The World Bank is not alone in making growth projections for the global growth situation. News out now maintains a stance of global growth in 2012, but not in Europe as the old continent is set to be in the red this year. Two key warnings are simply to prepare for more volatility in the years ahead and a warning that developing nations need to reduce their vulnerabilities.
Hans Eysink Smeet is a self-described former-banker and retail consultant in Amsterdam, who noticed, sadly, that all of the old sex shops that marked his daily walk from train station to office had disappeared. Well, Mr. Smeet was not at a loss for an answer: The porn industry, he knew, had gone online. "Anyone with a video recorder and a bare bum can make a porn and put it on the internet," he told Business Insider.
Editor’s note: Alex Banayan is an associate at Alsop Louie Partners, an early stage technology venture capital firm based in San Francisco, CA. He is nineteen years old (and thus this post could really use a #humblebrag in the title). To stay connected with Alex, sign up for his newsletter here.
Okay, full disclosure: I’ve never had a startup go through an IPO, I don’t have an MBA—heck—I’m not even old enough to take the finance course offered at my school, but I’m now an associate at Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm.
OMAHA, Neb. - The cost to dine with investor Warren Buffett has apparently spiked in value, with one deep-pocketed bidder forking over nearly $3.5 million during a charity auction Friday night.
The annual auction for a private lunch with the Nebraska billionaire closed following a flurry of activity in the final hours. In the end, the highest bid was a record-breaking $3,456,789.
As if you had not guessed that China's weekend releases of economic data were going to be weak after that surprise rate cut late in the week, the tally is out and it is weak on all fronts. The U.S. and other major industrial nations would kill for growth numbers like these. China just requires higher numbers from the National Bureau of Statistics of China for the world to be growing more.
WASHINGTON - The International Monetary Fund is estimating that Spanish banks need at least a euro40 billion ($49.87 billion) capital injection following a stress test it performed on the country's financial sector.
The lending institution said Friday that Spain's financial sector is well managed but vulnerable. It recommended that banks raise capital by an additional unspecified amount beyond the euro40 billion to properly restructure troubled banks, noting that the country should be prepared for further bank losses.
Reblogged from Business & Money:
In April, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao took aim at China's powerful state-owned banks. According to Reuters, he said at a discussion with local businesses: "Frankly, our banks make profits far too easily. Why? Because a small number of major banks occupy a monopoly position, meaning one can only go to them for loans and capital. That's why right now, as we're dealing with the issue of getting private capital into the finance sector, essentially, that means we have to break up their monopoly."
Morgan Stanley is planning to ax 100 traders internationally in the weeks to come, according to the New York Post, which posits a cruel summer for investment bankers as firms grapple with lower trading revenue.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that Goldman Sachs let go about 50 bankers last week, including some managing directors, adding to the 3,000 jobs the firm cut in the last year.
That means you, Greece.
Michael Tory, former head of U.K. investment banking at Lehman Brothers, just published an op-ed in the Financial Times suggesting that what European policymakers need most right now is not to pull the region's tenuous economy back from the ledge but to get down on their knees and take a good hard look into the darkness that awaits…
LinkedIn Corporation (NYSE: LNKD) disclosed two Form 4 filings made with the for two officers. While these were under adopted 10b5-1 trading plans as part of the insider trading policy, sales that go into millions of dollars are usually screened by watchers who look for the cashing out of key insiders. The shares sold were also under the A Shares rather than the key B Shares.
Reblogged from Business & Money:
Bankers and others in the business of finance aren’t exactly winning any popularity polls at the moment. The Facebook IPO has many complaining that the investment game is rigged. The Occupy Wall Streeters are still in the streets, banging pots and pans. And now Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen, currently on tour in Europe, is blasting bankers as “robber barons” and “greedy thieves” in pointed songs about America’s economic divide.
And so the Grexit continues to be nigh: George Soros may handicap Greece's June 17 election in favor of the pro-bailout parties deemed more likely to keep the nation in Europe's monetary union, but better-safe-than-sorry still applies. If you're a Greek saver, that may mean stashing some euros under your mattress. If you're the British banknote printer De La Rue, it means…
Reblogged from National Post | News:
PARIS/BERLIN -- When Jean-Claude Trichet called last June for the creation of a European finance ministry with power over national budgets, the idea seemed fanciful, a distant dream that would take years or even decades to realise, if it ever came to be.
