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Los Angeles Times – Traders and investment bankers might have more to worry about than dwindling bonus pools this year as mass firings on Wall Street are set to hit a record.
The fallout from this year’s global credit crisis has claimed jobs throughout Wall Street, from hedge fund managers to floor traders and beyond. More than 110,000 people have lost their jobs so far this year, and some industry experts forecast it could come close to 200,000 before the year is over.
Even the financial industry’s biggest name isn’t immune. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the world’s biggest investment bank, made plans Thursday to cut 3,200 positions from its staff of 32,000. Barclays Capital is in the midst of purging 3,000 jobs as part of its takeover of Lehman Bros., and Bank of America Corp.’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. is sure to add thousands more.
Boston Globe – Evergreen Solar Inc. got a shock when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bankrupt last month: The solar panel maker lost control of almost 31 million shares of its stock.
How that happened is the subject of a lawsuit the Marlborough company filed yesterday against Lehman and the defunct investment bank’s new owner, Barclays Capital. It also sheds light on the kinds of complex deals that had become common on Wall Street before the market meltdown.
Evergreen, when it needed to raise money in July to build a plant at the old Fort Devens site, arranged a $375 million bond deal with Lehman. But there was a catch. As part of the transaction, Evergreen had to lend Lehman 30.9 million shares of its own stock – so that hedge funds could borrow them and short them, or bet the stock would fall. That’s right: Evergreen had to provide its own shares for hedge funds to short.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net)- Barclays Global Investors (BGI) has opened an office in the United Arab Emirates’ Dubai International Finance Centre. BGI has been active in the region since 1998 and currently has assets under management of US$ 28 billion in area.
The office, which is co-located with Barclays Wealth and Barclays Capital, will principally address the growing needs of the region’s institutions – including Government sponsored pension and social security funds, Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs), Central Banks and High Net Worth individuals and families.
"The new office is a strategic development for BGI’s Middle Eastern business relationships." David Semaya, Chief Executive, Barclays Global Investors Europe & Asia, said, "We are seeing investors in the region becoming more demanding in their investment strategies."
BGI’s iShares, including its three recently launched Sharia’ah compliant funds, will primarily address the retail market. Islamic finance is a $400bn industry, growing at a rate of over 15% per annum.
BGI is the world’s largest asset manager with over $2.0 trillion in assets under management. BGI’s funds include hedge funds and fund of funds as well as index and active equities and bonds funds.
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Times Online- Philip Falcone is used to demanding change from underperforming company executives, but yesterday he took Harbinger Capital, his activist hedge fund, into new territory.
Complete with financial advisers and a big stake, Harbinger broke cover as a traditional prospective buyer of strategic assets, with a tentative approach to Inmarsat, the London-listed satellite operator.
Harbinger has a 29.9 per cent holding in Inmarsat, as well as stakes in several other satellite companies, including America’s SkyTerra and Terrestar.
Mr Falcone, a former Barclays Capital trader, appears to be intent on acting as an industry consolidator, a role more commonly played by trade buyers or private equity funds.
Bloomberg- BlackRock Inc., the largest publicly traded U.S. money manager, and Ospraie Management LLC, are among five companies that will start Shariah-compliant hedge funds based in Dubai.
The funds will get $50 million each in so-called seed capital from the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre Authority, a government-backed agency. Barclays Capital, securities unit of Britain’s fourth-largest bank, will also back the funds which will start in the next two weeks, said Frank Gerhard, the bank’s head of fund-linked derivatives strategy in an interview.
Shariah forbids investment in companies judged by scholars to be highly indebted, and those involved in alcohol, gambling and weaponry. Financial information companies including Standard & Poor’s and Dow Jones & Co. have started Islamic indexes that show only Shariah-compliant companies. The world’s Muslim community has about $3.6 trillion of combined wealth, Standard & Poor’s estimated in 2006.
Reuters India- CQS has hired former Barclays Capital managing director David Kilgore as its head of trading in Hong Kong, part of a broader push by the $9.6 billion (4.9 billion pound) UK hedge fund manager to expand its presence in high-growth Asia.
CQS, a specialist in convertible bond arbitrage, is looking at further expanding its 20-person Hong Kong office and the launch of additional Asia-focused hedge funds is possible, CQS director Brian Pohli said on Tuesday.
"There are a number of different businesses we can bolt on here. But it depends on the skill set of the folks available and the complementary nature of the fit into our existing platform," he told Reuters in an interview at the firm’s Hong Kong office.
