The London-based hedge fund, Moore Capital, was one of the firms raided by the City watchdog the FSA, the BBC has learned. One person at Moore Capital and five other City workers are being held. Those arrested are suspected of taking part in a long-running insider-dealing scheme. The arrests came after 16 addresses were searched in a joint probe by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca). Documents and computers were seized from premises in London, the South East and Oxfordshire. It is the FSA’s biggest operation against insider dealing.
Remember, back in the day, when Kenneth Feinberg was named Comp Cop and everyone working at a bailed out company, who were told their asses were about to be capped, threatened to leave if he so much as dared to take a penny of their hard-earned money away? Sure you did, they wouldn’t shut up about it, or the fact that this–this!– was going to be the death of their otherwise phenomenally profitable firms? Anyway, apparently most people were just messing.
Of the 104 senior executives whose pay was set by the federal pay regulator in the last two years, 88 executives, or nearly 85 percent, are still with the companies even though their pay was drastically cut back, according to people briefed on the government data. The relative stability, at least within the executive suite, suggests that a soft job market, corporate loyalty and personal pride helped deter the feared management exodus at the companies hardest hit by the pay rules.
In spite of the fact that the li’l fella may have said some untoward things about CG (who in turn suggested LB do everyone a favor and quit), Chaz would like to give props were they are due.
Treasury’s Geithner Urges End to Fannie, Freddie ‘Ambiguity’ (Bloomberg)
“Private gains can no longer be supported by the umbrella of public protection, capital standards must be higher and excessive risk-taking must be appropriately restrained,” Geithner said in testimony prepared for the House Financial Services Committee.
Broke? Buy a few warships, France tells Greece (Reuters)
“No one is saying ‘Buy our warships or we won’t bail you out’, but the clear implication is that they will be more supportive if we do what they want on the armaments front,” said an adviser to Prime Minister George Papandreou, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity.
NY is newest Madoff victim (NYP)
Bernie Madoff is number 68 on the list of deadbeats who owe Albany tax money ($984,280 to be exact). Number one is former Scores strip club owner Irving Bilzinsky, who owes $15.3 million.
Taxi Scheme Might Be Smaller Than Commission First Thought (NYT)
After announcing that tens of thousands of cabbies had cheated passengers by improperly flipping on an out-of-town meter rate, the chairman of the Taxi and Limousine Commission said on Monday that “a fairly significant number” of the incidents resulted in no additional charges, suggesting they might have been simple mistakes. “We have been vindicated,” said Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a drivers’ group. Continue reading »
Thought you should know, a revolt is afoot at Citi, as IT just put a block on ESPN.com. Definitely at 388 Greenwich Street, probably firmwide. During March Madness no less!
If women ran Wall Street, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and LTCM would all be in business today, according to this article, which today raises the debate that’s been raised just a few (million) times since the crisis started. Females are more risk averse, the presence of testosterone breeds more testosterone (whereas environments with less T ’cause your levels to decrease, as in the case of stay-at-home daddies), women are “more likely to admit that they’re wrong, faster,” men are more likely to engage in pissing matches with each other (which was the subject of Audur Capital founder Halla Tómasdóttir’s doctoral thesis entitled “The Great Big Penis Competition: The Story of Mergers and Acquisitions in Iceland”), blah blah blah. For those of you who want to take this “women make better money managers in the long run” theory (which holds that the ladies might not make you as much money in the short term but probably won’t blow up your firm like some people) for a spin but already have a team in place, a word of advice.
According to Doug Hirschhorn, a “peak performance coach to Wall Street traders” consulted for the story, Andrew Tong is the exception, not the rule. Don’t waste your time trying to find the perfect pair of panties for your male colleagues to report to work wearing. Instead, focus on spiking the girls’ morning coffee with T and teaching them to spit. That’s where you’re gonna see results.
While he was working on his Ph.D. in sports psychology, Hirschhorn got an offer to join what was then one of the largest proprietary trading firms in the country—with 1,200 traders, many of them former sports players—and help them improve their trading. “What was most interesting to me, was that out of the twenty women who were there, five of them were tremendously successful, so the ratio of success for the women was 25 percent, whereas it was maybe 2 percent for the men,” he says. He found that it was easier to teach women when to be more aggressive than it was to lessen the overaggression of the males.
The Citi Chairman told Bloomberg today that his little CEO that could has done “a tremendous job” but “has not been given the credit that is due to him and his team. His team being all the people of Citi.” So take two today to figure out how to tell the Citi employee in your life you’re proud of the work they’ve done. Whether it involves jumping out of a cake naked or one of those mini desk Zen Gardens with card that says “One day you’ll get the life-sized version,” the thought alone would mean a lot to Dick.
Also considered going with: 'I think we'll be okay here, they have a thin candy shell.'
Ebullio Capital Management is the commodities fund that lost 86 percent in February, after declining 70 percent in January, and YTD, is down 96 percent. We’ve already discussed the fact that in his letter to investors, founder Lars Steffensen was able to a) offer hope, by noting his ample qualifications to come back from such sack-rippingly bad results (“We took a hit,” Lars wrote. “I’ve always bounced back”) and b) look on the bright side, and make the argument why, performance aside, you’re better off sticking your money with him than some other joker who’ll just lie to you (“Most Managers would probably try to hush this up and not send out this Newsletter, but we have always been about transparency and having broadcast our winning months, we are going to do the same with our (albeit quite a lot more spectacular) losers and take the heat that comes with the territory.”) Now, Zero Hedge has obtained the full letter and there’s even more to love! Namely a pearl of wisdom Lars picked up while watching Crazy Heart, which is that you don’t see the ass-bleeding on the horizon until you’re laying face down on the couch, too uncomfortable to sit normally at your desk due to the Rectal prolapse.
Despite our very upbeat view on the future and performance of the Ebullio Commodity Fund, we have obviously had a tough couple of months and have certainly come to realize with Bad Blake (played by Oscar winning Jeff Bridges) in “Crazy Heart”: You don’t see it coming ’til it’s gone.
Actually, that’ s not entirely fair. Kenneth Feinberg can *try* to renegotiate payments he characterizes as not good for the people. But when it comes down to it? Yeah he can’t do shit. Which is why we suggest K.Fein perform his “look back” while enjoying an herbal refreshment in Jimmy Cayne’s new executive suite (tricked out basement).
Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department’s special master for compensation, will send a letter Tuesday to 419 firms that received TARP funds seeking data on compensation paid to the top 25 executives. The pay review will cover a relatively short period but will capture the 2008 end-of-year bonus season at most large firms.
Mr. Feinberg can’t claw back any pay but can seek to renegotiate any payments he deems “not in the public interest.” He is required to perform the so-called “look back” under the legal statute that created the pay czar.
Remember a few weeks back when– OMG!– it snowed a few inches and nobody would shut the hell up about it? These people actually did something productive about it, other than coining terms like ‘snowpocalypse.’
“To put it simply, we were bullish on the weather,” Henrik Wennberg, a portfolio manager, said in a telephone interview from Zurich. “We saw this already in the middle of December and started buying then to take long positions.”
BBC: 
