Opening Bell: 08.31.09

Author:
Updated:: Jan 14, 2019
Original:: Aug 31, 2009

Lehman Claims Could Reach $100 Billion (Reuters)
The majority coming from Joe Gregory. Kidding (kind of) but seriously: PWC says it's gonna be huge.
Cerberus to Raise New Distressed Funds (Bloomberg)
According to chief operating officer Mark Neporent, the requests to pull $4.77 billion came from other managers who needed to provide liquidity to their investors, meaning it had nothing to do with Cerberus and wasn't one of those "lack of confidence" situations. Therefore: you should not hesitate to fork over cash for the new funds.
Barney Frank Said To Back Broader Fed Audits (WSJ)
According to Ron Paul. "Barney told me, 'It's going to come. You're going to get what you want,' " Mr. Paul said.
Swiss Banks Expect To Avoid Witch-Hunt (FT)
They haven't been promised anything but are hopeful, the alternative involving latex gloves. Boris Collardi, chief executive of Julius Baer, said: "I don't want to say we're relaxed but we're prepared. There may be some requests for information [from tax authorities] but I don't think we face the risk of another John Doe summons. It's like we've been driving in a 60kph zone and after you've passed it, someone tells you it was 30. The interpretation of the rules has changed. It's a very unpleasant position to be in, but the most important thing is that we won't compromise on fishing expeditions or banking secrecy."
Preaching The Gospel Of Momentum (Barron's)
Barron's: You employ about 200 people. But none of them do fundamental research and follow companies like General Electric or Nestlé, right?
Asness: It's actually just me and David [Kabilllar] and one really big computer.
As Disposals Slow at AIG, ILFC Chief Makes Pitch (WSJ)
Steven Udvar-Hazy to possibly step up to the plate and buy about $2 billion of the company's aircraft portfolio (and start a rival business).
Scavengers scan beaches seeking valuable trinkets (NYDN)
Your new revenue stream?
Woman Hires Hitman For Just $200 (CBS12 via BI)
$100 up front, $100 after the job got done.
The Flash-Trading Thorn In NYSE's Side (WSJ)
Goes by the name William O'Brien.

Prosecutors, regulators close to making Libor arrests (Reuters) U.S. prosecutors and European regulators are close to arresting individual traders and charging them with colluding to manipulate global benchmark interest rates, according to people familiar with a sweeping investigation into the rigging scandal...Defense lawyers, some of whom represent suspects, said prosecutors have indicated they plan to begin making arrests and filing criminal charges in the next few weeks. Diamond Exit Fells Last Pillar In London’s Gekko Generation (Bloomberg) When Mervyn King and Adair Turner, the U.K.’s top two financial overseers, agreed to summon Barclays’s chairman to the Bank of England on July 2 and said they had lost confidence in Diamond, London’s best-known banker, they were making clear that the rules of the road had changed. “The signal to the City has got to be that if you behave badly you will be removed from your employment,” said Paul Myners, the government’s financial-services minister from 2008 to 2010 and former chairman of Gartmore Investment Management Ltd. “It will send shivers down the spine of anybody who is up to no good.” Spain Bans Short-Selling For Three Months (Reuters) Spain's stock market regulator banned short-selling on all Spanish securities on Monday for three months and said it may extend the ban beyond Oct. 23. The ban, which will not apply to market makers, will apply to any operation on stocks or indexes, including cash operations, derivatives traded on platforms as well as OTC derivatives, the regulator said in a statement. Greece Should Pay Wages in Drachmas Says German Lawmaker (Reuters) "Greece should start to pay half of its civil service wages, pensions and other expenditures in