Pre-migration untagged articles

You may remember last September when Joe Lewis, the celebrated billionaire currency trader, bought a not insignificant stake in Bear Stearns. The Bear was in all sorts of subprime-related trouble, with two of its hedge funds resembling the leaning tower of Pisa, and the firm’s shares were buckling.

Bankers working to originate and execute capital markets transactions were dealt a blow this week when two banks said that the US economy is heading towards recession, putting further strain on the markets.

Judged solely on the flow of short dated yen issuance, this week the private placement market was in good health. But dealers’ concerns about prospects for the first quarter began to rise as the dearth of benchmark financial issuance weighed on the MTN sector.

The asset backed commercial paper market enjoyed a week of growth in Europe and the US, but some market participants warned that shrinkage was likely and that conditions were far from back to normal.

Recession was whispered around every corner this week in the European credit default swap markets.

Fitch refused to withdraw the ratings of the Sigma, the largest of the structured investment vehicles, on Wednesday after Gordian Knot, the vehicle’s sponsor, asked for the ratings to be dropped following the expiration of its contract with the agency.

A flurry of floating rate notes from financial institutions showed that in the Swiss franc market, while large deals could be done this week, investors remain nervous about fixed rate deals.

We were asked what improvements we would like to see in the financial news coverage in 2008. We subscribe to almost everything, and have the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal hand-delivered by courier, at an outrageous cost.

The US dollar swap curve was besieged by steepening trades in the wake of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s pledge yesterday (Thursday) afternoon that the central bank would take "substantive additional action" to rescue the US economy.

Last year one of the main stories in capital markets was the number of chief executives and other high rollers who bit the dust. "By the end of the year there were enough top ranking names to create a war memorial," said one London hedge fund manager. How very cruel.