The New York bank reported third quarter earnings rose 74 percent in the third quarter, to $3.8 billion, due to lower losses from loans and an accounting gain. Its international consumer lending business grew in Asia and Latin America. The bank also decided to keep its credit card partnership with retailers as that business improved…Last week Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, said he understands the sentiments of the protesters and was willing to meet with them. Citi spokesman Edward Skyler said no one had reached out from the organizers to talk with Pandit yet. [AP, earlier]
Archive for October 2011
As you may have heard, around 100,000 financial services employees are set to be laid off by the end of the year (with the cuts already beginning for some). How will those made redundant attempt to get back in the game? Some will hire headhunters. Others will reach out to friends in the industry. Yet others will post their resumes on employment websites, hoping to catch a nibble. And a small but apparently growing group of people will take the less traditional path of driving a New York City cab, which offers the dual-function of an income and a captive audience for your pitch.
Tough times have prompted more New Yorkers to seek financial relief and upward mobility in the taxi trade. The number of licensed city cabbies has risen by 10 percent since the stock market began its decline in late 2007, according to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. License renewals are up, too, officials said, suggesting that drivers who used to move on to higher-paying jobs are sticking with the hack trade for now. At Master Cabbie Taxi Academy in Long Island City, Queens, instructors have noticed an increase in former financial workers since the recession began. “As they lay off, people come through,” the owner, Terry Gelber, said.
Scott Curtis, for instance, worked on Wall Street for 25 years until he was made a casualty of the recession. When he first lost his job, he got in touch with a few recruiters and signed up with Monster, though neither helped him land a position with a hedge fund, where he’s hoping to end up.
“There are 20 million other people on Monster.com,” said Mr. Curtis, who chats up his fares in case a chief executive or headhunter has stumbled in. “I thought people would see this, and think, ‘He’ll go the extra yard to go and get a job.’ ” Passengers who climb into Mr. Curtis’s cab are greeted by a laminated sheet of paper reading: “Ask to see my résumé. You won’t be sorry!” It has led to three interviews, one with a major British bank, though none has yet resulted in a job offer. Mr. Curtis, who is hoping to land a hedge-fund position, said he decided to become a cabby after having little luck with traditional headhunters and job Web sites. “I just figured the best way to market myself was to be driving around town with a sign that said: ‘Hey, help me! I need a job!’ ” he said.
While cab-driving offers the laid-off a unique opportunity to get their names out there, “exploit the inefficiencies of the market” (“Herb Reyes heads to the usually deserted Avenue of the Americas in Midtown rather than the Meatpacking District, where he knows bankers who work the Asian markets will be looking for rides”), and earn “all-cash wages” as opposed to 90% stock/10% cash deferred over 12 years, it does come with some downsides, like ferrying around idiot first-years who you’re pretty sure don’t know dick about finance. Continue reading »
Wall Street Protests Spread To Four Continents (Bloomberg)
“I want to see stricter regulation of the finance system,” said Joe Spence, 23, an anthropology student at Kent University, one of those who have camped out for three nights next to Christopher Wren’s 17th century church. “I want a government that will not just pander to the banks.” A notice at the campsite, about 100 yards from the LSE, read “Jail the Bankers.” The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that began last month in Lower Manhattan moved uptown on Oct. 15, as about 6,000 people gathered in Times Square during what organizers called a “global day of action against Wall Street greed.” The protests spread to Europe and Asia at the weekend, with more than 100 people were injured in Rome, where as many as 200,000 gathered, the Corriere della Sera newspaper reported…“Around the world, we’re seeing people coming out in record numbers — not just to protest and then go home,” said Tim David Frank, 27, a teacher involved with the Occupy Sydney movement. “These are people who’ve decided to live and stay overnight, on the streets, outside of the financial institutions to remind them that we exist and that our world should be based on our interests, not just theirs.”
Occupy Wall Street Protestors Flood Times Square (NYMag)
Saturday: As some [of the 10,000-20,000] protesters moved forward into the intersection, two officers on horseback repelled them. People were seen trying to kick and push the horses away. Said a facilitator who asked not to be named, “The horses were stomping on people. We were yelling, ‘stop, get down, don’t get arrested.’” Sewer steam was billowing into the air and one occupier yelled “tear gas!” in confusion. As the protesters pushed forward, officers ran toward them with batons, yelling, “Get back!” The crowd fell backwards, and an 82-year-old woman cracked her head on the pavement. She lay in the street bleeding from the head for ten minutes before EMTs arrived. During that time, police drove in a truck filled with more gates to the intersection, as well as several scooters. At least two people were arrested in the showdown.
