UK
Sector: Debt / Fixed Income
Dr Dread: Nastiness is by no means over yet
Ignore what banking bosses say: the nice decade is most definitely past and the nasty decade is upon us, says the purveyor of gloom…. Banking bosses are trumpeting the notion that the worst is over. But for a realistic perspective on the current state of play, the best person to listen to is Paul Volcker. [...]
Can Pandit handle it (and should you steer clear of Citi if not)?
If Meredith Whitney’s right, Citi’s going to the dogs no matter how hard Vikram Pandit tries to bed it down amongst the roses. Whitney says Pandit faces an “impossible feat” in turning Citi around. The associated costs, according to Whitney, are simply too “seismic” and the revenue streams too feeble. From the Whitney perspective, Pandit’s [...]
Is Merrill Lynch really the place to be?
Merrill Lynch is attracting some heavy hitters from rivals. Is Thain really about to turn things around, or is he just opening the Merrill cheque book? First came Thomas Montag, former head of sales and trading at Goldman Sachs. Then came Peter Kraus, former head of Goldman’s investment management unit. Now comes Caroline Silver, former [...]
Editor’s take: Toothless regulators won’t bite bonuses
It’s down to regulators to reform the bonus system. And given regulators are powerless to intervene, reform looks as likely as a small village in Hampshire becoming the financial centre of the UK. Regulators are certainly making scary noises. From Mervyn King’s anti-bonus diatribe, to Sir Callum McCarthy’s call for banks to emphasise long-term performance, [...]
Week in review: Hooray for hedge funds, more cuts at investment banks
It was a good week for hedge funds – unless you were GLG. Banks were still busily lopping staff, although there were rays of hiring in commodities and – strangely enough – leveraged finance. Hedge funds provided reasons to be cheerful. Hedge Fund Research predicted investors plan to pour $200bn into hedge funds this year. [...]
Are you a fat kitten?
Alongside its usual fare of scantily clad females and men baring expensive watches, Arena magazine claims to have unearthed a new phenomenon in investment banks: the fat kitten. Unlike ageing fat cats, fat kittens are apparently bankers of “tender years” and “portly appearance”, caused by years of “old school indolence, financed by years of excessive [...]
Pimco is the exception, not the rule
Lost your job in an investment bank and want to work on the buyside? You’ll be lucky. The Financial Times ran an article yesterday which said that Pimco, the world’s biggest fixed income fund manager, has been approaching Wall Street banks that are making redundancies in the hope of hoovering up a few of their [...]
Dr Dread: Bonuses are rotten, but necessary
Mervyn King’s scathing attack on bonuses would be easy to dismiss as the naïve whining of an underpaid regulator, were it not for the stench coming from the system. The investment banking world, or the ‘Shadow Banking System’ – let’s call it SBS, is a different world and a law unto itself. It exists in [...]
Making the Islamic finance move
While investment banks are looking sickly and spewing out staff on a weekly basis, sprightly Islamic finance houses are popping up all over the place. It doesn’t take a genius to see that now might be a good time to add a few Islamic tools to your kit. There are now five Islamic banks in [...]
Living dangerously: Diary of an ABS Professional, Week 21
In which Mr ABS tries to help his wife come to terms with his new situation and comes into uncomfortably close contact with a Porsche 911. My novelty value is wearing thin. When I was first made redundant, my wife received reams of sympathy from the other school mothers, who tried very hard to reassure [...]
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