Trading operations at Knight Capital Group are running again after the firm was forced to stop accepting orders yesterday amid a power outage at its Jersey City headquarters.
The market maker, which had been running on backup generators since Sandy landed on Monday evening, is said to have lost power around 11:45 a.m. yesterday. According Read More
Ladies, please meet our friend Bob. The CEO of a major insurance company, in his late-60s, some might say bullheaded, certainly outspoken, but there’s a kindness to his eyes, and he summers in the palatial estate built for the treasurer of a Yugoslavian king, which is nice. On the other hand, possibly a cheapskate, and probably not marriage material, which is to say, he’s married, but maybe open to the idea of a little additional companionship.
From Jess Pressler’s New York magazine profile of American Insurance Group CEO Robert Benmosche: Read More
Last week, as the Chicago teachers’ strike was puttering out of the news cycle and the National Football League’s lockout of its referees was thundering in, a federal labor mediator announced to little fanfare that the International Longshoremen’s Association and U.S. Maritime Alliance had agreed, “for the good of the country,” to extend the master contract governing dock work from Maine to Texas for 90 days.
The media barely covered the news, but the implications were enormous. If the two sides had failed to reach a deal before the existing contract expired on Sept. 30, the resulting chaos would have touched not only the 20,000-some longshoremen who punch a clock on the East Coast, but thousands of truckers and railroad men, mechanics and warehouse workers, and the many millions of Americans who buy and sell automobiles, home electronics, designer jeans, toothpaste and anything else that’s manufactured on foreign shores. Pretty much everyone.
Three months from now, it could still happen. Read More
Morgan Stanley is going to win out over Citigroup when a mediator places a value on the Morgan Stanley Smith Barney brokerage, The New York Post reports. The two banks have disputed the value of the joint venture: Morgan Stanley, which owns 51 percent of the brokerage and plans to acquire remaining shares, said the Read More
Whither Europe: The U.K. will inject $155 billion into the nation’s banking system in a move to head off ill effects of Greek elections on Sunday. That news comes after an unnamed G-20 official told Reuters yesterday that the world’s central bankers are ready to provide liquidity if the elections upset markets.
Niall Ferguson Read More
Probing MF Global: Two former back-office employees at MF Global, the broker-dealer led by Jon Corzine until its collapse last year, warned superiors that the firm was using clients’ funds to cover its own obligations. The misuse continued anyway. Federal investigators are focusing on Edith O’Brien, a former treasurer at MF Global; Ms. O’Brien Read More
The Facebook IPO keeps growing, a new source of irony in JPMorgan’s losses and an old player heads goes in for a fresh helping of mortgage bonds. That and more in today’s Wall Street roundup.
Who needs revenue? The world’s largest social network may yet challenge the record for the world’s largest IPO, as Zuck Read More
Zuck enters Facebook’s first road show presentation by the side door, Yahoo! CEO says sorry for … the distraction and a financier with fashion sense steps in to save Barney’s from bankruptcy court. Today’s morning roundup:
Road show: Mark Zuckerberg slipped into the midtown Sheraton through a side door to address investors yesterday, and left in the company of “a dozen beefy security guards,” the Journal reports, as Facebook kicked off its IPO road show. The presentation opened with a 30-minute video presentation available here. Following a delay while Facebook’s 27-year-old CEO was apparently having a hard time finding his way back from the bathroom, Zuck, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman fielded questions on the company’s strategies for China, mobile revenues and its recent $1 billion Instagram acquisition. With excitement building, analysts have been quick to offer opinions on Facebook, with Sterne Agee slapping a buy on the company and Wedbush Securities assigning a $44 price target to the stock.
So sorry: Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson apologized to employees for lying on his … wait, no, for the distraction caused by the “disclosure of my academic credentials.” You can find the whole letter (addressed “Yahoos:”) over at Dealbook. Third Point Capital’s Dan Loeb has been calling for Mr. Thompson to step down since last week, when the hedge fund manager asserted that the executive lied on his resume.
Trader exodus: Nearly two dozen of Wall Street’s most profitable credit traders have defected from banks in the past 13 months, Bloomberg reports, as lenders cut bonuses and regulators seek to limit the types of trading banks can engage in.
Chopping red tape: Bank of America data chief John Bottega has a fourth-degree black belt in Okinawa karate, so watch what you say about consolidating bank data, a cause Bottega championed in a previous position at the New York Fed.
The lovely Art Deco skyscraper at 70 Pine Street has had as rough a few years as its former owner. The Financial District tower was acquired by AIG in 1976, then losses in the economic crisis led AIG to its infmaous $183 billion dollar bailout. To recoup some of that money, the company had to sell properties and assets to pay off the debt. Asian investors stormed the building and bought that and 72 Wall Street, another AIG building, for $150 million.
There was plans to convert 70 Pine into condominiums, but the partners behind the project had a rough few years themselves and ended up in the court duking it out. Another firm, Sciame Development, was brought in to determine whether it should be developed as hotel or a condominium, but paths shifted and Metro Loft Management and the Eastbridge Group bought the building last December for $205 million dollars.
Now, they are finally going ahead with luxury rental plans that will make this the highest residences in the city, according to The Times. Read More
On Sunday night, Goldman Sachs’ weekly Investment Strategy Group memo went out as it does every Sunday; as one could imagine, this week’s was a fairly fun read. Consider the title: “A ‘Lehman Moment’ Under Every Rock.” Highlights: Read More
