Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta wall street. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta wall street. Mostrar todas las entradas
domingo, 8 de febrero de 2009
Fannie Mae’s Last Stand
Crónica sobre el descalabro de Fannie Mae, publicada en Vanity Fair por Bethanu McLean, autora del mejor libro sobre el Caso Enron, llamado "The Smartests guys in the room", y proxima a publicar a mediados de años un libro sobre la crisis mundial.
lunes, 29 de diciembre de 2008
The weekend that Wall Street died - El fin de semana que Wall Street murió
Crónica del segundo fin de semana de setiembre del año que acaba, en que se detalla cómo se fue a la quiebra el Lehman Brothers.
The weekend that Wall Street died
With his investment bank facing a near-certain failure, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s chief executive officer, Richard Fuld Jr., placed yet another phone call to the man he thought could save him.
Fuld was already effectively out of options by the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 14. The U.S. government said it wouldn't fund a bailout for Lehman, the country's oldest investment bank. Britain's Barclays PLC had agreed in principle to buy the loss-wracked firm, but the deal fell apart. Bank of America Corp., initially seen as Lehman's most likely buyer, had said two days earlier that it couldn't do a deal without federal aid -- and by Sunday was deep in secret negotiations to take over Lehman rival Merrill Lynch & Co.
Desperate to avoid steering his 25,000-person company into bankruptcy proceedings, Fuld dialed the Charlotte, N.C., home of Bank of America Chairman Kenneth D. Lewis. His calls so far that weekend had gone unreturned. This time, Lewis's wife, Donna, again picked up, and told the boss of Lehman Brothers: If Lewis wanted to call back, he would call back.
Fuld paused, then apologized for bothering her. "I am so sorry," he said.
.
His lament could also have been for the investment-banking model that had come to embody the words "Wall Street." Within hours of his call, Lehman announced it would file for bankruptcy protection. Within a week, Wall Street as it was known -- loosely regulated, daringly risky and lavishly rewarded -- was dead.
As Fuld waged his increasingly desperate bid to save his firm that weekend, the bosses of Wall Street's other three giant investment banks were locked in their own battles as their firms came under mounting pressure. It was a weekend unlike anything Wall Street had ever seen: In past crises, its bosses had banded together to save their way of life. This time, the financial hole they had dug for themselves was too deep. It was every man for himself, and Fuld, who declined to comment for this article, was the odd man out.
For the U.S. securities industry to unravel as spectacularly as it did in September, many parties had to pull on many threads. Mortgage bankers gave loans to Americans for homes they couldn't afford. Investment houses packaged these loans into complex instruments whose risk they didn't always understand. Ratings agencies often gave their seal of approval, investors borrowed heavily to buy, regulators missed the warning signs. But at the center of it all -- and paid hundreds of millions of dollars during the boom to manage their firms' risk -- were the four bosses of Wall Street.
Details of these CEOs' decisions and negotiations, many of them previously unreported, show how they sought to avert the death of America's giant investment banks. Their efforts culminated in a round-the-clock weekend of secret negotiations and personal struggles to keep their firms afloat. Accounts of these events are based on company and other documents, emails and interviews with Wall Street executives, traders, regulators, investors and others........
The weekend that Wall Street died
With his investment bank facing a near-certain failure, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s chief executive officer, Richard Fuld Jr., placed yet another phone call to the man he thought could save him.
Fuld was already effectively out of options by the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 14. The U.S. government said it wouldn't fund a bailout for Lehman, the country's oldest investment bank. Britain's Barclays PLC had agreed in principle to buy the loss-wracked firm, but the deal fell apart. Bank of America Corp., initially seen as Lehman's most likely buyer, had said two days earlier that it couldn't do a deal without federal aid -- and by Sunday was deep in secret negotiations to take over Lehman rival Merrill Lynch & Co.
Desperate to avoid steering his 25,000-person company into bankruptcy proceedings, Fuld dialed the Charlotte, N.C., home of Bank of America Chairman Kenneth D. Lewis. His calls so far that weekend had gone unreturned. This time, Lewis's wife, Donna, again picked up, and told the boss of Lehman Brothers: If Lewis wanted to call back, he would call back.
