Search results for Merrill Lynch
-
Posted
Jul 20 2009, 05:17 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Take a look at Minyanville's collection of eight lifestyles of the rich and incompetent...
A couple of years ago, a study called "Where Are the Shareholders’ Estates?" by Arizona State University professor Crocker Liu and New York University professor David Yermack, asserted: “Future company performance deteriorates when CEOs acquire extremely large or costly mansions and estates."
The researchers' sources of information included property deeds, tax records, online databases such as Zillow.com and Reply.com, Google searches, employment contracts and voter registration data.
Their findings certainly show a privileged class:
Read More...
-
Posted
Jun 26 2009, 07:29 AM
by
admin
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post was written by Company Focus columnist Michael Brush.
For years whenever I’ve criticized companies like Merrill Lynch, Time Warner (TWX), KB Home (KBH) and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) for showering execs with excessive pay, outsized bonuses and juicy perks, two responses have inevitably followed.
-
The companies say they need to pay executives that much to attract the “best talent."
-
Free marketers tell me to leave them alone. The executives, after all, are so good at what they do that they deserve whatever they get. They earned it.
Reality, however, is not so simple. Tellingly, excessive pay and perks often go hand in hand with poor stock performance -- not the kind of superior performance you’d expect from “the best talent” or overachievers.
A quick look at the charts of the stocks of all the companies above bears this out. Each stock has either blown up or vastly underperformed the S&P 500 index over the past five years. Several studies have demonstrated a link between excessive pay and poor stock performance, and now a new one from the Corporate Library joins the chorus
Read More...
-
Posted
Jun 24 2009, 05:19 PM
by
Andrew Horowitz
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 We have seen a great deal of questionable activities over the past year or so. We have already been through market manipulation and commodity fixing, tax evasion and sex scandals. Now we are learning about the possibility of one of the most respected positions in our government involved in a multi-billion dollar cover up. Would that even surprise you these days? Probably not, as nothing is a surprise anymore.
But what are the implications if it is concluded that Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke and Former Treasury Secretary Paulson had pressured Bank of America's (BAC) CEO Ken Lewis to keep material information from shareholders?
Read More...
-
Posted
Jun 24 2009, 03:51 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
24/7 Wall St.has been a large fan of exchange-traded funds, exchange-traded notes, and other exchange-traded instruments which are open for trade throughout the day and allowed to be invested in just like a stock. But with all new and growing markets, there are risks that need to be kept in check. There are some leveraged ETF’s and their inverse counterparts which might need to see reverse share splits in the near future. The notion of so many low-priced shares being so active may wreak havoc as the funds managing each ETF try to keep up with appropriate derivatives and in buying and selling shares of the components that are supposed to be the underlying securities. There are even a few ETF’s which should probably just be closed down entirely and liquidated to holders. Direxion Daily Financial Bull 3X Shares (FAS) and the Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (FAZ) are both prime examples of ETFs which skew total daily exchange trading volume numbers because of low share prices today and massive trading volume. This is not meant to pick on the fund groups because they created trading vehicles which they did not expect to see some of these moves. There are many more ETFs and ETNs to consider here.
Direxion just announced a reverse split for another ETF yesterday, but not its two financial triple-leverage ETFs. Direxion Daily Financial Bull 3X Shares is now back down close to $8 per share, yet it trades 250 million shares on an average day. The Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares is barely above $5 and trades more than 200 million shares on an average day. So between the FAS and FAZ, you have an average of more than 450 million shares, and at today’s prices that is close to $3 billion worth of nominal value.
Read More...
-
Posted
Apr 23 2009, 12:01 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Explosive news out Thursday: Government officials acted like thugs last December, twisting Ken Lewis' arm until he agreed to keep Merrill Lynch. And Lewis sold out Bank of America (BAC) shareholders in order to keep his job. But will Lewis still have his job after this news sinks in?
The details came out after New York's attorney general began investigating last year's merger between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch -- particularly the big bonus payments Merrill gave after the deal was done. The investigation (full report here) found that Lewis wanted out of the Merrill deal -- seeing as how Merrill's financials were garbage. In fact, Merrill had lost several billion dollars in the two weeks after the merger was approved by B of A shareholders. The situation was so bad
Read More...
-
Posted
Mar 30 2009, 05:51 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Taking money from the U.S. government isn't just risky; it can cost you your job.
Just ask Rick Wagoner, the now former chief executive officer of General Motors (GM). After accepting billions in aid from the Treasury Department -- but failing to produce an acceptable restructuring plan -- Wagoner was forced out of the beleaguered automaker over the weekend.