Customers locked in and arrested after attempting to close their accounts in protest (DM)
Footage has emerged showing what appears to be dozens of Citibank and Bank of America customers denied requests to close their accounts, some even being arrested after alleged clashes with branch managers. A woman dressed in a business suit holding a checkbook attempts to enter but is stopped by officers outside who ask her if she was part of the protest. After calmly insisting she is a customer of the bank, a plain-clothed officer detains her. Police swarm as she appears to be taken back inside – one of 24 people arrested on charges of criminal trespassing…Citibank said in an official statement the group was ‘very disruptive and refused to leave after being repeatedly asked.’
Obama Extends Support For Protestors (FT)
On Sunday, Mr Obama honoured Martin Luther King at a dedication to a new memorial on National Mall in Washington. Referring to protests that have spread from Wall Street to London, Rome and elsewhere, Mr Obama said: “Dr King would want us to challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonising those who work there.” Continue reading »
Cuts at the House Of Moynihan. Continue reading »
Well, okay, it wasn’t exactly a layoff in the strictness sense of the word, more like an entirely voluntary resignation by Rick Perry’s son from his job at Deutsche Bank so he could go campaign with dad, but Momma Perry interpreted that as Griffin Perry ‘losing’ his job thanks to that damn Obama guy [shakes fist] so just go with it. Same diff/no diff. Continue reading »
Markets got you down? Can’t seem to keep up with your benchmark this year? Not sure you’ll ever figure out this whole buy-low, sell-high thing that you keep hearing rumors about? Cheer up, you’ve got good company. Company anyway. Specifically, corporate America, whose overall market timing ability is much worse than that of a chimp who watches Art Cashin.
That’s what McKinsey coldly concluded, noting that from 2004 to 2010, “Only 31 percent of the [S&P 500] companies earned a positive return from buying back shares—less than you would expect from a random throw of the dice.” And not only did two out of three companies underperform putting cash under a pillow; three out of four underperformed dollar cost averaging:
Cramer says their goals should include holding accountable those responsible for the housing crisis — “Let’s indict them. We all know that they committed, to me, they committed crimes.” — and the repayment of bonuses that were given out at banks that received TARP money. “It’s outrageous!” he said. “It is outrageous what they paid themselves. It is obscene! I mean, there are real reasons to be angry.” [Daily Intel]
Maybe you think you’ll be one of the 100,000 financial services employees projected to be laid off this year. Maybe you’re bracing for a bonus that will need to be supplemented with outside revenue streams. Maybe everything’s going great for you career-wise, you’re at the top of your game but you’ve decided a traditional get to work in the morning, leave at night, keep your pants on the whole time type job is no longer for you. Married couple Tyler and Berkley got that. And while they couldn’t have initially predicted that “turning their bedroom into a new kind of home office” would turn out to be the dream gig they never knew they wanted, that’s exactly what happened.
Tyler, 24, and Berkley, 21, who did not want their last name revealed, said they can usually make about $1,000 a week from doing five nights of amateur porn via webcam around midnight…”We did it once together, that first night,” Tyler said. “Within 30 minutes we had made, like, $300. And I was like, I’m done with the normal 40-hour week. I’m done.”
If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, take 5 to attend an information session with T ‘n B, who say that the one downside to the job is that “Having sex off and on for two, three hours gets kind of hard…It’s, like, rough, so it wears on you a lot.” Continue reading »
Apparently the previously suggested cuts have begun. Continue reading »
A group of students stormed Goldman Sachs’s central Milan offices on Friday ahead of worldwide protests against financial inequality planned for the weekend…Students managed to break into the hall of the Goldman Sachs building in the heart of Milan’s financial district, a few steps away from La Scala opera house, police said. The protests were quickly dispersed by police and security was restored to the elegant building, though red graffiti was daubed on its walls expressing anger at Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and proclaiming “Give us money.” Protesters in Italy’s financial capital also hurled eggs at the headquarters of UniCredit, the country’s biggest bank. [Reuters via BI]
-
Posted in:
Communiqués
Bill Gross Would Have Beaten His Benchmark Had He Not Eaten Those 500 Basis Points
By Bess Levin
Several weeks back, bond manager Bill Gross wrote a very personal letter to investors about feeling fat. In it, he spoke of hating his “spare tire,” feeling self-conscious about wearing a bathing suit, and preferring to be shot dead than getting a glimpse of what his ass has become. Today, Bill sent out another letter, entitled “Mea Culpa,” in which he apologized to PIMCO investors for the poor performance of the firm’s Total Return Fund (which through Wednesday was up a mere 1.1 percent versus the 5.7 percent benchmark). And yet perhaps it is the investors who should be apologizing to Mr. Bill? Continue reading »