Fuld paused, then apologized for bothering her. "I am so sorry," he said.
.
His lament could also have been for the investment-banking model that had come to embody the words "Wall Street." Within hours of his call, Lehman announced it would file for bankruptcy protection. Within a week, Wall Street as it was known -- loosely regulated, daringly risky and lavishly rewarded -- was dead.
As Fuld waged his increasingly desperate bid to save his firm that weekend, the bosses of Wall Street's other three giant investment banks were locked in their own battles as their firms came under mounting pressure. It was a weekend unlike anything Wall Street had ever seen: In past crises, its bosses had banded together to save their way of life. This time, the financial hole they had dug for themselves was too deep. It was every man for himself, and Fuld, who declined to comment for this article, was the odd man out.
For the U.S. securities industry to unravel as spectacularly as it did in September, many parties had to pull on many threads. Mortgage bankers gave loans to Americans for homes they couldn't afford. Investment houses packaged these loans into complex instruments whose risk they didn't always understand. Ratings agencies often gave their seal of approval, investors borrowed heavily to buy, regulators missed the warning signs. But at the center of it all -- and paid hundreds of millions of dollars during the boom to manage their firms' risk -- were the four bosses of Wall Street.
Details of these CEOs' decisions and negotiations, many of them previously unreported, show how they sought to avert the death of America's giant investment banks. Their efforts culminated in a round-the-clock weekend of secret negotiations and personal struggles to keep their firms afloat. Accounts of these events are based on company and other documents, emails and interviews with Wall Street executives, traders, regulators, investors and others........
domingo, 28 de diciembre de 2008
El Wa Mu siempre decía SI
El último artículo sobre la Crisis Financiera actual publicado por el NYT de la Serie The Reckoning (Artículos sobre las causas de la crisis) demuestra cómo el Washington Mutual se comportaba mas como una Fábrica de Hipotecas que como una institución financiera seria.
Por ejemplo hace cuatro años un cliente al solicitar un préstamo hipotecario, señalaba que tenia ingresos anuales de seis dígitos en base a su profesión de mariachi.
Como el banco no podia verificar sus ingresos , simplemente le tomaron una foto vestido de marichi al frente de su casa que fue enviada al file del cliente en el Wa Mu, resultado Crédito Aprobado.
Historias como estas existen miles, y estos Créditos Subprime son los que luego se empaquetaron en los CDOs por miles de millones de dólares con Ratings AAA y que luego han desencadenado la crísis que hoy vivimos.
The Reckoning
Por ejemplo hace cuatro años un cliente al solicitar un préstamo hipotecario, señalaba que tenia ingresos anuales de seis dígitos en base a su profesión de mariachi.
Como el banco no podia verificar sus ingresos , simplemente le tomaron una foto vestido de marichi al frente de su casa que fue enviada al file del cliente en el Wa Mu, resultado Crédito Aprobado.
Historias como estas existen miles, y estos Créditos Subprime son los que luego se empaquetaron en los CDOs por miles de millones de dólares con Ratings AAA y que luego han desencadenado la crísis que hoy vivimos.
Saying Yes, WaMu Built Empire on Shaky Loans
“We hope to do to this industry what Wal-Mart did to theirs, Starbucks did to theirs, Costco did to theirs and Lowe’s-Home Depot did to their industry. And I think if we’ve done our job, five years from now you’re not going to call us a bank.”
— Kerry K. Killinger, chief executive of Washington Mutual, 2003
SAN DIEGO — As a supervisor at a Washington Mutual mortgage processing center, John D. Parsons was accustomed to seeing baby sitters claiming salaries worthy of college presidents, and schoolteachers with incomes rivaling stockbrokers’. He rarely questioned them. A real estate frenzy was under way and WaMu, as his bank was known, was all about saying yes.
Yet even by WaMu’s relaxed standards, one mortgage four years ago raised eyebrows. The borrower was claiming a six-figure income and an unusual profession: mariachi singer.