drachmas now," Dobrint said. "A soft return to the old currency is better for Greece than a drastic move. Having the drachma as a parallel currency would allow the chance for economic growth to develop." All Eyes On Facebook Revenue (WSJ) Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect Facebook to report second-quarter revenue of $1.1 billion on earnings of 12 cents a share. Facebook needs to hit those marks to prove that it can grow into the $100 billion valuation that it gave itself in its IPO. The valuation implies Facebook will grow at a significant pace, said Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney. Facebook's "business has been showing significant revenue-growth deceleration," he said. "The market valuation implies at least a stabilization of revenue growth this year and next year." Using Small Business Loans To Generate Big Profits (WSJ) At a recent group-lending meeting in the Kawangware slum, about 10 miles from downtown, Jackson Munyovi sought $350 to build a new shanty for his wife and two children. The 31-year-old welder asked fellow church congregants and friends to co-sign a loan to finance building materials. A church deacon vouched for the borrower's assets, including a few metal-shop machines and his marital bed, and Mr. Munyovi promised to repay the loan in six months, plus 8% interest. And with that, Equity Bank Group—one of Africa's most ambitious banks—snagged another customer. The Kenyan bank has enjoyed a booming business lending to people with little collateral beyond the potential disgrace of letting friends down. Equity executives aren't shy about a business model that leverages societal mores and shame—often the strongest collateral to be found on a continent where formal credit records are scarce beyond the biggest cities. Avenue Capital Places Faith In Eurozone (NYT) Now, even as Europe’s economic problems worsen and the markets punish giants like Spain and Italy, Mr. Lasry is betting on a long-term comeback for the Continent. This month, his hedge fund, Avenue Capital, finished raising nearly $3 billion for a fund that will invest in the debt of troubled European companies. He has committed roughly $75 million of his own money to the new fund. That’s still a small part of his estimated $1.3 billion fortune, but Mr. Lasry is among a coterie of hedge fund and private equity managers who are gambling that the euro zone will stay intact and revive over the long run. Wealth chief could be Morgan Stanley’s No.2 (NYP) Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman may have found his No.2: Greg Fleming. That’s after Fleming, the president of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and Morgan’s wealth management unit, proved to be the only bright spot in the firm’s otherwise disappointing second-quarter results...Gorman, 53, hasn’t anointed a second-in-command since he took over as CEO from John Mack back in 2009. But Morgan Stanley’s co-presidents of institutional securities, Colm Kelleher and Paul Taubman, and possibly CFO Ruth Porat (if she chooses to accept), are among those who could be named. Though still relatively new, having joined the company in 2009, Fleming has shown he’s a worthy contender for the crown. Tony Robbins ‘Firewalk Experience’ goes wrong (AP) Fire officials in California say at least 21 people were treated for burns after attendees of an event for motivational speaker Tony Robbins tried to walk on hot coals...at least three people went to a hospital and most suffered second or third-degree burns. Robbins was hosting a 4-day gathering called “Unleash the Power Within” at the San Jose Convention Center. Witnesses say on Thursday, a crowd went to a park where 12 lanes of hot coals were on the grass. Robbins’ website promotes “The Firewalk Experience” in which people walk on super-heated coals. Witness Jonathan Correll says he heard “screams of agony.”

