson Puts Money On Citi, Ditching Goldman (NYT)
Paulson & Co. acquired an additional 300 million shares of Citigroup during the third quarter, while selling its entire holding in rival Goldman Sachs.
Blankfein: Firm’s wealth unit ‘should be bigger’ (IN)
He declined to discuss specific hiring goals but said in the interview that the firm “has to get into the high hundreds, before we can talk about thousands, of advisers.”
Deutsche Bank Drowning in Vegas on Costliest Bank-Owned Casino (Bloomberg)
And they’re literally underwater: “Any construction project of this size runs into problems,” Fasulo said. “But to bump into an aquifer is just bad luck.”
GM Reports $1.15 Billion Loss (WSJ)
An improvement over last year!
$$$ Heidi Moore: The Hard Fall Of Hedge Funders [NYM]
$$$ Tudor Vet. To Head Hedge Funds For China Sovereign Fund [FA]
$$$ Hedge Fund Clones: Better Than The Original? [The Deal]
$$$ The Lloyd’s Prayer [TBP]
$$$ The Madoff Auction Had Everything But Underwear [Daily Intel]
$$$ Jim Cramer will not be keying David Faber’s car any time soon: Newsweek did something very naughty. [DB]
Tax cheats are fast running out of tax shelters. The latest to submit to international standards are Singapore and Liechtenstein.
The former was removed from the OECD’s “grey” list on Wednesday and the latter today, after it signed its 12th bilateral information-sharing agreement with (ugh) the French. The city-state sought to reassure the many tax-evaders who have brought their money to its spit-and-gum-free shores, but methinks they doth protest too much.
