Washington, D.C., March 15, 2013 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Stamford, Conn.-based hedge fund advisory firm CR Intrinsic Investors has agreed to pay more than $600 million to settle SEC charges that it participated in an insider trading scheme involving a clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s drug being jointly developed by two pharmaceutical companies…
That’s the largest insider trading settlement ever. And is more than Goldman paid to settle Abacus. Read more
Mario’s presentation to EU leaders from Thursday night. Msg: ‘Mind the gap’…
A hat tip to John Kemp at Reuters for drawing our attention to this from the US Treasury on Friday:
WASHINGTON – The Treasury is calling for Large Position Reports from those entities whose reportable positions in the 0-3/4% Treasury Notes of September 2013 equaled or exceeded $2 billion as of close of business Wednesday, December 8, 2010. This call for Large Position Reports is a test. Entities with reportable positions in this note equal to or exceeding the $2 billion threshold must report these positions to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Live markets commentary from FT.com
It’s going to take awhile to go over the report of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee for Investigations. There are 1,654 footnotes and we wouldn’t want to miss a single one.
This, however, is one of our favourite exhibits thus far. Not that it’s shocking. More that it’s kinda like a famous artifact that we never thought we’d get to see: Read more
Follow the money.
A central bank buys government debt. Prior holders of said debt are forced to invest elsewhere. Some are drawn to the corporate bond market, where a similar process repeats itself: corporate bond yields fall, offering cheap financing to companies, who issue fresh debt and end up holding at least a portion of QE cash. Read more
Tune in today at 9:25am EST (1:25pm in London) for a special edition of US Markets Live as we watch members of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee for Investigations question current and former JPM managers about the Whale trade. We’ll keep going until either someone gets arrested, the hearings end, or we get bored.
The info on the hearings, a witness list, and the Senate’s 300+ page report can be found here. Read more
Live markets commentary from FT.com
FT Alphaville is currently experiencing a sensation of rubbernecking around the recently nationalised Dutch financial group SNS Reaal.
With two separate wrecks on either side of the motorway to gape at, it’s hard to look away. On one side, there is all that went wrong with the financial group, and its ultimate fate. With a turn of the head, there are credit derivatives referencing SNS Bank for which payouts were triggered when the government swooped in.
Here, we digest news of the arrest of another suspect in an investigation into alleged fraud at the Property Finance unit of SNS Bank. This reached us on Wednesday courtesy of Vasco van der Boon reporting for Het Financieele Dagblad (FD). The failure of SNS Bank is in many ways the failure of this unit, so it’s worth a bit of a history lesson before proceeding to the actual allegations. Read more
A new era for gold? || Senate Whale report highlights || Goldman & JPM rebuked by Fed || Kuroda approved as BoJ governor || Japan to join Pacific trade deal talks || Greece & lenders fall out over firings || Samsung launches S4 || US sanctions magnate shipping Iranian oil || Boeing defends Dreamliner || Markets update Read more
Here follows a thoughtful commentary on the changes going on in gold market from BNY Mellon’s Neil Mellor, including the point that central bank purchases are in many ways helping to stabilise what might otherwise be a much more substantial slump.
Our emphasis throughout… Read more
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Washable electrodes.
- Why RSS still matters.
- Though, could Google Scholar be next to go? Read more
Asian markets boosted by US jobless claims || BoJ governors approved || King says pound ‘fairly valued’ || Senate panel harshly critical of JP Morgan || Fed rebukes JP Morgan and Goldman’s capital plans || EU leaders talk of fighting unemployment || EU strikes down harsh Spanish foreclosure rules || Li Keqiang appointed Chinese premier Read more
Tomorrow will be a difficult day for the witnesses called before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
We haven’t made our way through all 300+ pages of the report, but we’ve searched around and come across some excerpt-worthy items. And we’ll have plenty more coverage tomorrow, when we host a special edition of US Markets Live starting at 9:25am EST. Read more
Close but no cigar for the S&P 500. The index remains three points below its all-time closing high of 1565, having gained 0.5 per cent on Thursday amid another round of improved jobless claims data, and energy stocks rallying on natural gas prices (Wall Street Journal).
