“I want people to know I have nothing against you personally,” Davis, 81, tells C.E.O. Lloyd C. Blankfein. “And you are not a bad looking guy.” She then gives Mr. Blankfein a free copy of her newsletter Highlights and Lowlights…Davis [later asks] Mr. Blankfein if his wife Laura was present. [Dealbook, earlier]
Archive for May 2011
No one has said anything but…the standing ovation on the floor of the NYSE, the “good luck, Erin” from Jane Wells, the hints being dropped by Haines and, as one of you noticed, what appear to have been tears in EB’s eyes at the start of the program seem to suggest yes?
Update: And yes, it’s been confirmed today is the day (though Burnett will say her final good-bye Street Signs at 2PM).
Update II: Erin has gifted Haines with a pack of camel magnets, a keychain, a card she was insistent he not read on air, and Cheetos-flavored lip gloss. Continue reading »
“I would not at this moment say that any financial services firm, especially Goldman, who was preeminent during that whole time, is out of the woods on this,” said Peter Sorrentino, a senior portfolio manager at Huntington Asset Advisors in Cincinnati, which manages $14.8 billion, including almost 135,000 Goldman Sachs shares. “At this juncture, given the magnitude of what happened, I don’t know what the time window is…I still think we’re one headline away from this stock getting clobbered.” [Bloomberg]
Last February two former SAC Capital employees, Noah Freeman and Donald Longueuil, were charged with insider trading, with Longueuil pleading guilty in April and Freeman doing so from the get-go, having chosen to cooperate with the FBI (cooperation that included wearing a wire while having conversations with his ex-best friend, Longueuil, in which he got Don to vividly describe destroying evidence with two pairs of pliers and a North Face fleece). At the time of the accusations, SAC said that they were “outraged” by the actions of the duo, who’d been fired in 2010 for “poor performance.” That should have been the end of it, but now the Feds are taking a look-see at whether or not these punks got their stink on The Cohen Account AKA The Big Book. Continue reading »
Goldman BRIC Fund Among Most Hurt in ‘Panic’ Commodities Selling (Bloomberg)
The $831 million Goldman Sachs BRIC Fund (GBRAX) and the $825 million Templeton BRIC Fund (TABRX), which focus on Brazil, China, India and Russia, both fell 5.7 percent in the week ended yesterday. The funds, from New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and San Mateo, California’s Franklin Resources Inc., lost the most among diversified equity funds with more than $500 million in assets and at least 20 percent in energy or basic materials stocks, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Glencore IPO Orders Continue To Roll In (WSJ)
Glencore on Wednesday set the price range for the offer at 480 pence to 580 pence, valuing it at around $61 billion, including the new money being raised. Around $10 billion in shares will be sold, plus a $1 billion overallotment. Most of the offer is in the form of new shares. Bankers said the order book was covered after the first day of subscriptions. One on Friday said a “material” amount of orders were added to the total on Thursday, even as oil and silver prices slid sharply.
Paulson’s Biggest Fund Said to Be Down in 2011 After April Gain (SFGate/Bloomberg)
Paulson’s Advantage Plus Fund, which uses strategies designed to profit from corporate events such as takeovers and bankruptcies, is down 1.7 percent in 2011 after gaining 0.1 percent last month, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the returns are private. The fund’s gold- denominated share class rose 6.3 percent in April and 4.9 percent this year.
Bank of America Had Positive Trading Revenue Every Day of First Quarter (Bloomberg)
Trading-related revenue was positive every day and exceeded $25 million on 98 percent of days during the year’s first three months, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender said today in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2010, it had gains on 90 percent of trading days, with perfect records in that year’s first and third quarters, according to previous filings.
AIG quarterly net income drops 85% (MarketWatch)
First-quarter net income attributable to AIG was $269 million, compared with $1.8 billion a year earlier, the company said. On a per-share basis, AIG reported a net loss of 35 cents, versus a profit of $2.66 a share in the first quarter of 2010…AIG expected to make 34 cents a share, according to a FactSet survey of three analysts. A Thomson Reuters survey of three analysts came up with a consensus estimate of a loss of 15 cents a share.
JPMorgan Chase Said to Be Subpoenaed by SEC Over Mortgage Debt Documents (Bloomberg)
JPMorgan received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over failed mortgages, a person familiar with the investigation said, as the agency probes banks including Credit Suisse Group AG for allegedly failing to share refunds from sellers of faulty debt.
