And now, we present you Dick Bove, book reviewer. In a note yesterday, Dick tells us about a great new read he recommends (“great” mostly because someone, finally, is agreeing with what he’s been saying forever). It’s called This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly and he wants you to pick up a copy today. Yes, it’s “not an easy read,” but fear not people, Dick broke it down for us: “I recommend that readers buy the book and just read chapters 10, 13, and 16 to get at the thrust of this massive effort. In fact, just read pages 270 to 273 to get at the core of this work.” Or you know, just read Dick’s notes. “They reach the same conclusion that I have. A flood of unregulated money that pours into a national economy creates the base for a financial collapse.”
Archive for February 2010
Icahn Partners LP 4Q [PDF]
‘Who Pays Wins’ as Merrill, UBS Lure Bankers With Pay Increases (Bloomberg)
UBS is offering managing directors in its securities unit base pay of as much as 300,000 pounds ($470,000) compared with at least 150,000 pounds last May. Bank of America raised London managing directors’ base pay to about 230,000 pounds, from 150,000 pounds in 2009.
RBS to seek investor green light on executive pay (Reuters)
Lest there be some sort of, you know, revolt or outrage.
UBS Defers Bonuses on Compensation Above $250,000 After Unprofitable Year (Bloomberg)
Deferred stock bonuses for senior employees whose total pay for 2009 exceeds $250,000 to limit compensation costs for the unprofitable year. Beyond that level, 60 percent of bonuses will be paid out in so-called equity ownership plan awards and 40 percent in cash.
Manhattan DA Launches Major Economic Crimes Bureau (NYT)
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance has created a Major Economic Crimes Bureau as he and other high-profile investigators redouble their efforts to fight financial fraud.
Rocky road to funding for Benihana (NYP)
Coliseum Capital Management, which owns 9.9 percent of Benihana’s Class A shares, outlined its complaints in a tersely worded letter mailed yesterday to Benihana President and CEO Richard Stockinger. “Thus far, the company has not provided a compelling rationale to affect such a potentially dilutive fundraising,” Coliseum Managing Director Adam Gray said in the letter, which was sent by FedEx to Stockinger.
The Great Goldman Sachs Fire Sale of 2008 (Opinionator)
William Cohan: “One wonders if the president would be a bit more begrudging if he knew that at the height of the financial crisis, many of Goldman Sachs’s top deal-makers — although not Blankfein himself — moved quickly to unload their own stock in their firm.”
America’s Top Ten Most Dangerous Drivers By Profession (CNBC)
Nurses (10), dog groomers (6), government workers (3), finance professionals (2).
Timmy G’s tormentor-in-chief Rep. Darrell Issa will get to the bottom of that whole AIG saga, believe you me. Issa sent yet another letter to Bernanke yesterday, asking him to turn over all Fed documents related to the AIG bailout and its credit-default counterparties. Apparently those 250,000 pages they already turned in don’t reveal anything and the document production is “incomplete and not in full compliance with the Committee’s subpoena.”
So….Harbinger head Phil Falcone and his wife Lisaare being sued by their former house manager, William Gamble, for a bunch of stuff. Said stuff includes allegations of:
* Homophobic slurs from Phil (William is gay, and claims he was asked about his sexual orientation during his interview)
* Being forced to work out of an office that the family’s pet pig used to live in
* Being told by Lisa that that he wasn’t gay enough for her tastes, but, at the same time, having his nuts grabbed, without permission.
Lisa Maria, meanwhile, told him his “demeanor did not live up to her idea of what a stereotypical gay man should be, as [he] was not ‘effeminate’ enough.”
That March, he went with the family on a trip to the Falcones’ compound in St. Bart’s, where Lisa Maria “chided him for not bringing a more revealing bathing suit.”
On March 27, “a visibly inebriated Falcone confronted and assaulted” Gamble, “forcibly pushing her hand down his pants to grab his genitals,” the suit says. “When rebuffed, Falcone struck [Gamble] three times with her hand forcefully enough to leave deep bruises on his abdomen.”
She then told Gamble “all he required was ‘a good f–k’ in order to change him into a heterosexual,” Gamble said he was “highly disturbed and physically ill as a result of this incident.”
When they got back to New York, his “work environment became increasingly hostile,” with Falcone telling him, “If you weren’t so beautiful, you wouldn’t be here.”
RBS Will Not Be Made To Feel Guilty About Its Huge, Gleaming Trading Floor, On-Site Massages
By Bess Levin
RBS moved into its new building in Stamford, an 11-story palace on I-95, almost a year ago. So there’s been loads of time for anyone interested in making the team feel bad about the fact that despite having 84 percent of its ass owned by the British government and the massive taxpayer bailout, the bank shelled out the money to build one of the most enormous and impressive trading floors in the world, where employees needn’t leave headquarters to grab a few drinks and watch whatever Olympic event tickles their fancy, as there’s a sports bar conveniently located inside. And yet. Today the Times seems to go out of its way to to point out that RBS, “the British version of Citigroup or the American International Group,” should be embarrassed to inhabit this place, rather than something more in line with their success, like the parking lot of the Howard Johnson in Riverside.
