Louis Bacon to return $2bn August 1, 2012 HEDGE fund industry titan Louis Moore Bacon plans to shrink his flagship portfolio and return $2bn (£1.3bn) to his investors. In a letter, Bacon told investors that current market conditions make it more difficult to manage huge sums of money. He will send back about one quarter of the $8bn flagship fund’s assets. The Moore [...]
Profits rise at insurer MetLife August 1, 2012 PROFITS at MetLife, the largest US life insurer, doubled in the second quarter following a huge gain on derivatives tied to falling interest rates. The company has long had a substantial derivatives programme designed to hedge the risk of low interest rates. As rates dropped this quarter the company took a $1.4bn (£900m) gain on [...]
StanChart stays strong despite industry slump August 1, 2012 STANDARD Chartered’s profits jumped again in the first half of the year thanks to its focus on growing markets in Asia and Africa rather than the troubled Eurozone, the bank revealed yesterday. But it even managed to notch up growth in its currency area operations despite the sovereign debt crisis, in stark contrast to the [...]
Asia-focused bank is proving that if you get it right, even the bad times can look rather good August 1, 2012 EARLIER this week Deutsche Bank, a Europe-focused bank with a core Tier 1 ratio well below seven per cent, announced plans to axe 1,900 bankers. Yesterday, Standard Chartered, an Asia-focused bank with a core Tier 1 ratio of 11.6 per cent, said it is hiring more than 1,500 new staff. The divide couldn’t be clearer, [...]
SocGen joins euro banking rout as profits take another beating August 1, 2012 PROFITS plunged at French bank Societe Generale as the bank was hit by losses on asset sales, a hybrid debt buyback and writedowns on the value of US and Russian units over the second quarter, it reported yesterday, as well as wider damage from the Eurozone crisis. Second quarter profits fell 42 per cent to [...]
CREDIT SUISSE APPOINTS NEW M&A CHAIRMAN August 1, 2012 CREDIT Suisse named veteran investment banker David DeNunzio (right) as global chairman of mergers and acquisitions yesterday, as part of a broader reshuffling of the group in recent weeks. DeNunzio’s appointment comes after Steve Koch, who was co-chairman of the M&A group, decided to retire to become the deputy mayor of Chicago. Scott Lindsay, the [...]
Northern Rock shareholders lose legal fight August 1, 2012 FORMER investors in Northern Rock yesterday reacted angrily after the European Court of Human Rights rejected their claim for compensation. Dennis Grainger, who acted as lead plaintiff in the case, said the court’s decision was “shocking stuff” and ignored the human right to protection of property. Northern Rock was on the brink of collapse when [...]
Eurozone and BRICs suffer in worldwide manufacturing dive August 1, 2012 EUROZONE manufacturing plummeted in July, down to a 37-month low, based on poor results in all key countries but Ireland, said Markit in its prominent business survey (PMI) yesterday. Eurozone manufacturing PMI hit 44 – a score of 50 indicates no change – as even Germany and Austria were hit by the unresolved troubles in [...]
Greece agrees new spending cuts to meet bailout terms August 1, 2012 GREECE yesterday agreed €11.5bn (£9bn) of additional spending cuts to meet the terms of its bailout. The junior partners in the coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras set aside demands for an immediate renegotiation of the terms of the deal to ease talks with the troika of IMF and EU lenders. With €3.2bn worth [...]
MARIO MONTI SAYS ESM WILL GET BANK LICENCE August 1, 2012 THE Eurozone bailout fund will be given a banking licence to help deal with the currency union’s debt crisis, Italy’s PM Mario Monto claimed yesterday. He also told reporters in Finland that the Eurozone needed to integrate their economic and financial policy more extensively. But the Finnish premier, Jyrki Katainen, said Finns see bailouts as unfair, [...]