RBS core operating profit jumps 25 pct (Reuters)
RBS, which is majority-owned by the British government, made a first quarter loss of 528 million pounds ($841.5 million) after it racked up 1.3 billion pounds in bad debts at Ulster Bank… RBS said Irish loan losses would stay high this quarter before “gradually declining” in the second half of the year. The bank’s core business – namely its main retail and investment banking arms and excluding its insurance unit which is due to be sold off or floated on the stock market in 2012 – had an operating profit of about 2 billion pounds a quarter.
Schumer Tilts Toward Offer by Germans for Big Board (WSJ)
Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, remains publicly neutral on the competing proposals: a roughly $10 billion bid from Deutsche Börse AG, which agreed in February to buy NYSE Euronext, and a hostile, $11 billion offer from Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. and IntercontinentalExchange Inc. But Mr. Schumer is favoring the German deal as the best way to protect New York, according to the people who have spoken with him. Mr. Schumer focuses on the question so much that he tracks the number of Bloomberg terminals sold in major financial capitals.
Coffee, Sex, Blowing Nose May Increase Risk of a Stroke, Dutch Study Finds (Bloomberg)
Researchers from University Medical Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands, analyzed 250 patients who survived such a stroke and identified eight risk factors tied to the event. They included drinking a cup of coffee, which carried the highest risk, having sex, physical exercise, nose blowing, straining to defecate, drinking cola and being startled or angry. Continue reading »
$$$ Trichet ignites biggest dollar rise since 2009 (MarketWatch)
$$$ U.S. Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Jump on Auto Shutdowns (Bloomberg)
$$$ Oil crashes 10 percent in record rout (Reuters)
$$$ Gold, silver plunge on new margin increases (MarketWatch)
$$$ ‘Home Alone‘ house in Winnetka for sale for $2.4M (Chicago Tribune) Continue reading »
Does The Glencore IPO Have Goldman Sachs And Morgan Stanley Waking Up In A Cold Sweat?
By Bess LevinSupposedly, yes. Continue reading »
Ayn Rand-Worshipping Former Banker’s Got $2 Million With Your Business School’s Name On It
By Bess Levin
All you have to do is promise to make the work of his goddess required reading and pray at her alter daily. Continue reading »
Earlier this week, we took a serious look at a sport beloved to a certain hedge fund in Stamford, CT: ping pong. Second only to trading and hunting humans, p-pong is the pastime that is often cited internally as the secret to this firm’s success, the practice of which has made what started out as a 2-bit boiler room into the powerhouse fund it is today. A prescient call, as today Bloomberg has published an article quoting table tennis experts on ping pong being the hottest new thing in the business community.
“It’s like a real-life version of LinkedIn,” says founder Peter Farnsworth. “We’re bringing the business community together through pingpong.”
According to Alan Williams, of sports management firm North American Table Tennis, “Everyone who plays table tennis [will] live longer, be smarter, and be more attractive.” While true, this affirmation did not please our hedge fund manager who, as we all know, is above all else a trend-setting icon, not a follower. He doesn’t hop on bandwagons, he builds them from the ground up (see: skinny jeans) and the burns them down when others pile on, years later. Continue reading »
Joe Kernen Wants To Save Your Children From Brainwashing By Liberals Who Hate Capitalism And Are Poisoning Their Minds
By Bess Levin
He’s so serious about the issue he wrote a book about it, which you unfortunately can’t buy until May 12th. By then, it might be too late.
Player-Hating Securities And Exchange Commission Won’t Let Broke Guy Put In An Offer For All Of AMR Corp
By Bess Levin
Allen Weintraub is a convicted felon who’s racked up his share of securities violations and, in 2007, filed for bankruptcy. He’s also a man with a dream- several in fact- that last March, he went after. In short, Weintraub wanted to buy AMR Corp- all of it. Eastman Kodak Company, too. And unlike some people, who are all talk and not a lot of action, Weintraub set out to make his dreams a reality.
In the AMR case, Weintraub sent a letter March 29 to “Gerald Arpey” offering $9.75 per share of AMR stock, an offer worth about $3.25 billion. Gerard Arpey is chairman, president and chief executive of AMR. That followed Weintraub’s March 19 offer for all shares of Kodak for about $1.3 billion.
Apparently Weintraub initiative wasn’t cool with the SEC, which filed a suit against him today, that Weintraub would characterize as bull shit typical of people trying to hold him down. Continue reading »