Like A.I.G., the British bank has been the target of many attacks by unhappy taxpayers, including protests during the Group of 20 summit meeting in London in April 2009 and a snowball barrage on some of its workers in London two months earlier that became popular images on the Internet. Last month, the British singer Billy Bragg rallied a crowd in Hyde Park in London to demand that R.B.S halt bonus payments.
And so, five time zones away, executives in R.B.S.’s American outpost are a bit cautious as they give a tour of their new offices, a $500 million building designed in 2006. “It’s very bull market,” said Michael Lyublinsky, co-head of global banking and markets for R.B.S. in the Americas…the 11-story building would probably stir the ire of British taxpayers already reeling from a government bailout of more than $71 billion at today’s exchange rate. But perhaps luckily for the workers here, those taxpayers are an ocean away.
Did the company ever consider “canceling the move in light of the bank’s problems,” the Times would like to know? Fuck no they didn’t, and let me tell you why. Reason number one: the cash bonuses they didn’t pay their employees for the past several years mostly made up for the costs associated with building this place. You know this is true because members of the staff were in such financial straits that they had to steal money from the firm. Reason number two: it’s not like they didn’t try to be sensitive to what people might think, which is why that sports bar? Was re-branded a “coffee bar.” And reason number three: it makes everyone feel really good about themselves.
Governor Paterson has a new advisor in none other than Eliot Spitzer, and we can only rejoice in the news. This is fantastic on so many levels. First, who is truly better equipped than the Spitz to advise him on a variety of matters, including, but not limited to: love, ethics, socks on or not, the merits of closet-banging, and what did you really mean by “things that were unsafe?’ There can only be one. Spitzer is mentor and confidant all rolled in one convenient package.
Ping (Jiang) Capital Down 4.96 Percent For January, Ping Jiang Interested In Meeting With *You* Today
By Bess Levin
Ping Jiang, maestro of the whiteboard marker, was fired from SAC Capital in March 2008, (not because of the push-up bras but due to poor performance). He branched out on his own soon thereafter but we’d heard nary a peep since then re: returns or whether or not he was making employees sew their own dresses. No word on the latter yet (speak up, young seamstresses!) but– and I bite my tongue saying this– I’m slightly worried about how the team will be able to cover the costs associated with new “office supplies,” after ending January down nearly 5 percent. Granted, this may have been a blip, following a stellar 2009, when the fund was up 192.81%, presumably thanks to the official implementation of PJ’s trading philosophy (no more hiding it behind closed doors). And while we’re on the subject– it seems as though Jiang is keeping it in the family, having hired brother (?) Justin as a manager, which as an interesting twist to the BJ for trade approval model. Finally, the most important news! The team is looking for investors for a new fund, Ping Emerging Markets Macro, and would love to get your ass in to meet Mr. J today– get a piece of this while it’s still hot.
From: [redacted]
To: [redacted]
Subject: Ping Emerging Markets Macro Fund
Dear [redacted],
Ping Capital Management Ltd was founded by Ping Jiang and partners in March 2008. Ping Jiang splits his time between a research office based in Shanghai and a trading and operations office in New York. Ping Jiang is currently in New York and would like to meet with interested investors to discuss their current fund, Ping Exceptional Value Fund, and a new fund, Ping Emerging Markets Macro Fund, that is expected to launch H1 2010. Short biographies for Ping and the partners are attached.
The Ping Exceptional Value Fund is a Latin American- and Asian-focused macro strategy that combines quantitative micro analysis with discretionary macro analysis and trading. The Fund trades across two different time frames; long-term concentrated value investments in themes that are determined to be extremely undervalued and short-term
active trading around the core themes.
The Ping Emerging Markets Macro Fund will use the same research process as the flagship fund but will have a more significant focus on the short term trading element.
Please let us know if you would like to arrange a meeting, schedule a call or would like to receive any additional information from the manager.
Matt Taibbi has a new article out. See if you can guess what it’s about. Were you going to say evil bankers and particularly the evil ones at Goldman Sachs? Of course you were. In MT’s latest, we “learn” that all banksters used junkie, con-men-like attitudes, and that Blankfein’s super power resides in his “pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles.” So now you know. Also:
At one point or another, pretty much everyone who takes drugs has been burned by this one, also known as the “Rocks in the Box” scam or, in its more elaborate variations, the “Jamaican Switch.” Someone sells you what looks like an eightball of coke in a baggie, you get home and, you dumbass, it’s baby powder.