France’s LBO Firms See ‘Death’ From Hollande’s 75% Carry Tax (Bloomberg) Hollande, who released his first annual budget on Sept. 28, plans to tax fund managers’ share of the profit from their investments, known as carried interest, at a rate of as much as 75 percent, part of a wider effort to increase taxes on the wealthy and narrow the country’s deficit. France also plans to as much as double taxes on capital gains and restrict the amount of debt interest payments a company can deduct from its taxable income, a measure that will reduce returns on leveraged buyouts. Facebook Test Turns Users Into Advertisers (FT) Facebook is testing a new product in the US that allows ordinary users to pay to promote their own status updates, marking a shift in the social network’s willingness to charge its users for a core service. The product has potential to generate revenues, analysts said, but could also threaten the organic feel of the site as people pay to market their own social lives. Mark Zuckerberg Confirms: 'I wear the same thing everyday' (DL) "I mean, I wear the same thing every day, right? I mean, it's literally, if you could see my closet," Zuckerberg starts to explain, as Lauer asks if he owns 12 of the same gray t-shirt. "Maybe about 20," Zuckerberg admits, somewhere between discussing the future of Facebook, his daily routine, the iPhone 5, and his wedding to college sweetheart Priscilla Chan last May. The Facebook CEO says that he doesn't really have much in his closet — it's mainly used by his wife, who graduated from medical school at the University of California at San Francisco shortly before their marriage. Instead, Zuckerberg's identical t-shirt collection lives in the one drawer he's allotted. Tiger Global Up 22.4 Percent (Reuters) Tiger Global, one of the world's best-performing hedge funds, ended the third quarter with strong gains, leaving the fund up 22.4 percent for the year, two people familiar with the numbers said on Wednesday. The roughly $6 billion fund, run by Chase Coleman and Feroz Dewan, has been the darling of the investment community for its string of strong returns at a time when the average hedge fund is delivering only low single-digit returns. In 2011, when most funds nursed losses, Tiger Global captured headlines with a 45 percent gain for the year after having made a good chunk of money on the short side, people familiar with the portfolio said. 'Dark Pool' And SEC Settle (WSJ) The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged in its order that Boston-based broker-dealer eBX LLC allowed the third-party operator of its trading platform, called LeveL ATS, to use details on client orders, including the stocks involved and whether they were buy or sell orders, to its own advantage. That operator is Lava Trading, an electronic-trading unit of Citigroup, according to eBX. eBX agreed to pay $800,000 to settle the SEC's allegations. It did so without admitting or denying wrongdoing. Mohamed El-Erian: No corner offices at PIMCO (Fortune) "It doesn't matter whether you're CEO or whether you're an associate, you have the same size office. No corner offices. Just a conference room. And then I knew that I had made the right decision when my very first outing with PIMCO, I had come from the IMF, 15 years working on emerging markets. I had a swagger, I thought I knew what I was talking about. I put forward my view, and this summer intern felt safe enough to get up and say, "You know what? Mohamed is wrong and this is why he's wrong." The fact that PIMCO had created this safe zone where a summer intern could get up and question someone who was supposed to be an expert confirmed to me that I was in the right place." Bank-Friendly U.S. Regulator Shifts Focus to Revamp Reputation (Bloomberg) In a stately hearing room stuffed with senators and bankers, Thomas Curry began his apologies. His agency should have stopped a major bank from helping drug cartels launder cash. The violations went on for years while his agency was overly passive. “I deeply regret we did not act sooner,” he said. Curry had been on the job for just over three months on that day in July, so the mistakes hadn’t been made on his watch. His apologies were less a confession than a signal the new Comptroller of the Currency -- long seen as the most bank- friendly of U.S. regulators -- was changing course. “I’m not interested in what people thought about in the past,” Curry said in an interview. “My focus is going forward.” Since he took over in March, at least two key staff members closely associated with the agency’s pro-industry stance have departed, notably chief counsel Julie Williams. Williams, a 19- year OCC veteran, was known for helping nationally chartered banks resist state regulation by arguing they were preempted by often less-stringent federal rules. Curry has also raised the profile of consumer protection and shifted focus toward “operational risk” -- the idea that bank practices and management can pose as much of a threat to safety and soundness as external forces. Argentine Navy Ship Seized In Asset Fight (FT) An Argentine naval vessel crewed by more than 200 sailors has been seized in Ghana as part of an attempt by the US hedge fund Elliott Capital Management to collect on bonds on which Buenos Aires defaulted in 2001. A Ghanaian court ordered an injunction and interim preservation order against the ARA Libertad, a 100-metre long tall ship, following an application by Elliott subsidiary NML Capital on Tuesday. The hedge fund, run by the US billionaire Paul Singer, has been closely monitoring the course of the Libertad, according to sources familiar with the firm. Elliott had been waiting for the ship to stop in a port where it would have a chance to enforce legal judgments previously awarded by UK and US courts. The hedge fund declined to comment. Argentina slammed the interception of the Libertad as a “trick which these unscrupulous financiers” had pulled, adding that it “violates the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity”. Morgan Stanley commodities talks with Qatar hit snag (Reuters) Morgan Stanley's talks with Qatar's sovereign wealth fund over the sale of its commodities business have run into difficulty, and the deal may need to be reworked if it is to go ahead, banking sources said. One of the top banks in commodity trading over the past 30 years, Morgan Stanley has been in discussion for more than a year with Qatar over the sale of at least a majority stake in the energy-focused trading business, the bankers said. "There have been some differences, and Qatar is a bit lukewarm about it," one said. "It's not dead yet but definitely not imminent." Maple syrup stolen in Quebec seized by police in New Brunswick (The Star) Quebec police have seized between 700 and 800 barrels of maple syrup from a New Brunswick exporter, linking the drums to August’s massive heist of the sweet stuff. Étienne St-Pierre, owner of S.K. Exports in Kedgwick, N.B., told the Star that police executed a search warrant Sept. 26 and hauled away the barrels. “They said they were searching to find some stolen drums from Quebec,” he said. “It was a surprise. That was the first news I received.” St-Pierre said each barrel weighs about 270 kilograms and holds 170 litres of syrup, meaning police seized at least 119,000 litres of gooey Quebec gold. A spokesperson for the Sûreté du Québec, Sgt. Bruno Beaulieu, confirmed a search warrant had been executed in Kedgwick but said he could not comment on the investigation. The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers has never revealed the amount of syrup stolen from its secure St-Louis-de-Blandford, Que. warehouse in August. The facility held about 3.75 million litres of syrup, enough to fill one and a half Olympic swimming pools. St-Pierre said he obtained the barrels from a regular Quebec supplier, who he refused to identify.

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