Times Online – Guardian Media Group, the owner of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, lost £24m last year on botched currency trading as it tried to protect hedge-fund investments.

Read Complete Article

Tags: currency trading, derivatives, fund investments, guardian, hedge fund, investment-fund, losses, market valuation, media group, newspaper publisher, newspapers, rapid rise, readership, rise against, risk, sterling

Bloomberg – It has been a year of record misery: the largest bankruptcy, bank failure and Ponzi scheme in U.S. history; $720 billion in writedowns and losses by financial institutions; $30.1 trillion in market valuation wiped out.

The biggest loss and the hardest thing to recover, though, may be something that can’t be precisely measured — confidence in the markets and the firms that rely on them.

“The wholesale funding model lost its credibility,” said David Hendler, senior analyst at New York-based CreditSights Inc. “That started the semi-nationalization of funding in the financial markets. It’s a real chink in the armor of capitalism as supposedly the best process for allocating capital. The government is now deciding who gets access to capital.”

Read Complete Article

Tags: bank failure, bankruptcy, capitalism, chink in the armor, confidence, credibility, financial-institutions, financial-markets, hardest thing, hendler, losses, market valuation, misery, nationalization, senior analyst, trillion, wholesale