Finance Investment Banking
Financial Market Update - A Tough Day for The Ultrawealthy
Nov 17, 2008
By: Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

The Dow Jones index started down, bumped up a little, then went down again, and then... the usual undulations, in other words. By the end of the day, however, the Dow was down 233.73 points, or 2.63 percent. The S&P 500 dropped 2.58 percent and the Nasdaq was down 2.29 percent.

Citigroup Inc. has unveiled plans to eliminate 50,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of its workforce, in the wake of four quarterly losses in a row totaling some $20 billion. The market was unimpressed: Citi stock fell in the morning, but rose toward noon back near where it started, then fell again down 0.63, or 6.62 percent.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with insider trading. The SEC is alleging that Cuban, an Internet entrepreneur, sold 600,000 shares of Internet search engine company Mamma.com Inc. in 2004 on inside information that it would initiate a stock offering. Strictly speaking, this is a pre-Panic of 2008 sort of story, but it's nice to know that the SEC is still on task in wanting to slap billionaires on their wrists.

Speaking of high-net-worth individuals, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., famed for its exceedingly fat executive bonuses, has decided to cancel bonuses for its senior officers in 2008. Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's bonus last year was nearly $70 million, so it's a considerable cut, though presumably he has some dosh stashed away for this unimaginably rainy day. Shortly thereafter, Swiss bank UBS followed suit in axing executive bonuses.

What about the rest of Wall Street? It could become a trend, but not without some soul-searching by those top dogs with really large senses of entitlement. One can imagine the trembling lips and the moist eyes: "Do we haveta?"

President Bush said of the G-20 Summit over the weekend that it wasn't "going to change the world," but who expected it to? Still, the meeting did bring up various issues that the next round of G-20 in April will address again: controls on off-balance-sheet assets of investment banks, executive pay and oversight of credit-rating agencies.

Bush is old news anyway. President-elect Obama, in his first major interview since the election, told 60 Minutes yesterday that he favored a bailout to the Big Three automakers, but that it must not be a "bridge loan to nowhere." Obama seems to be for major strings attached to any money thrown at the automakers' problems: "... my hope is that over the course of the next week, between the White House and Congress, the discussions are shaped around providing assistance but making sure that that assistance is conditioned on labor, management, suppliers, lenders--all the stakeholders coming together with a plan..." he said.

 
Recent Investment Banking Headlines
Economic Update – CRE Defaults Head for High Ground
A new report by Real Estate Econometrics, based on FDIC data, puts the commercial real estate loan default rate at its highest level in more than a decade and a half, at least those loans held by regulated deposit-taking institutions—banks and thrifts, for the most part. The default rate soared from 1.62 percent in the last quarter of 2008 to 2.25 percent in the first quarter of 2009. That rate doesn’t include defaults on loans associated with multi-family rental properties, which Real Estate Econometrics put at 2.45 percent in the first quarter of 2009, up 68 basis points from the previous quarter.
Economic Update – Fast-Track Chrysler Reorganization Stalls
The Chrysler reorganization and sale to Fiat, which was to have been a model of a quick turn-around, has hit a snag in the form of a court order by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Pension funds that hold some of Chrysler’s secured loan are objecting to the goings-on, claiming it isn’t fair to them, and so petitioned Justice Ginsburg for the measure. It isn’t clear how long the temporary stay will delay the sale, or whether it will kill the sale, or whether the full court will reverse the stay in a few days. It’s unlikely, though, that the legal wrangling will affect the fate of the Chrysler dealerships slated for closing, or change the amount of real estate their closing will put on the market.
Economic Update - Starwood Eyes Distressed Sector with $500M Fund
Yet another deep-pocketed real estate entity has jumped into the grave-dancing game—only please, don’t call it that, but rather strategic investment in distressed properties. The player is a newly formed investment company called Starwood Property Trust Inc., a creation of Starwood mogul Barry Sternlicht, which filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission late last week for a public offering that aims to raise half a billion dollars to do the distressed-property boogie. It will invest in not only physical properties, but mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.
Economic Update - Retailers See May Malaise
May comparable-store sales numbers are filtering down from various retailers, and the results aren't inspiring confidence in the prospects for recovered consumer spending. Actually, most analysts expected average retail same-store sales to decline in May 2009 when compared with May 2008, but the trouble was they declined more than expected.
Signs of Life in 2Q as Sales Volume, Capitalization Jump
Despite overall sales figures down double digits from last year, transactions are still move forward, albeit in smaller amounts. Another good sign of real estate activity is the re-equitization of the REIT industry that continued in May as more companies deleveraged their balance sheets with equity capital raised in the public markets.