Ex-Goldman Trader Run-Symphony Seeks Money for Hedge Funds. Symphony Financial Partners, co- founded by an ex-Goldman Sachs (GS) Group Inc. trader in 2003, is seeking $1 billion from investors after its Japan-focused hedge fund returned more than four times its peers. David Baran, co-chief executive officer of Tokyo-based Symphony, is targeting about $500 million in new allocations for the $200 million SFP Value Realization Fund, which invests in Japanese companies and works with management to prompt corporate actions such as share buybacks, he said.
Symphony is also opening up the $21 million Sinfonietta fund, an Asia-focused macro fund, and looking to raise $400 million to $500 million from outside investors for it, he said. Baran, who traded stocks and equity derivatives as a proprietary trader at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers in Tokyo, is seeking to entice investor appetite with his fund performances as hedge funds globally struggle to capture new allocations. Mispriced Stocks Nagawa Buyback Bank Support. Chinese Banks' Stealth U.S. Growth Plans Get Fed Backing. NEW YORK (TheStreet) - In what may prove to be an unheralded but game changing move earlier in May, the Federal Reserve approved plans by three of China's largest banks to establish bank branches in the U.S. Although the Fed's approval gives China's three largest state-owned lenders to the opportunity to open banking outlets, investors and customers shouldn't expect branded banks and ATM's from the likes of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.
Instead, the decision may have the biggest impact on specialty commercial banking units at the nation's largest banks like JPMorgan Chase (JPM_), Citigroup (C_), Bank of America (BAC_) and Wells Fargo (WFC_). On May 9, the Fed approved plans for ICBC to become a bank holding company in the U.S. and for Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China to open regional branches in cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Spain's Bankia requests multibillion-euro bailout - SPAIN. Jamie Dimon Faces JPMorgan Shareholders | Companies | Business. JPMorgan Chase & Co. chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon speaks at Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester’s New York City Conference on May 3. Dimon spoke with the company’s shareholders recently at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) On May 15, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon was face-to-face with the bank’s shareholders at its annual shareholder meeting. At the meeting, Dimon retained his position as both the firm’s chairman and chief executive—a role that some large shareholders had wanted to split up for the checking and balancing of power. Dimon would have already had to face a challenging shareholders meeting, as JPMorgan’s stock had declined by more than 10 percent in the week leading up to the meeting, and Dimon’s pay package of $23 million is among the highest on the Street. Shareholder meetings have become a forum for dissent and reform at many large banks. “This should never have happened. It’s time to break up the big banks. Dimon, of course, has been Wall Street’s most vociferous critic of banking reforms, deploying an army of lawyers and lobbyists — at the cost of an estimated $7.4 million in 2010 — to try to delay, dilute and disembowel the Dodd-Frank legislation.
The unrelenting legal and lobbying campaign has clearly intimidated the regulators, forcing delays beyond the dates mandated by the statute. Most recently, the bank lobby seemed on the verge of defenestrating the Volcker rule that would limit commercial banks from gambling with depositors’ money. That rule, itself a pale shadow of the Glass-Steagall Act repealed during the Clinton years, might have constrained the kind of opaque, risky bets that led to the losses. Dimon, who was paid $23 million in 2011 (up 11 percent from the year before) has a personal stake in gutting reform.
But it is inexcusable for Mitt Romney and Republicans to make repeal of all the Dodd-Frank reforms part of their campaign mantra. Banking is risky, by definition. Federal Reserve allows Chinese-controlled banks to take stakes in US banks.
Spekulation und Gerüchte: Die Jagd auf den Goldschatz der Bundesbank - Wirtschaft. Wer seine Hand an die Goldreserven der Bundesbank legen will - derzeit sind das rund 3401 Tonnen mit einem aktuellen Marktwert von 196 Mrd. Dollar -, steht vor einem Problem: Wo ist das Gold der Bundesbank überhaupt? Diese einfache Frage ist seit Jahren Gegenstand wilder Spekulationen. Kritische Geister behaupten, das Edelmetall sei größtenteils in den USA, wo es im Kalten Krieg einerseits möglichst weit weg vom "Eisernen Vorhang" und andererseits auch als ideologisches Pfand für die Bündnistreue Deutschlands zur USA deponiert worden sei. Überkritische Geister ziehen sogar in Zweifel, dass die Bundesbank das Gold überhaupt besitzt. Zweitgrößter Goldschatz der Welt Der Reihe nach: Die großen Goldreserven der Bundesrepublik - laut jüngsten Daten der Minenlobby World Gold Council die zweithöchsten der Welt nach den USA, die mit 8133 Tonnen nochmals mehr als doppelt so viel hält - stammen noch aus den 1950er-Jahren.
