UK
UBS sees shares tumble as rumours emerge of further write-downs of up to $7.5bn (Financial Times), and looks for experienced bankers to replace board departures. (The Times)
Lehman has “solid liquidity and capital footing”, which helps out its slumping share price. (Reuters)
FSA regulator in charge of overseeing Northern Rock walks away with 600k payoff. (The Independent)
IPOs shrink to levels not seen since 2003. (Bloomberg)
Fixed income bankers: don’t expect hedge funds to hoover you up. (Breakingviews)
Credit crunch spreads to Australia, as Merrill makes investment banking layoffs. (CNN Money)
Monoline write-downs mount up to $25.7bn. (FT Alphaville)
Traders admit they’re wrong? Not in our lifetime…(Clusterstock)
The IRS investigation of UBS should be interesting. I’ve never heard of such strange incidents as smuggling client diamonds in tubes of toothpaste before ….
You mean you haven’t heard the one about Christoph Meili? Security guard who spotted wartime files being shredded at UBS and managed to salvage a couple of boxes… Holocaust files of Jewish clients having become somewhat inconvenient to the bank, it would seem.
This was in 1998, so we aren’t talking an early post-war paranoid environment here. He’s the only Swiss national to gain political asylum in the US after he received death threats, apparently.
Which leads this cynic to believe that the delete button and the shredder will do overtime at any bank with bodies to bury. So to speak.
I thought the IRS investigation was big news. But sounds like any scandal can be forgotten with the passage of time…
Eventually the mud sticks. If you’re patient.
It was quite shocking when Arthur Andersen was brought down by the Enron scandal – it was hard to imagine at the time a Big 5 accounting firm disappearing. It contrast whatever scandal some of these Big Banks face it seems to be water off a duck’s back