Observer » Louis Moore Bacon

To Do Thursday: An Evening for the Boids

Drew Grant — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 09:00:24 -0400

Louis Moore Bacon (right), honoree of The Audubon Society (PMc)

Tom Brokaw emcees the National Audubon Society Gala Dinner tonight, during which high-flying socialites flock to the Plaza Hotel for a night of dining, dancing and not a little peacocking.

The Audubon Society will present its highest award, the Audubon Medal, to Louis Moore Bacon, founder and CEO of Moore Capital Management LP, who has been supporting the conservationist movement for two decades with his Moore Charitable Foundation. The Inaugural Dan W. Lufkin Prize for Environmental Leadership will be presented to George Archibald, the founder and leader of the International Crane Foundation (IFC). And then it’s time to ruffle some feathers!

Plaza Hotel, 768 Fifth Avenue at 59th Street, 6:30-9:30pm. For more information, call (212) 979-3197 or visit www.audubon.org.

Critics of High-Frequency Trading Take to Capitol Hill; Hedge Funder Asks, ‘What’s Wrong With Nimbyism?’ Roundup

Patrick Clark — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:56:36 -0400

The Senate Banking Committee will hold hearings on high-frequency trading today, and the Wall Street Journal meets the star witnesses: Dave Lauer, a former trader at Citadel and Allston Capital who plans to tell lawmakers that high-speed trading has made markets less fair for many participants; and Andy Brooks, head of U.S. trading for T. Rowe Price, who will say that rules governing high-frequency trading generally favor bodies with short-term profit incentives.Hedge fund titan Louis Moore Bacon has donated nearly 170,000 acres of Colorado ranch land for federal conservation easements in order to protect the land from the construction of giant power lines. “What’s wrong with Nimbyism?” he said in an interview with Forbes. “The entire environmental movement was built on it. Some of the greatest environmentalists were Nimbys. Thoreau protected Walden, right?”

Bank of America is accelerating cost-cutting plans, and may eliminate another 16,000 jobs by the end of the year, The Wall Street Journal reports. Most of the cuts will focus on the company's retail operations, as firm closes branches and shrinks its mortgage operation. Project New BAC, as the bank's restructuring efforts are called, is designed to save $8 billion annually by 2015.

Federal lawmakers are weighing means to prevent cities from using eminent domain to seize mortgages. A proposed law would prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from buying mortgages in localities that attempt to ease borrowers' woes by seizing mortgages, according to Bloomberg. Chicago and San Bernardino County have considered eminent domain as an approach to the foreclosure crisis.

The Department of Justice is asking for more time to complete its investigation of banks implicated in efforts to manipulate interbank-lending rates, according to The Journal. While the statute of limitations on the potential Libor-rigging violations is 5 years, banks generally prefer authorities not rush investigations. DoJ's move comes after the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission made similar requests this summer.

Libor is hardly the only financial benchmark vulnerable to manipulation, according to a paper from an international group of regulators.

The chances that Greece will leave the eurozone have increased now that the region is better prepared for a possible Grexit, Citigroup economists say, according to Business Insider.

Doubleline founder Jeffrey Gundlach was the victim of a $10 million robbery, Business Insider says, citing the Los Angeles Times.

The head of payment processing for Full Tilt Poker pleaded guilty and faces as much as 15 years in prison for misleading banks into accepting online gambling transactions.

At Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith got fooled by a fake Newsweek article in which Niall Ferguson was purported to wonder, "Was Mussolini Right?"

My name is Arch Crawford, and I'll be your financial astrologer.

Moore Capital’s Louis Bacon Makes (More) Room for Wildlife on Colorado Ranch

Patrick Clark — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 15:20:12 -0400

Moore Capital Management founder Louis M. Bacon has donated a 77,000-acre conservation easement on his Trinchera Ranch in Colorado, the U.S. Department of Interior announced today. The easement, in the center of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, is said to offer breathtaking vistas of high desert shrubs and mountain grasslands; the Southwestern Willow flycatcher and the Rio Grande cutthroat trout are among the species that will benefit from the new conservation area, Leith Edgar, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, told The Observer.

Mr. Bacon, a noted huntsmen, had previously donated a 90,000-acre easement on his neighboring Blanca Ranch earlier this year.

“We are too quickly losing important landscapes in this country to development—and I worry that if we do not act to protect them now, future generations will grow up in a profoundly different world,” Mr. Bacon said in a Department of the Interior statement announcing the new easement:

This motivates me and is why I am proud to place Trinchera Ranch, Blanca’s adjoining ranch, into a conservation easement forever protecting it with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I am also honored to help Secretary Salazar and the US Fish and Wildlife Service create the Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. It is an area widely known for its cultural, geographic, wildlife and habitat resources, and this conservation area provides another opportunity to conserve it in perpetuity.

Earlier this year, Mr. Bacon returned about $2 billion to investors after deciding that a leaner firm would reap bigger profits. His firm was said to eliminate 10 to 15 positions on Tuesday.