Gold in den USA, England und Frankreich. Here's How Banks Will Lie To The Public When They Announce Their Bonus Figures This Year. The idea that banks have to talk about bonuses with any specificity to anyone other than individual employees or in generalities to anyone other than a small group of shareholders is a rather recent one. Only since the peak of the most recent boom has the size and structure of bonuses been of widespread interest.
And it was only during and after the financial crisis that this interest turned from detached wonder to focused criticism. So it is not surprising that when banks talk about bonuses they tend to use a relatively small number of tropes to deflect attention away from just how much money they are paying their employees. One topic banks love to talk about, and reporters love to write about, is stock. There's been a flurry of high-profile coverage recently abut employees getting paid in equity. It is hard to find a public statement from a bank on bonuses that does not refer in some way or another to equity compensation. Tax Rates, Income Inequality & the 1% Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC: What is Wrong with the American Political System.
Which Democrats Sided With The Banks By Voting Against Regulatory Reform And Consumer Protection? Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over. Bankers have seized Europe On November 25, two days after a failed German government bond auction in which Germany was unable to sell 35% of its offerings of 10-year bonds, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Germany might retreat from its demands that the private banks that hold the troubled sovereign debt from Greece, Italy, and Spain must accept part of the cost of their bailout by writing off some of the debt. The private banks want to avoid any losses either by forcing the Greek, Italian, and Spanish governments to make good on the bonds by imposing extreme austerity on their citizens, or by having the European Central Bank print euros with which to buy the sovereign debt from the private banks.
Printing money to make good on debt is contrary to the ECB's charter and especially frightens Germans, because of the Weimar experience with hyperinflation. Obviously, the German government got the message from the orchestrated failed bond auction. Strange, isn't it. DEAR BANKS: If You Thought Barney Frank Was Bad, Just Wait Until You See His Replacement. Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, one of the architects of the sweeping financial regulations overhaul, announced today that he plans to retire at the end of his term in 2012, leaving an open spot at the top of the powerful House Financial Services Committee.
Unfortunately for the banking sector, the next Democrat in line to succeed Frank as the committee's ranking member is none other than Rep. Maxine Waters, the controversial California congresswoman best known for her questionable ethics and apparent lack of understanding about how the U.S. financial system works. If the 2009 TARP hearings are any indication, Waters's ascension will likely have Wall Street longing for the days of Dodd and Frank. She also introduced a bill calling for a ban on credit-default swaps and, more recently, called on President Obama to rein in "gangsta" banks and "tax them out of business.
" Here's the video of Waters questioning bank CEOs. And here's her asking Geithner about Goldman Sachs. You Won't Believe What Hank Paulson Revealed To Hedge Funders Right Before The Height Of The Financial Crisis. The bombshell reports from Bloomberg Markets delving into the events that transpired amid the 2008 financial crisis just keep coming, and this time it concerns some dubious actions by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
The newest expose by Richard Teitelbaum reveals that in July 2008, then-Treasury Secretary Paulson met with several hedge fund managers and told them that a government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was a very real possibility. Just a week prior to that meeting, he had testified in the Senate and told media outlets that government intervention in Fannie and Freddie was near impossible. In case anybody needs a refresher: Fannie and Freddie were infamously bailed out by the federal government on Sept. 6, 2008. Paulson, as many know, is famous for being the CEO of Goldman Sachs from 1999 to 2006. The entourage of hedge funders he addressed that day included at least five former Goldmanites who had gone into the hedge fund industry. They also included...
DC as ATM: Newt, the Ultimate Beltway Swindler. Policy-Making Billionaires Privatizing Public Policy. Please Sign Petition Urging UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi to Resign! Petitioning UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi Why This Is Important Join University of California at Davis, Assistant Professor Nathan Brown in calling for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Nathan Brown's Open Letter To The Chancellor is below: Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Linda P.B. I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. You are not. I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons: 1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today 2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality 3) to demand your immediate resignation Today you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad.