Mr. Parsons could not verify the singer’s income, so he had him photographed in front of his home dressed in his mariachi outfit. The photo went into a WaMu file. Approved.jueves, 11 de diciembre de 2008
Wall Street se destruye otra vez
El gran historiador britanico Niall Ferguson, nos da una gran descripción de la crisis financiera actual, y de cómo modelos matemáticos importaron mas que el sentido comun
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/12/banks200812
Wall Street Lays Another Egg
Not so long ago, the dollar stood for a sum of gold, and bankers knew the people they lent to. The author charts the emergence of an abstract, even absurd world—call it Planet Finance—where mathematical models ignored both history and human nature, and value had no meaning.
This year we have lived through something more than a financial crisis. We have witnessed the death of a planet. Call it Planet Finance. Two years ago, in 2006, the measured economic output of the entire world was worth around $48.6 trillion. The total market capitalization of the world’s stock markets was $50.6 trillion, 4 percent larger. The total value of domestic and international bonds was $67.9 trillion, 40 percent larger. Planet Finance was beginning to dwarf Planet Earth........
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/12/banks200812
Wall Street Lays Another Egg
Not so long ago, the dollar stood for a sum of gold, and bankers knew the people they lent to. The author charts the emergence of an abstract, even absurd world—call it Planet Finance—where mathematical models ignored both history and human nature, and value had no meaning.
This year we have lived through something more than a financial crisis. We have witnessed the death of a planet. Call it Planet Finance. Two years ago, in 2006, the measured economic output of the entire world was worth around $48.6 trillion. The total market capitalization of the world’s stock markets was $50.6 trillion, 4 percent larger. The total value of domestic and international bonds was $67.9 trillion, 40 percent larger. Planet Finance was beginning to dwarf Planet Earth........
El Fin de Wall Street
Michael Lewis el autor de Liar's Poker, ha publicado este extraordinario artículo sobre la Crisis de Wall Street en la Revista Portfolio.
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom
Este artículo es citado por Thomas Friedman en el New York Times en el artículo," All Fall Down"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/opinion/26friedman.html.
Friedman señaló "Also check out Michael Lewis’s superb essay, “The End of Wall Street’s Boom,” on Portfolio.com. Lewis, who first chronicled Wall Street’s excesses in “Liar’s Poker,” profiles some of the decent people on Wall Street who tried to expose the credit binge — including Meredith Whitney, a little known banking analyst who declared, over a year ago, that “Citigroup had so mismanaged its affairs that it would need to slash its dividend or go bust,” wrote Lewis. "
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom
Este artículo es citado por Thomas Friedman en el New York Times en el artículo," All Fall Down"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/opinion/26friedman.html.
Friedman señaló "Also check out Michael Lewis’s superb essay, “The End of Wall Street’s Boom,” on Portfolio.com. Lewis, who first chronicled Wall Street’s excesses in “Liar’s Poker,” profiles some of the decent people on Wall Street who tried to expose the credit binge — including Meredith Whitney, a little known banking analyst who declared, over a year ago, that “Citigroup had so mismanaged its affairs that it would need to slash its dividend or go bust,” wrote Lewis. "
La Caida de Lehman
Aqui encontraran una descripción de la caida de Lehman Brothers y de su CEO Richard Fuld
Bleeding Green: The Fall of Fuld
Money, Respect and the Corner Office: What Lehman's 'Gorilla' CEO Has Lost
By ALICE GOMSTYN ABC NEWS Business UnitOct. 6, 2008
If you've ever heard of the tony estates of Greenwich, Conn., it probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that some come equipped with squash courts.
A decade ago, George Ball lived a mile and a half away from one of them. Ball was friends with the property's athletic owner and they played the game together -- one alpha male against another in a white box court.
Ball's squash partner was Richard Fuld, the chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers. Fuld, he said, wanted "very badly to win" but he also played fair.
Fuld is "the rare person who simultaneously wants to beat your brains in but also takes a good deal of joy in the things that his opponent does well," Ball said.
Off the court, Fuld, 62, probably isn't taking joy in much these days. Last month, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, marking the demise of one of Wall Street's most storied brokerage firms. Today, Fuld, who declined an ABCNews.com request for an interview, is scheduled to testify before Congress in a hearing on the financial crisis that continues to wreak havoc at other financial firms and the economy. (Read Fuld's prepared testimony.)