One year later, with the euro zone’s debt crisis threatening to tear the bloc apart, Germany is pushing its partners for precisely the kind of giant leap forward in fiscal integration that the now-departed European Central Bank president had in mind.
And then this happened: Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Engle played Mark Fiore's satirical advertisement for a fictional pharmaceutical called ContagionEx—"sovereign transmitted debts don't have to be embarrassing or keep you from other financial relationships"—at the end of a highly technical lecture on systemic risk today at the NYU/Moody's Credit Risk Conference today. Heidi Moore says the wonks were nearly rolling in the aisles…
Squeeze play: JPMorgan has been selling profitable securities to prop up second-quarter results after the bank's chief investment office and the trader known as the London Whale incurred billions in losses. The asset sales may be tax inefficient, and will deprive the lender of future gains, which is just too bad for Jamie Dimon's firm. With its share price down 18 percent from the day before the trading losses were first reported, JPMorgan is under pressure to generate earnings.
Today’s release of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices indicate that housing prices across the US are down -1.9% from March 2011 and down -2% for the first quarter of 2012 compared with the first quarter of 2011. Month-over-month changes in the 10-city and 20-city composite indices were minimal, but “with all these latest data, all three composites still posted their lowest levels since the housing crisis began in mid-2006,” according to today’s report.
Reblogged from CNN Political Ticker:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned -- but what about a Wall Street titan?
Deep-pocketed financiers have abandoned President Obama and are flocking to Mitt Romney in droves, providing more donations to his campaign than any other industry except retired workers. (And that's not really an industry.)
Luxury jewelry retailer Tiffany & Co. (NYSE: TIF) reported first quarter earnings this morning that were a light even though revenues were better than expected. The company posted EPS of $0.64 compared with a consensus estimate of $0.69. Revenue totaled $819 million versus an estimate of $817 million. The stock is getting slashed in the pre-market, though, based on the company’s revised guidance.
1. Say goodbye to the individual investor on Wall Street. Whatever positive impression they had of the IPO market and the stock market in general was just torched to the ground. When everyone you know associated with the stock market is telling you and the media is confirming that this could be a huge IPO that will make money for those lucky enough to get shares and the opposite happens, goodnight.
Ralph Lauren Corporation (NYSE: RL) has what would appear to be good news in most headline watching: the high-end apparel maker is doubling its dividend. Unfortunately this is getting lost in the shuffle after its earnings report showed gains of 29%. The company has now declared a quarterly dividend of $0.40 per share, or $1.60 when you take it on an annualized basis, from its prior level of $0.20 per share per quarter.
Reblogged from Fortune Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine:
Katy Huberty, Morgan Stanley's chief Apple (AAPL) analyst, issued an elaborate report Monday entitled AAPL: How Do You Do Risk Management? that I can't pretend to understand completely -- not even the title.
But two takeaways are clear: (I quote)
Zynga's share price plummeted 11.4 percent from $8.09 to $7.19 in the eight minutes after Facebook's IPO went live, and down 13.3 percent since yesterday. Trading was halted for a number of minutes to stem further losses. Then, the stock came back and started to recover. It's currently down around 5% overall -- and halted again for the time being.
Hundreds of Facebook employees congregated at 'Hacker Square' at the company's Menlo Park headquarters this evening ahead of the company's insanely-hyped initial public offering. Now, some of the first photos are starting to trickle in. There was a standing ovation for chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who gave a talk before several long-time engineers bounced in while wearing capes or bringing boomboxes.
The Facebook IPO is the most important IPO to hit the stock market in .....forever. Not because of its size in dollars. Not because of the gap up it may experience in its first day of trading. Nope. Its the most important IPO ever because:
1. It could lead to individual retail investors coming back into the market.
For the first time in a long time I had someone ask me what I thought about an IPO.
The Oracle of Omaha acquired his hometown newspaper in January and just snapped up dozens more in a $142 million deal. This is supposed to be the fastest declining industry in America. What is Warren Buffett up to?
Here's why the deal makes a lot more sense than it appears:
A "three corner pool shot"
This week's deal makes Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway, the proud owner of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and 62 other daily and weekly papers in Virginia and the South.
WSJ Markets
Recent Comments