email: tips@dealbreaker.com
text: (646) 820-4847
call: (212) 334-1871
all tips are anonymous
$$$ Dow tumbles 500 points in global rout (WSJ
$$$ Matthew Goldstein: The Paulson Advantage Plus fund is down 21.6 percent for the year after the fund fell 4.63 percent in July, according to people familiar with the firm who declined to be identified. The Paulson Advantage fund is down about 15 percent for the year. (Reuters)
$$$ Ex-MLB player charged with insider trading (Fortune)
$$$ Benmosche: AIG No Longer Beholden to US Government (CNBC) Continue reading »
Not only is Morgan Stanley gaining FICC market share, dominating tech IPOs, and not laying off scads of people, but its CEO thinks it’s a buy:
James Gorman, chief executive officer of Morgan Stanley, purchased $2.06 million of stock in the firm as the shares touched their lowest level since March 2009.
Gorman bought 100,000 shares today at a weighted average price of $20.62, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The stock tumbled $1.32 on the New York Stock Exchange, or 6.3 percent, giving Gorman a $92,000 one-day loss on the transaction.
SAC Capital Advisors may have a one-day paper loss of about $196 million from its stake in Dendreon Corp. (DNDN), the drugmaker that plunged the most ever after it withdrew its 2011 revenue estimate. SAC Capital owned 8.2 million shares of Seattle-based Dendreon as of March 31, making it the biggest shareholder, according to a regulatory filing. Dendreon fell 67 percent, or $23.87, to $11.97 at 3:15 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading, the largest decline since its initial public offering in June 2000. [Bloomberg]
Remember Gryphon Financial? It was a boiler room scam run under a bunch of false names (including “Michael Warren” and “Kenneth Maseka,” supposedly a Harvard and Oxford grad) by Kenneth Marsh, who’s going to be sentenced for securities fraud next week. Investors claim that Gryphon not only lied to them about an endorsement by George Soros (who the firm claims said “Alone, the Gryphon Financial are incredible, together they are unstoppable”) but the opportunity to see mind-boggling returns. Except that those huge-ass returns turned out to be real! Sort of. Maybe. In any case, if you’re having a tough time in the stock-picking business, you may want to talk to Marsh (pictured above) in, oh, about 14 years.
Continue reading »
Rebecca Rickwood is a 15 year-old girl living in the UK whose name should make you quake in fear. What about a 15 year-old girl could you possibly have to be afraid of? How about the fact that she could whip up a spreadsheet in the time it takes you to fill out your first cell, and could have your job and the jobs of 50 of your colleagues if she wanted? Continue reading »
So! Lots of signs of the apocalypse to choose from today. The Dow is down over almost 3%. The 10-year is yielding under 2.5%. Europe is sucking more countries into the vortex. Even gold is down somehow. Most ominously of all, Dealbreaker has been down all morning and afternoon, for reasons that are not clear to us but that we’re going to blame on interference from LightSquared anyway.
But our favorite harbinger of doom has to be the WSJ’s report that Bank of New York Mellon is now paying (0.13%) interest on large deposits – that is, if you want them to watch your money for you (and you’ve got over $50mm), you pay them 13bps. Negative rates on short-dated Treasuries are back, and negative real interest rates have been pretty common recently, but negative rates on large bank deposits are new to us. (Or not new exactly, since lots of people have fee checking accounts, but most of them don’t have $50 million in the bank.) Continue reading »
The Dow is off 400 points at present. According to CNBC, the last day of a 400+ point drop was December 1, 2008. We could all use a drink or 45. Continue reading »
Air France ruled that only male cabin crew were allowed to serve Dominique Strauss-Kahn, currently fighting accusations he attempted to rape a New York hotel maid. The claim was reported Thursday by Le Parisien newspaper, which also says lawyers for the former IMF chief’s alleged victim, Nafissatou Diallo, are soliciting testimony from female flight attendants at the national carrier, who may have been subjected to inappropriate behavior by the Frenchman.”Air France has a few hundred complaints from clients, employees, crew members who met the man suspected of having abused your client Madame Diallo,” the letter alleged, adding, “it was decided by Air France that ‘only male employees should be deployed in the first class cabin when this client [Strauss-Kahn] was traveling.’ French magazine Le Point reported that just moments before Port Authority detectives arrived, he had barked at an attendant, “What a nice ass!” as she prepared the cabin for takeoff. [NYP]
“I think they’ve been doing gang-bangers across the board”– Bob Pisani’s thoughts on GM to Melissa Lee and Jim Cramer earlier this morning
At the end of June, Tim Geithner said that he was considering leaving his post at the Treasury after the debt deal past, telling friends that he’s tired, needs a break, and wants to put family first (his wife and son are living in Westchester again so that young Geithner can finish high school there). TG’s work pals were a bit too busy to say anything at the time, but now that the whole debt situation is behind us, they’ve begun to let him know he’s not going anywhere.
Obama, for one, doesn’t want to lose his office buddy, while White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley doesn’t want to deal with a confirmation battle that would take place should Geithner need to be replaced, which is why he “jokingly” tells Tim to fuck off and gestures towards his crotch when the topic of resignation comes up. Continue reading »
How The White House Wooed Wall Street In Debt Debate (WSJ)
White House officials including Mr. Daley and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett placed calls to banks, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Daley called a former colleague at J.P. Morgan, head of government relations Peter Scher, and tried to reach Bank of New York Mellon Corp. CEO Robert Kelly, people familiar with the matter said. The message from administration officials: contact key senators and congressman in both parties to tell them that an agreement was crucial for business confidence and the economy…Separately, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and J.P. Morgan CEO James Dimon talked twice in the last week about the debt-ceiling deliberations, said people familiar with the conversations. Mr. Dimon called Mr. Geithner last week and the two discussed how the markets were reacting and whether a government default would upend U.S. payment systems. On Monday Mr. Geithner called Mr. Dimon to brief him on the final deal, one of these people said.
Berlusconi to Meet Italian Executives, Unions (Bloomberg)
The meeting in Rome today comes after the premier, rejecting calls to resign, addressed both houses of Parliament yesterday on Italy’s economy. Berlusconi said he’d seek to liberalize the labor market, adding that the country is “up to the task” of tackling the debt crisis as its economic fundamentals are solid.
Italian Bank CEO: Italy Is Rich But Needs Growth (CNBC)
“It’s a matter of confidence. I don’t think the fundamentals of Italy are justifying this overshooting in the market. So, we have problems, the debt is very high but on the other side the debt is only 23 percent of the total wealth of the families so Italy is still quite a rich market,” said Federico Ghizzoni, the CEO of Unicredit during an interview in Milan.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Sister Is Over Facebook (Daily Intel)
Randi Zuckerberg has quit the family business.
Swedish Man Caught Trying To Split Atoms At Home (AP)
A Swedish man who was arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen said Wednesday he was only doing it as a hobby. Richard Handl told The Associated Press that he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment in southern Sweden when police showed up and arrested him on charges of unauthorized possession of nuclear material. The 31-year-old Handl said he had tried for months to set up a nuclear reactor at home and kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove. Only later did he realize it might not be legal and sent a question to Sweden’s Radiation Authority, which answered by sending the police. Continue reading »
