Opening Bell: 7.29.16
UBS Beats Profit Estimates, CEO Pushes Ahead With Cost Cuts (Bloomberg)
UBS Group AG beat analysts’ second-quarter profit estimates and said it’s on track to cut costs by 2.1 billion Swiss francs ($2.2 billion) through 2017, with Chief Executive Officer Sergio Ermotti struggling with a slump at the wealth management and securities-trading units. Net income slipped to 1.03 billion francs from 1.2 billion francs a year ago, the Zurich-based bank said in a statement Friday. That beat the 668 million-franc average of five analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Pretax profit at the investment bank, led by Andrea Orcel, dropped 48 percent, while wealth management saw a 31 percent decrease.
Barclays Rises as Cutbacks, Gain in Trading Ease Profit Drop (Bloomberg)
The bank’s cost-income ratio fell to 65 percent from 69 percent, the lowest that measure has been in at least two years. The bank’s common equity Tier 1 ratio, a measure of its capital strength, rose to 11.6 percent from 11.3 percent in the first quarter. Barclays’s core units posted adjusted pretax earnings of 1.85 billion pounds on revenue that was little changed. While that profit was down 7.5 percent from a year earlier, it was 10 percent higher than consensus estimates, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts led by Raul Sinha wrote in a note to clients.
Risky Lending by Wall Street Banks Has Increased, Regulators Warn (WSJ)
Credit deemed “special mention” and worse jumped 13% based on exams for the last 12 months ended in April from the previous 12-month period to $421.4 billion, according to the annual review of bank’s major loan portfolios conducted by the Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The review said the greatest levels of risk remain in “leveraged loans” that are extended to highly indebted companies, such as those bought by private-equity firms, as well as oil and gas portfolios.
Hedge-Fund Money: $48.5 Million for Clinton, $19,000 for Trump (WSJ)
“There are two reasons I’ve given more than ever before,” said J.B. Pritzker, managing partner of private investment firm Pritzker Group, who has donated $7.9 million to Clinton-friendly groups and helped raised funds for her campaign. “First, I think she ought to be president. Second, I want to defeat Donald Trump. I believe that he would be terrible for the country.”
Florida man arrested when police confuse doughnut glaze for meth (UPI)
The police report of the Dec. 11 incident in Orlando says an officer staking out a 7-Eleven store for suspected drug activity pulled over Daniel Rushing, 64, after he left the store for failing to make a complete stop before pulling out of the parking lot and driving 42 mph in a 30 mph zone. Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins, an eight-year veteran of the department, wrote she asked Rushing to exit his vehicle when she noticed a concealed carry permit in his wallet and he confirmed that he had a gun. The officer took note of "a rock like substance on the floor board where his feet were." "I recognized through my eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic," she wrote. Rushing consented to a search of his car and officers found three more pieces of the suspicious substance, which the driver identified to police as glaze from a Krispy Kreme doughnut. "I kept telling them, 'That's ... glaze from a doughnut. ... They tried to say it was crack cocaine at first, then they said, 'No, it's meth, crystal meth,'" Rushing told the Orlando Sentinel. The police report confirms Rushing told the officers it was doughnut glaze. Officers conducted two roadside tests that came back positive for illegal substances, and then proceeded to take Rushing to the county jail on a methamphetamine possession charge, where they strip searched him and after about 10 hours, released him on $2,500 bail. The charges were dropped several weeks later when a Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime lab confirmed Rushing had been telling officers the truth.
Credit Suisse to create U.S. banking business for billionaires (Reuters)
The group will not provide traditional wealth planning to ultra-wealthy clients, but instead focus on lending, capital markets and M&A advice, people familiar with the bank's plans said. It will target business owners who are already ultra- wealthy, as well as entrepreneurs in industries like oil and gas, biotechnology and telecommunications, whose stakes in their companies could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, one of the people added. The bankers might, for example, cultivate a relationship with the chief executive of a private technology company. When the entrepreneur is ready to sell the business or take it public, they could introduce the CEO to Credit Suisse bankers who handle M&A or stock offerings.
Second-quarter US economic growth weaker than expected (AP)
The US economy grew at a pace of 1.2 percent in the second quarter of 2016, worse than analysts’ expectations of 2.5 percent. The slow results for the April-June period raise new warnings signs about the strength of the US economic expansion. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected that the nation’s gross domestic product would grow at a 2.5 percent pace in the second quarter, which would mark the best reading since the same period last year.
Bank of Japan Opts for Limited Stimulus Expansion (Bloomberg)
Governor Haruhiko Kuroda and his team did enlarge a program of buying exchange traded funds by 2.7 trillion yen ($26 billion) a year, in a move to shore up confidence in light of post-Brexit volatility in financial markets and a slowdown in emerging markets. A dollar-lending facility was also expanded, the BOJ said in a statement in Tokyo Friday. Kuroda reiterated that further easing will be done if needed and said the central bank hasn’t hit a policy limit.
British 'Donkey Whisperer' Uses Technology To Translates 'Ee-Aws' (HP)
A self-proclaimed “donkey whisperer” is encouraging people in London to use technology to help them understand donkeys’ emotions and mannerisms. Mark Ineson, owner of “Real Donkeys” in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, has been studying the animals for more than 20 years and says they are very emotive creatures. Entertainment group Merlin Events has teamed up with “Real Donkeys” to offer donkey rides “with a difference” in London’s Jubilee Gardens. New technology allows children to hear the animals’ sounds translated into English, and into full sentences.