Average weekly new jobless claims have now fallen to their lowest level in to five years (Financial Times, Reuters). Read more
Remember the Bank of England audits? Launched in May last year. Covered banking rescues, the really super top-secret hush-hush banking rescues, and fan-charting.
The bank’s official response to them is out. Read more
William Porter at Credit Suisse has been mulling the market’s muted reaction to the Italian elections. Increased stress is no longer finding its way into widening spreads, thanks to the Draghi “put”.
This credit strategist is concerned. A dampened signaling mechanism increases the risk of something going badly wrong — a market crash, even. Read more
He struggled as a young bureaucrat on a climb with officials and journalists up a 1,500-meter (4,900-foot) mountain in Nagano Prefecture, to the west of Tokyo, according to Utsumi, now president of Japan Credit Rating Agency Ltd. Kuroda “got exhausted and said he’d never do it again,” he said. “He’s not the sporty type.”
Metaphors aside we can ignore that but the rest of Bloomberg’s profile of the man set to take over at the Bank of Japan is worth a read. After all Kuroda has to convince the Japanese that Abenomics is for real now that much of the easy lifting has already been done. Read more
Live markets commentary from FT.com
Adding to the list after doctors who smoke, psychologists with serious family problems, and engineers who can’t figure out how to work the lights: an organisation that handles insolvencies in the UK that wouldn’t be able to stay afloat were it not for £89m of “rescue cash” between 2008 and 2012.
Go on, have a giggle before we get to the serious part… Read more
Meanwhile at Harvard Business School || An argument about excess reserves || Xi Jinping, China’s new president || Also, there’s a new pope || Tim Cook has to testify in ebook case || Blackberry gets order for 1m Z10s || Obama has words for China on cyber espionage || CFTC probes gold pricing || JPM-MF Global accord approved Read more
From Google Reader* on Thursday,
- Mathbabe goes finance myth-busting.
- Cyprus and the politics of contagion fear.
Asian stocks mixed || Qatar in talks on £10bn UK infrastructure || CFTC investigating gold pricing || New UK regulator warns on bonus cap costs || Xi Jinping becomes China’s president || Diet lower house approves BoJ nominees || Australian job numbers beat expectations Read more
Longest winning streak for the Dow in 16 years. The index edged up just 5 points to close at 14455.28 — registering nine c0nsecutive days of gains for the first time since November 1996. The S&P 500 closed at 1,554.52, within a whisker of its all-time high of 1,565.15 (Reuters).
The new Pope is Argentine, a former Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Jorge Mario Bergoglio will assume the papal name of Francis I, having won on the fifth ballot. As cardinal, he balanced modernising and conservative sides of the Argentine church. Pope Francis is the first Jesuit ever to achieve the papacy, and the first non-European for 1,272 years (Financial Times, Wall Street Journal). Read more
From a note Wednesday morning by ConvergEx (emphasis ours): Read more
Alan Blinder closes his op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal:
Is there a way out? Here’s one thing that could help. As I have argued for some time, the Fed should reduce the interest rate it pays on the roughly $1.7 trillion of banks’ excess reserves. If it did so, banks would keep less cash on deposit at the Fed. The liberated funds would probably flow mainly into the money markets, but some would probably find their way into increased lending—which would give the economy a little boost. Read more
Compare (Bloomberg News, 2011):
EU Writedown Plan Puts Banks’ Long-Term Debt in Firing Line Read more
Statistical modelling. It goes everywhere.
The Monkey Cage points us to this 2004 paper on strategic voting in papal elections (there was still no sign of white smoke at pixel time on Wednesday): Read more
Older entries
1The Fed's balance sheet and an expert commentary problem
2A new era for gold?
3Insolvency Service in the red, but it's a good thing! Sort of. Maybe. Or no. Actually no.
4How do company execs trouser QE cash?
5Excerpts from the Senate's Whale report
Show more6Who to believe, Michael O'Leary or Reuters?
7A 2023 US T-note squeeze?
8SAC settles for $600m
9Further reading
10The JPMorgan mismarking table
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