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Article: BlackRock, State Street Exploring Takeover Of Credit Suisse Asset Management Arm

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BlackRock, State Street Exploring Takeover Of Credit Suisse Asset Management Arm

TYLER DURDEN, 09 April 2021

Earlier, several financial media outlets reported that Credit Suisse was considering dramatically shrinking or selling off its prime brokerage unit, the hedge-fund-focused business that just lost $4.7 billion for the bank, obliterating 18 months of the bank’s average net profits.

But in the last few hours, the focus has shifted to the bank’s asset management unit, amid reports that several American firms might be interested in making a bid, even as the bank has yet to release the final tally of expected losses from the Greensill debacle. Continue reading “Article: BlackRock, State Street Exploring Takeover Of Credit Suisse Asset Management Arm”

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Article: Top Carbon-Credit-Seller Launches Internal Probe After Selling “Worthless” Offsets To JPMorgan, Disney

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Top Carbon-Credit-Seller Launches Internal Probe After Selling “Worthless” Offsets To JPMorgan, Disney

Joen Coronel, 09 April 2021

Back in December, Bloomberg published a sweeping expose that raised serious questions about the ESG investing craze sweeping the world. In the piece, Bloomberg detailed how the Nature Conservancy, the world’s biggest environmental group and a prominent seller of carbon offsets, had sold “worthless” credits to JPMorgan, Disney and BlackRock as the corporations sought to finance the protection of carbon-absorbing forest land to absolve them of their sins tied to fossil fuel usage. Continue reading “Article: Top Carbon-Credit-Seller Launches Internal Probe After Selling “Worthless” Offsets To JPMorgan, Disney”

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Article: Japan ensures G20 pledge vs ‘disorderly’ moves as FX language tweaked, sources say

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Japan ensures G20 pledge vs ‘disorderly’ moves as FX language tweaked, sources say

Tetsushi Kajimoto, 09 April 2021

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan made sure that language warning against excess currency market volatility remained in place when G20 finance leaders made a rare tweak to their message on exchange-rate moves, said officials with knowledge of the deliberations.

In the first communique compiled since U.S. President Joe Biden took office, finance leaders of the Group of 20 major economies called for the need for currency moves to reflect “underlying” economic fundamentals. Continue reading “Article: Japan ensures G20 pledge vs ‘disorderly’ moves as FX language tweaked, sources say”

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Article: HSBC reportedly blacklists MicroStrategy’s stock for investing in Bitcoin

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HSBC reportedly blacklists MicroStrategy’s stock for investing in Bitcoin

OSATO AVAN-NOMAYO, 09 April 2021

Buying MicroStrategy stock is reportedly no longer possible for HSBC customers on the bank’s online trading platform — HSBC InvestDirect, or HIDC.

According to a supposed message from the bank to its customers, HSBC has directed users that already own MicroStrategy stock not to buy additional shares.

Twitter user Camiam claimed to have received such a message from the banking giant on March 29: Continue reading “Article: HSBC reportedly blacklists MicroStrategy’s stock for investing in Bitcoin”

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Article: Half of S&P 500 report more money for foreign taxes than U.S. taxes

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Half of S&P 500 report more money for foreign taxes than U.S. taxes

STEPHEN GANDEL, 09 April 2021

Nearly half of the large U.S. companies that make up the S&P 500-stock index set aside more money to pay foreign taxes in 2020 than they did for payments to the U.S. government — a lot more money.

In all, 241 S&P 500 companies last year earmarked a combined $73 billion for taxes to foreign governments and just $6.7 billion to cover U.S. taxes, according to a CBS MoneyWatch analysis of the companies’ regulatory filings and data from financial information firm FactSet. That’s a foreign-to-domestic tax ratio of more than 10-to-1.

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Article: Hong Kong stock exchange to extend circuit breakers to futures products to temper wild gyrations in equities and derivatives

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HKEX incoming CEO Nicolas Aguzin

Hong Kong stock exchange to extend circuit breakers to futures products to temper wild gyrations in equities and derivatives

Yahoo Finance, 09 April 2021

The move will add to similar controls put in place since August 2016, first on extreme gyrations in equities and a year later on derivative products. They followed a series of events that provoked regulatory probes into market misconduct such as price manipulation and pump-and-dump scandals.

“The volatility control mechanism (VCM) has worked as intended without any negative feedback from the market,” said Tom Chan Pak-lam, chairman of Hong Kong Institute of Securities Dealers, the local brokerage industry body. “In many cases, sharp and sudden price movements were smoothed out as the cooling-off periods allowed participants to react while trading continued.”

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Article: Bitcoin Shows Us That Not All Volatilities Are Created Equal

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Bitcoin Shows Us That Not All Volatilities Are Created Equal

Enrique Dans, 09 April 2021

For many people, the main obstacle to using cryptocurrencies is that they are volatile; their value fluctuates sharply across time depending on, apparently, many different factors. To put the issue in context, the original paper on bitcoin was published in late 2008 and the first transaction in early 2009: since then, its value in dollars or euros has risen by more than 15,000%.

In contrast, over the same period of time, the parity between the dollar and the euro, has varied by a few percentage points up or down. No surprise therefore that bitcoin is seen as highly volatile and unsuitable for transactions, and at best, a store of value, subject to the systemic risk that arises every time the authorities or a government make decisions that could affect it. China talks of banning bitcoin mining and its price falls. Elon Musk uses part of Tesla’s reserves to buy bitcoin? Bitcoin rises.

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Article: Senate Banking Chair Probes Banks Over Archegos Collapse

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Senate Banking Chair Probes Banks Over Archegos Collapse

Dean Seal, 08 April 2021

The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee is asking Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street giants that brokered for Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management to explain their involvement in the fund’s high-profile collapse.

