A brief follow-up. Read more »
Bank of America
A whole bunch of mini Moynihans are said to have left the building. Read more »
A while back Bear Stearns sold some mortgage-backed securities to a thing called FSAM, which was basically a subsidiary of Franco-Belgian monstrosité Dexia, and FSAM sold the RMBS on to Dexia, and the mortgages were all terrible, and their value dropped, and Dexia sued JPMorgan, currently the proud owner of Bear Stearns, and today JPMorgan won:
JPMorgan Chase & Co has won the dismissal of the vast majority of a lawsuit accusing it of misleading the Belgian-French bank Dexia SA into buying more than $1.6 billion of troubled mortgage debt.
The decision, made public Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan, is a victory for the largest U.S. bank, in a case that gained notoriety after emails and other materials were disclosed that suggested the bank and its affiliates knew the debt was toxic, but sold it anyway.
Despite the notoriety this is kind of a boring case: it’s a garden-variety RMBS fraud case; Bear said various things in the offering documents that maybe weren’t so true, and the market crashed and the investors lost a lot of money, and now they’re mad. There’s like a zillion of those cases; actually there’s like a zillion of those cases just against Bear Stearns (here are two).
But the fact that the bank won is pretty interesting? Like, if JPMorgan can win a garden-variety RMBS case then so can anyone? I guess? So I suppose it’s worth spending a minute figuring out what this means for other banks.
We run into immediate problems because it’s hard to know exactly why JPMorgan won; the judge’s order is two pages of “opinion to follow.” But reading JPMorgan’s submissions you can get behind CNBC’s interpretation: Read more »
Bank of America Corp. co-Chief Operating Officer Thomas K. Montag received a 21 percent raise to $14.5 million for 2012, topping his boss Brian T. Moynihan for the third straight year. Montag, 56, got a $5.46 million cash bonus for 2012, $8.19 million in restricted stock units and an $850,000 base salary, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender said today in a regulatory filing. That compares with the $12 million awarded to Moynihan, 53, giving the chief executive officer a raise of more than 70 percent from 2011. “This says to everybody that Brian is OK with Tom getting a superior compensation; Montag is doing a great job in a business that’s very tough right now,” said Jeanne Branthover, managing director at Boyden Global Executive Search Ltd. in New York [Bloomberg, earlier]
Brian T. Moynihan, who endured record losses and public thrashings while cleaning up Bank of America Corp.’s mortgage mess, said he wouldn’t mind being chief executive officer of the lender forever. “It’s the best job there is,” Moynihan said yesterday in an interview scheduled for public television’s “Charlie Rose” program. “While there have been times when you sit there and say, ‘Jeez, this is a lot of pounding,’ you always keep your eye on the purpose you’re here. And that’s to help people with their financial lives — if you really keep focused on that, I could do this the rest of my life.” [Bloomberg]
Cuts are said to have gone down at the House ‘o Moynihan. Read more »
The Journal has an article this morning with the headline “BofA Times an Options Trade Well” that is about how BofA timed an options trade well. Specifically, in June 2012, it bought $60K worth of July $20 calls on Constellation Brands (STZ), and a week later STZ announced it was buying a big beer importer and its stock went up and BofA made about a million dollars on the calls.
But it’s not really about BofA’s smart timing; rather, it’s about the fact that BofA was an advisor and lender on the M&A deal, so it’s mighty suspicious that BofA’s options traders got this timing so right at the same exact time that its bankers and lenders were chock-full of confidential information.
Is it? My strong instinctive reaction is no, because I worked at a bank on the private side and also talked to equity vol traders, and it would never have occurred to me to call the vol traders and be all “hey we have a merger coming you should buy some calls,” and if it had, it would never have occurred to them to buy the calls instead of calling compliance and having me arrested. Because it is so dumb! For like a million bucks, too – likely far less than BofA made on its financing and advisory assignments. Like the man said, a million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Not going to prison.1
Depending on your priors you can read this as a story about how data-mining on activity in thinly traded options just before merger announcements leads to a lot of false positives and uncalled-for eyebrow-raising, or as a story about how too-big-to-prosecute banks can get away with a lot of things that random dudes in Switzerland can’t. Read more »
AIG is in the news today for two very small numbers in connection with much larger numbers. First: AIG is no longer bailed out! I know, you thought that happened like six months ago, and then again three months ago, but today AIG got rid of the last little bits of government ownership, really this time:
American International Group, Inc. (NYSE: AIG) announced today that it completed the repurchase of warrants issued to the United States Department of the Treasury (U.S. Treasury) in 2008 and 2009. … AIG and the U.S. Treasury agreed upon a repurchase price of approximately $25 million for the warrants. The U.S. Treasury does not have any residual interest in AIG after AIG’s repurchase of these warrants.
“With AIG repurchasing all outstanding warrants issued to the U.S. Treasury, we are turning the final page on America’s assistance to AIG,” said Robert H. Benmosche, AIG President and Chief Executive Officer. “We appreciate the opportunities this support allowed and are proud to have returned to America every cent plus a profit of $22.7 billion.”
Back in December, I speculated baselessly about why AIG didn’t just buy back these warrants in connection with Treasury’s final sale of stock back in December, since they were just rounding error on the $7.6bn offering. I figured waiting would let the government get a better deal, and it seems to have: I ballparked a value of $18,000,000.393 for those warrants in December, so Treasury made an extra $7mm by waiting three months.1 One possible explanation is that AIG and Treasury enjoyed the dynamic of announcing “AIG HAS PAID OFF ITS BAILOUT” every three months, so they milked it for all it was worth. I’m sure someone from Treasury left a pen or something at AIG’s offices, and its return will be announced with great fanfare in a few months.
But this is a distraction from more amazing, less pleasant AIG news: Read more »
Dick Bové Is ThisClose To Gifting Brian Moynihan With A LivingSocial Deal For Public Speaking Courses
By Bess Levin
After one investor conference in June 2011, veteran bank analyst Richard Bove says he called the lender’s investor relations department to complain. “I told them I didn’t believe such an incredibly bad presentation could be made,” Bove says of Moynihan. “He doesn’t have the ability to speak off the cuff, and to let him is to destroy shareholder wealth.” Moynihan’s lack of eloquence is the main reason he’s underestimated, says Bill Miller, chairman of Legg Mason Capital Management Inc., whose funds own about 4 million Bank of America shares. Miller says the stock can double within three years. “There’s a tendency to impute much greater skill on the part of somebody like Jamie Dimon, who is very smooth, over someone like Brian,” Miller says. “People say, ‘Oh, he doesn’t speak well, and he stumbles over his words and he’s sweating.’” [Bloomberg]
Time was, being Chief Executive Officer of Bank of America was a thankless job that involved being mocked by Stephen Schwarzman, engaging in hand-to-hand combat, and generally feeling as though one’s ass was being kicked on a daily basis. It may still be a thankless job that involves all those things but now it comes with a little extra cash to make B-Moy feel better about himself/the prank calls that he knows are coming from Blackstone. Read more »
Countrywide is both an albatross and a boon for Brian Moynihan. Sure, it’s the reason for all of Bank of America’s troubles, but it’s also really convenient to have such a reason.
This, however, is less convenient: Read more »
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