Pre-migration untagged articles

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) may have had a busy week joining other central banks in injecting liquidity into money markets, but the domestic bond market had a quieter one. There were no new issues this week.

Goldman Sachs has closed a $120m synthetic CDO, managed by Cheyne Capital. Cheyne Capital Guaranteed Credit Notes, was settled last Friday.

UBS’s subprime worries continued to dominate the headlines this week, as the group announced further writedowns of Sfr11.4bn ($10bn) on Monday — causing it to revise its expectations for the fourth quarter from profit to loss.

This has not been a very good year for Morgan Stanley. In early 2007 the firm appeared almost unstoppable. You could look at the company and say that there were very few chinks in its armour. The CEO, John Mack, may have missed an opportunity to form an association with Larry Fink’s BlackRock, but had Larry made the right decision to choose Merrill Lynch as a partner?

If the five central banks hoped that their Christmas present to the markets would be received with boyish whooping and teary-eyed gratitude, they must have been disappointed by the end of the week. Although the package of liquidity measures was greeted with enthusiasm on Wednesday, by yesterday (Thursday) it lay neglected like an uncherished bicycle in the shed on Boxing Day.

THE US credits at the sharp end of the subprime crisis lurched wider this week after gradual improvement recently. Countrywide Financial was quoted as 12%/13.5% upfront with 500bp running after closing at 10% upfront on Wednesday, said dealers.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp (CMHC) proved that record breaking issuance was still possible even in volatile markets at the end of the year, with a C$9.5bn ($9.36m) tap of its December 2012 bond.