What happened next? Police used batons to try to push the students apart. This is what happened. Your words express concern for the safety of our students. The Credit Crunch That Richard Koo Warned Us About Has Arrived Exactly As He Predicted. In a note from November 1, Nomura economist Richard Koo explained one of the problems facing Europe in the way of the October 26 summit agreement... Problem 1: no measures to ease credit crunch Having considered the positive aspects of the agreement reached on October 26, I would now like to discuss two major shortcomings. First, the plan contains no measures to address the credit crunch that is likely to result when a 50% haircut is combined with substantially higher minimum capital ratios for the banks. As I argued in my last report, great care must be taken to prevent a credit contraction in the current circumstance.
If support for Greek growth in the form of debt forgiveness coupled with tougher capital rules causes European banks to stop lending, the eurozone economy will be the victim of these policy initiatives. Unfortunately, this issue is addressed in just one line of the 15-page document, and all it says is that Shrinking the balance sheet is synonymous with calling in loans. Paul Krugman: The World's Two Most Impressive Economies Have One Thing In Common. In a debate going on tonight in Canada between David Rosenberg, Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, and Ian Bremmer, the attendees were asked what they would do for the Canadian economy. Krugman's simple answer: "Hold onto your own currency.
" Of course, Krugman recently clarified quite nicely that the fundamental problem in Europe was the abdication of sovereign currencies, and the fact that countries like Italy, Spain, and Greece had relegated themselves to the status of third-world countries that are forced to borrow in foreign currencies. So obviously he doesn't think Canada should be entering a currency union anytime soon. But he noted something else interesting, which is that two of the best countries in the world are Canada and Sweden, which both have their own sovereign currencies and are appended to much larger economic blocks. Both have made it through the crisis and bust fairly nicely, owing in no small part to their currency flexibility. Interesting.
Dennis M. Kelleher: Another Wall Street Win & Main Street Loss. The details are still under wraps, but it is being reported that a House-Senate conference committee is cutting the administration's $308 million budget request for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) by one-third, to $205.3 million, which is merely level funding. Of course, the CFTC's responsibilities under the new Dodd Frank regulatory reform law aren't level.
In fact, massive new responsibilities were assigned to the CFTC to bring transparency, oversight and accountability to the $600 trillion derivatives markets, which were at the center of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. That's not a typo. The derivatives market is $600 trillion big and much of that market is controlled by just 4 Wall Street megabanks: JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs (according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency). Who is the watchdog for those derivatives? This is their reward? And, this doesn't just relate to the financial crisis of 2008. Meltdown - Episode 01: The Men Who Crashed The World - Watch Free Documentary Online - Al Jazeera, CBC. Description In the first episode of Meltdown, we hear about four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne.
The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929. But how did it all go so wrong? Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place. Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace. Tags. How microfunding is feeding the creative economy. Erika Hess showed up at Voltage Coffee & Art in Kendall Square last spring with an idea: she wanted to combine art and activism to teach people about urban gardening.
But first, she needed funding. Unlike most artists and community organizers looking for grants in an increasingly bleak financial landscape, Hess didn't spend weeks drafting a proposal, and she didn't wait months to hear the outcome. Instead, she came to Feast Mass, where she and other artists outlined their ideas to like-minded creative types over a veg-friendly meal donated by local farmers. At the end of the evening, the guests voted on which project to fund. Hess was the winner, and walked away with a micro-grant of $600, raised entirely from the dinner's $10-per-plate tickets. This is the new face of philanthropy: local, direct, and community-oriented.
"And you have to have a certain type of degree, a certain salary," adds another Awesome Foundation trustee, Kara Brickman. Deal-breaker election looms over supercommittee negotiations. Banker Bonuses Fall Thanks to Government Regulation. Here's What Happened Outside Of MF Global When All The Employees Got Fired. Paul Krugman Explains The Eurozone Crisis In One Sentence. Holy Bankrollers. Goldman Has $2.3 Billion ‘Funded’ Credit Exposure to Italy. U.S. Bank Default Swaps Increase on Italian Contagion Concern. New bank regulations: A deadly cocktail. SEC. MF Global Suspended by N.Y. Fed Pending Proof It Can Act as Primary Dealer.
EU debt deal: China 'buys Europe's silence on human rights' Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) | Move your money! Goldman Sachs Sued By Hedge Fund For Knowingly Selling Toxic Mortgage-Backed Investments. Bank of America Versus America the Beautiful. How to Make Banks Really Mad: Occupy Foreclosures. Corporations Couldn't Wait to "Check the Box" on Huge Tax Break. Across the World, the Indignant Rise Up Against Corporate Greed and Cuts. The $2 Billion UBS Incident: 'Rogue Trader' My Ass. Wells Fargo Sees ‘Huge Opportunity’ as BofA Cuts Home Loans.