In letters released Thursday, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, told higher-ups at the Swiss bank, Goldman, Morgan Stanley and Nomura that he was “troubled, but not surprised” that risky derivatives transactions between the banks and Hwang’s generally unregulated family office were connected to a shocking multibillion-dollar firesale on stocks in late March. Continue reading “Article: Senate Banking Chair Probes Banks Over Archegos Collapse”

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Article: Florida Sues CDC Over Cruise Ban, Citing Losses for Operators and State Economy

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Florida Sues CDC Over Cruise Ban, Citing Losses for Operators and State Economy

Lawrence C. Strauss, 08 April 2021

Florida is suing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to resume U.S. cruise sailings, calling the lockdown “arbitrary and capricious” and citing hundreds of millions of dollars in potential losses for the state economy.

The suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Tampa by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, asserts that “the cruise industry has been singled out, and unlike the rest of America, prevented from reopening.” Continue reading “Article: Florida Sues CDC Over Cruise Ban, Citing Losses for Operators and State Economy”

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Article: LA-Based Actor Charged With Running $227 Million Ponzi Scheme

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LA-Based Actor Charged With Running $227 Million Ponzi Scheme

TYLER DURDEN, 08 April 2021

Zachary Horwitz, a little known LA-based actor, has been arrested by the FBI this week and was charged with running “an enormous ponzi scheme” wherein he represented that he had a successful film distribution company.

The reality was that the actor – who has had some roles in small films – was cheating his investors out of $227 million and using most of the money to fund his own lifestyle, according to the NY Post. Horwitz also “used investor funds to pay in cash for a $5.7 million home in Los Angeles’s Beverlywood neighborhood,” the Wall Street Journal added. Continue reading “Article: LA-Based Actor Charged With Running $227 Million Ponzi Scheme”

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Article: Concerns over insider trading mount

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Concerns over insider trading mount

Leanna Reeves, 08 April 2021

Insider trading must be tackled by regulators to provide a fairer market for small shareholders, particularly since the pandemic caused record levels of retail trading accounts, says Mohammed Rharrabti, senior business analyst at Natixis.

“You can go to a forum and see many people exchange about their trade and shares. If you’re a small shareholder, you will have the opportunity to see all the moves. If you see something gaining 20 percent in a day it could be because of the news and so on, but there will be people that have taken this position 10 days before. This is not normal.” he says. Continue reading “Article: Concerns over insider trading mount”

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Article: Can Credit Suisse Avoid Becoming The ‘Deutsche Bank’ Of Switzerland?

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Can Credit Suisse Avoid Becoming The ‘Deutsche Bank’ Of Switzerland?

TYLER DURDEN, 08 April 2021

Markets were shaken but unstirred by the collapse of Greensill and the Archegos unwind trades. Credit Suisse is the ultimate loser of the two scandals – reputationally damaged and holed below the water line. The bank is paying the price of years of flawed management, poor risk awareness. and its self-belief it was still a Tier 1 global player. Its’ challenge is to avoid becoming the Deutsche Bank of Switzerland – which it will struggle to do without a radical and unlikely shakeout. Continue reading “Article: Can Credit Suisse Avoid Becoming The ‘Deutsche Bank’ Of Switzerland?”

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Article: Texas Legislature needs to change course on prescription drug proposals

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Texas Legislature needs to change course on prescription drug proposals

BILL HAMMOND, 08 April 2021

Amid dire economic conditions brought on by the pandemic and exacerbated by the recent weather conditions, Texas legislators are eyeing policies on prescription drug prices that could jeopardize Texas employers’ ability to provide vital accompanying health care and prescription drug coverage.

Health insurance costs for prescription drugs are now higher than for any other expense, including patient hospital costs and doctors’ payments. The cost of health insurance is ranked as the single biggest problem and priority for Texas small-business owners in a recent National Federation of Independent Business survey of members. Continue reading “Article: Texas Legislature needs to change course on prescription drug proposals”

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Article: GameStop plans to elect activist investor Cohen as chairman

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GameStop plans to elect activist investor Cohen as chairman

Reuters, 08 April 2021

GameStop Corp, which has been part of a recent Reddit-driven trading frenzy, said on Thursday it intends to elect activist investor Ryan Cohen as chairman, putting him in the driver’s seat as he looks to transform the videogame retailer.

Since Chewy co-founder Cohen joined GameStop’s board in January, he has been pushing towards transformation of the brick-and-mortar retailer into an e-commerce firm that can take on big-box retailers such as Target Corp and technology firms such as Microsoft Corp.

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Article: ‘Pro-Crypto’ Peter Thiel Warns Bitcoin “Could Be A Chinese Financial Weapon Against The US”

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‘Pro-Crypto’ Peter Thiel Warns Bitcoin “Could Be A Chinese Financial Weapon Against The US”

TYLER DURDEN, 08 April 2021

Cryptocurrencies are typically open-source, meaning that anyone with technical ability can contribute. On top of that, anyone disgruntled with a given cryptocurrency’s trajectory can “fork” it, creating a new coin (as we have seen in both bitcoin and ethereum). Cryptocurrencies are also famously designed to be extralegal – beyond the reach of the government – although of course the SEC and the IRS hope to quash that notion.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence relies on the trend that came before it, big data, and big data is gathered by big entities. Historically, communist regimes like the Soviet Union and Maoist China sought to create highly centralized command economies, noted Thiel. A sufficiently powerful AI could realize the bureaucrat’s dream of accurately predicting peasant farmers’ potato yields months in advance from thousands of miles away.

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