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Posted
Oct 21 2009, 12:24 PM
by
Jim Van Meerten
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
I was going through the stack of newspapers that accumulated while I was on vacation and on the front page of The Charlotte Observer was the headline "Cameron Harris sues Wachovia". Since his family sold their insurance company to First Union, Wachovia's predecessor that's big news here in Charlotte. Friends just don't sue friends in Charlotte, bless his heart.
His suit claims that while on a hunting trip with Ken Thompson, Wachovia's then CEO he pumped Mr. Thompson for information about what was really going on in Wachovia. He asserts Ken Thompson's failure to give him what would have been unpublished insider information caused him to keep his stock and incur a large financial loss.. He might have gotten out at $55 instead of riding it down to what ever he owns now. He and his family owned around a million shares so the pony ride down cost him some real dough.
I'm no legal genius but if Ken Thompson had told him about what was really going on and he sold his stock before the swan dive wouldn't he be guilty of insider trading? Wouldn't both he and Ken Thompson be eligible of a free trip to Club Fed down at Ft. Walton Beach, Florida? Hasn't he heard of Martha Stewart.
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Posted
Oct 02 2009, 07:41 AM
by
Jim Van Meerten
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 I moved to Charlotte right in the middle of its Golden Age. Hugh McColl and Ed Crutchfield, two local good old boys, had built not one but two international banking empires in the same town and it looked like there was no stopping them from becoming even bigger.
Charlotte was calling itself the second largest financial center in the U.S., second only to New York City. Most of the locals were reaping the benefits of the large dividends from Nations Bank and First Union. If you didn't work for one of the two banks, you owned a good chunk of the stock.
They both endorsed a new, young and charismatic mayor named Pat McCory, and the three together got funding for everything Charlotte needed to be a great city. We were getting mass transit, the downtown was bringing back people after dark to a football stadium, new arena, dining and entertainment venues. The Arts & Science Council and United Way were receiving full funding from everyone. The local joke was that the official bird of Charlotte was the building crane. They were sighted all over town, in flocks.
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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."
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Posted
Nov 06 2008, 09:02 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
There was a morning-after feel to the market yesterday. It wasn't buyers' remorse, exactly, but there was a pause: We found ourselves in the middle of a vast ocean of problems for as far as the eye could see.
The last minute sell-off also re-emerged yesterday; though there wasn't a sense of unbridled fear, there was a sigh of disgust. Very few things worked, and cheap stocks got cheaper.
I'm worried about the market today - and not just because the economic reports are poised to provide further shock and awe. The financials are looking ugly again. The news from Ambac and MBIA was disastrous, and there's a sense of urgency there that means either government intervention - or a 21-gun salute. But so many different industries are asking for help that it's conceivable that none will receive it in time.
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Posted
Oct 28 2008, 03:27 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
No one with an abacus, a calculator or a mainframe will ever know what the global credit crisis has cost in real money. Lost jobs means lost tax revenue. Lost bank capital means a drop in share values. Government aid must be near $1.5 trillion when the taxpayers' $700 billion is added to what all other nations have put in to shore up banks.
The Bank of England reckons the cost of the near-collapse of the financial system is $2.8 trillion. It does not say precisely how it came up with that figure, but in the guessing game that hardly matters.
Looking at the issue from a simpleton's perspective, Citigroup has lost $200 billion of is market cap. The number for Wachovia is more like $100 billion. The loses to Lehman and WaMu shareholders are of a similar magnitude. By these calculation
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Posted
Oct 24 2008, 06:39 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
No matter where economists look there is no evidence that a recession in the US, EU, and Asia is doing anything but deepening. The stock markets are the least of it. Some of the indexes in the largest countries are off 40% from their peaks reached a year ago. Banks are failing. In cases where the government has not stepped in some have disappeared and others have been merged into more healthy institutions. Healthy for now, that is.
The financial sector could easily lose several hundred thousand jobs in the US. New York City expects employment in the banking and brokerage sector to fall by 150,000. Marriages like the ones between Bear Stearns and JP Morgan and Wachovia (WB) and Wells Fargo will clearly put tens of thousands of people out of jobs. Goldman Sachs apparently will let 10% of its workers go.
The trouble has spread well beyond banks. Merck, Xerox, GM, and Chrysler just said they will push more poor souls out the door. Even a successful tech company such as Hewlett-Packard has taken significant numbers of people out of its workforce.
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Posted
Oct 10 2008, 11:37 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Slowest job in the world right now? Being AIG's event planner. The insurance company is canceling its functions after receiving harsh criticism for spending half a million dollars on a spa resort getaway for employees recently. The insurance company got an $85 billion bailout from the Treasury, which apparently wasn't enough because it's getting an additional $38 billion to keep it solvent. In the middle of all this, employees went on a week-long retreat at a California resort and ran up at least a $440,000 tab on drinks, rooms, pedicures and who knows what else. The public reaction was intensely negative, no surprise. And the pressure is enough that AIG is pulling out of an event next week at the Ritz-Carlton in Northern California's Half Moon Bay. The Ritz-Carlton? Oh yeah, that's how AIG rolls.
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Posted
Oct 09 2008, 06:43 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Henry Paulson watched the Brits come up with a new plan to save the banking system before he did. He is probably embarrassed by that. He and Bernanke seemed to have a big lead over everyone else in building Lego models for saving the financial world.
The latest idea if for the Treasury to actually buy equity in banks thereby mainlining capital into large financial institutions in the hope that they will then lend that money out.
It would be a fabulous and daring program if it made any sense. According to The New York Times,"Having tried without success to unlock frozen credit markets, the Treasury Department is considering taking ownership stakes in many United States banks to try to restore confidence in the financial system."
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Posted
Oct 08 2008, 10:32 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Shorts will be returning to the game for the financials, which could have played a role in the massive sell-off in that sector. In the meantime, shorts are chomping at the bit.
The Financial ETF closed in unchartered territory on huge volume. Even with the 500-point decline on the Dow, old-school market watchers will tell you it wasn’t capitulation; volume was under 2 billion, when it should have been over 3 billion. Volume was massive in the financials yesterday, because there was no clear-cut reason for the move. Sure, Bank of America is going to raise money and cut its dividend, but why was Morgan Stanley beaten to a pulp?
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Posted
Oct 07 2008, 11:09 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Last week, by its own account, Wachovia was a breath away from failing. Today, two of the four biggest banks in the country are literally suing each other for the right to buy the troubled Charlotte-based lender.
As I write this morning, Wachovia's fate is unknown. Whether that will be the case by lunchtime is anyone's guess.
By all accounts, Wells Fargo's bid makes more sense, it being the far stronger firm and eschewing the FDIC's involvement in the transaction. Citigroup, however, has yet to capitalize on the bank firesale its competitors are taking advantage of, and it doesn't want to miss the party.
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