The Wall Street Journal reports that, in addition to removing Wagoner, the Obama administration’s auto-industry team floated the notion that bankruptcy may be the best option for Chrysler and GM. Although the government said it doesn’t have plans to oust Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli, it did suggest that it's growing tired of propping up the struggling company.
The shakeup at GM didn’t end with Wagoner: A large part of the board of directors was also asked to leave, and Chief Operating Officer Frederick “Fritz” Henderson was named chief executive. He, along with a new and improved board and management team, will receive a 60-day credit lifeline by which to devise a more rigorous turnaround plan.
Read More...
-
Posted
Mar 16 2009, 03:01 AM
by
Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner site The Big Money.
American International Group (AIG) named names on Sunday, revealing at long last a lengthy list of payouts it made to its creditors for its catastrophically bad bets -- all with Uncle Sam's bailout cash. Tens of billions were paid out to banks, some that are no longer standing on their own, according to the New York Times. The list includes names like Merrill Lynch ($6.8 billion), Goldman Sachs ($12.9 billion), and Wachovia ($1.5 billion). Overseas banks -- including Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, Barclays, and UBS -- were also paid off. They claimed a combined $25.5 billion. It doesn't end there. "In total, A.I.G. named nearly 80 companies and municipalities that benefited most from the Fed rescue, though many more that received smaller payments were left out," the newspaper writes. The Wall Street Journal calculates "that roughly two-thirds of the $173.3 billion in federal aid it received has been paid out to trading partners such as banks and municipalities in the U.S. and abroad."
Read More...
-
Posted
Mar 12 2009, 03:15 AM
by
Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner site The Big Money.
Rogue financier Bernard Madoff is expected to plead guilty today to operating a vast decades-long fraud, and details of his elaborate international Ponzi scheme continue to emerge. The Wall Street Journal leads its coverage today with details that Madoff used his London office to launder cash in a type of carousel trade, "transferring client money from the investment-advisory business in New York to London and then back to the U.S. to support the U.S. trading operation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, and also for his personal benefit and for family members and associates." The revelation means British authorities have opened up an investigation of their own into the alleged fraudster's dealings, the newspaper adds.
According to the New York Times, after today's plea hearing in federal court, "there is a strong chance that [Madoff] will not return home." The most suspenseful moment today will come after the plea, the newspaper writes, when Madoff's attorneys will argue that the judge ought to preserve his $10 million bail agreement and let him resume living in his penthouse apartment rather than wait out the next few weeks (or few months) until he's sentenced behind bars. He may be guilty of running the largest financial fraud in history, BusinessWeek notes, but does a potential life sentence for Madoff fit the crime? The magazine talks to a variety of trial attorneys, and their verdict is not heartening for Madoff
Read More...
-
Posted
Mar 05 2009, 02:13 AM
by
Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner site The Big Money.
Eight percent growth in 2009. That's the lofty outlook China delivered on Thursday, reiterating a growth rate that remains unchanged even as the rest of the global economy continues to sink, the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times report this morning. Both newspapers are a bit suspicious of Premier Wen Jiabao's rosy outlook. The FT points out Jiabao spoke of choosing the right policy mix to achieve the 8% target, but he was vague as to what that might be. The WSJ adds that Jiabao failed to deliver on a long-rumored new economic stimulus package. There's a lot riding on this target. Not meeting it could lead to further social unrest, even Jiabao acknowledged.
Jiabao's vague address probably won't please market watchers. Shares in the U.S. surged on Wednesday, breaking a five-day string of losses, on hopes China might introduce a new stimulus proposal, the WSJ writes. Yesterday, the newspaper writes, the so-called "China trade" was back on. Shares in Japan and China, though, remained buoyant on Thursday, climbing slightly after Jiabao's address, the BBC reports.
Read More...
-
Posted
Mar 04 2009, 03:45 AM
by
Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner site The Big Money.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's crusade against the highest paid provides the Wall Street Journal with front-page fodder today. Meanwhile, those that brought you the housing crisis are reaping big rewards for buying back defaulted mortgage loans at "pennies to the dollar," according to the New York Times in a front-pager about Stanford Kurland, Countrywide's former president, who has launched a distressed debt firm.
The WSJ has identified the top 10 best-compensated Merrill Lynch employees, who are the target of an investigation led by Cuomo into $3.6 billion in bonuses paid by the firm in the days before it was taken over by Bank of America. Those executives, the story reveals, received a grand total of $209 million in cash and stock in 2008 ($8 million more than what was doled out to the top 10 last year), much of which came from bonuses. Merrill's base salaries for top executives are usually $200,000 to $750,000. Bank of America hasn't yet coughed up the names of Merrill's highest-paid executives, "claiming it would help rivals woo its top talent."
Read More...
More Posts Next page »
|