Lehman's bankruptcy thrust Fuld, who led the firm for 15 years and worked there for nearly 40, into the ever-growing club of CEOs who saw their investment banks felled by the subprime housing meltdown. On the day of Lehman's bankruptcy filing, Merrill Lynch announced it was selling itself to Bank of America. Months earlier, Bear Stearns was purchased by JPMorgan Chase with the government's backing. The week after Lehman's collapse, the country's last two major independent brokerage firms -- Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- sought to save themselves by morphing into commercial banks.
The bankruptcy filing distinguished Lehman from the fate of its brokerage brethren. Most of Lehman's North American operations were purchased by the U.K.-based Barclays Capital. But the debt holders of Lehman, unlike those of Bear Stearns and Merrill, were left with pennies on the dollar, said Sean Egan of the credit rating company Egan Jones.
And while shareholders of Bear Stearns saw the value of their stocks decimated, they still came out ahead of those who invested in Lehman, including many Lehman employees, who saw their holdings plummet to nothing. Fuld himself, according to InsiderScore.com, lost at least $600 million since December.
The face of Lehman's defeat, quite literally, was Fuld. On the day the bankruptcy filing was announced, artist Geoffrey Raymond -- known for painting Wall Street heavyweights and politicians -- debuted a large portrait of Fuld outside Lehman's Times Square headquarters. As he's done with other works, Raymond invited passersby, including Lehman employees, to use colored markers to sign messages on the canvas.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=5951669&page=1
Bleeding Green: The Fall of Fuld
Money, Respect and the Corner Office: What Lehman's 'Gorilla' CEO Has Lost
By ALICE GOMSTYN ABC NEWS Business UnitOct. 6, 2008
If you've ever heard of the tony estates of Greenwich, Conn., it probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that some come equipped with squash courts.
A decade ago, George Ball lived a mile and a half away from one of them. Ball was friends with the property's athletic owner and they played the game together -- one alpha male against another in a white box court.
Ball's squash partner was Richard Fuld, the chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers. Fuld, he said, wanted "very badly to win" but he also played fair.
Fuld is "the rare person who simultaneously wants to beat your brains in but also takes a good deal of joy in the things that his opponent does well," Ball said.
Off the court, Fuld, 62, probably isn't taking joy in much these days. Last month, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, marking the demise of one of Wall Street's most storied brokerage firms. Today, Fuld, who declined an ABCNews.com request for an interview, is scheduled to testify before Congress in a hearing on the financial crisis that continues to wreak havoc at other financial firms and the economy. (Read Fuld's prepared testimony.)
Lehman's bankruptcy thrust Fuld, who led the firm for 15 years and worked there for nearly 40, into the ever-growing club of CEOs who saw their investment banks felled by the subprime housing meltdown. On the day of Lehman's bankruptcy filing, Merrill Lynch announced it was selling itself to Bank of America. Months earlier, Bear Stearns was purchased by JPMorgan Chase with the government's backing. The week after Lehman's collapse, the country's last two major independent brokerage firms -- Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- sought to save themselves by morphing into commercial banks.
The bankruptcy filing distinguished Lehman from the fate of its brokerage brethren. Most of Lehman's North American operations were purchased by the U.K.-based Barclays Capital. But the debt holders of Lehman, unlike those of Bear Stearns and Merrill, were left with pennies on the dollar, said Sean Egan of the credit rating company Egan Jones.
And while shareholders of Bear Stearns saw the value of their stocks decimated, they still came out ahead of those who invested in Lehman, including many Lehman employees, who saw their holdings plummet to nothing. Fuld himself, according to InsiderScore.com, lost at least $600 million since December.
The face of Lehman's defeat, quite literally, was Fuld. On the day the bankruptcy filing was announced, artist Geoffrey Raymond -- known for painting Wall Street heavyweights and politicians -- debuted a large portrait of Fuld outside Lehman's Times Square headquarters. As he's done with other works, Raymond invited passersby, including Lehman employees, to use colored markers to sign messages on the canvas.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=5951669&page=1
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