A Financial News Service of The New York Times
DealBook
Lehman Brothers chief executive Richard S. Fuld Jr. reached out to General Electric head Jeffrey Immelt about making an investment in the embattled bank prior to its collapse, The New York Post reported, citing unnamed sources. Mr. Immelt passed after Mr. Fuld, hoping the G.E. chief would take as much as a 20 percent stake in [...]
Vice Chancellor Stephen P. Lamb ruled decisively for Huntsman in his 89-page opinion (as I predicted he would in my previous post, “Last Words From Huntsman and Hexion”). In his opinion, Judge Lamb found that Huntsman had not suffered a material adverse effect, and that Hexion Specialty Chemicals — which, along with its private equity [...]
Merrill Lynch's chairman and chief executive, John A. Thain, will remain at Bank of America after the merger of the two financial giants, Charlotte-based Bank of America said in a statement Thursday.
Take-Two Interactive Software said Thursday that it plans to remain independent, almost two weeks after negotiations with Electronic Arts over a potential $2 billion deal fell apart. The announcement seems to finally draw a curtain on the sometimes heated battle between the two videogame companies, months after E.A. unveiled a hostile bid for the maker of [...]
Commonwealth Bank of Australia poured cold water on report that it’s bidding for HBOS’s Australian unit BankWest. The bank said that it “regularly reviews acquisition opportunities but at this time confirms we do not have any offer with HBOS plc to acquire BankWest.” The statement by the Sydney-based bank follows a report in the Australian Financial Review [...]
As Lehman Brothers continues to slog through a long and complicated bankruptcy, befitting the largest ever in American corporate history, many hedge funds are trying to allay investor concerns about their exposure to the fallen investment bank. Among them is GLG Partners, one of London’s biggest hedge funds. On Thursday morning, GLG released a letter to [...]
“If we don’t do this, we may not have an economy on Monday.” So said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, according to The New York Times, in an emergency meeting on Thursday, Sept. 18 — part of a 36-hour period that The Times says included “two of the scariest days ever in financial markets.” It was [...]
Borders Group issued the hedge fund manager William Ackman warrants for 5.15 million shares after the bookseller was unable to sell itself. Borders struck the agreement in April with Mr. Ackman, the head of Pershing Square Capital Management and the company’s largest shareholder. Mr. Ackman now holds those warrants, which are exercisable at $7 a share. [...]
Institutional investors and the accounting industry on Wednesday lashed out against potential plans to suspend rules used to account for banks’ hard-to-price assets, saying it would deprive investors of critical information, Reuters reported. “Investors have a right to know the current value of an investment, even if the investment is falling short of past or future [...]
Efforts by Embarq to sell itself have stalled, as current market conditions have made it difficult for potential suitors to raise cash to finance a deal, The Wall Street Journal reported. According to The Journal, the fourth-largest U.S. phone company by customers hired JPMorgan Chase to explore a sale. But the company’s deadline for bids was [...]
Is there anyone who is happy with Washington’s latest steps to regulate executive compensation? On one hand, some say the provisions included in the recent bailout bill are little more than window dressing. The new restrictions, which will apply to banks that take part in the financial bailout, are vague, temporary or easy to avoid, these [...]
Merrill Lynch reported its earnings Thursday, possibly for the last time as an independent company. On a conference call that was notable mostly for its lack of fireworks, John Thain, Merrill’s chief executive, said he was “optimistic” about the firm’s future as it moved to consummate its merger with Bank of America. Nelson Chai, Merrill’s chief [...]
After an initial outcry, many opponents of Anheuser-Busch’s sale to Inbev, including lawmakers and members of Anheuser’s founding family, eventually gave the deal their support. But one critic of the $52 billion transaction isn’t backing down. Grupo Modelo, the Mexican company that makes Corona, said early Thursday that it has filed a notice of arbitration against [...]
Right now, it certainly does not feel good to be a banker. Nor does it feel good to be the author of a book satirizing a world that no longer exists. “Basically, I’m making fun of a class of people who most of the world still hates,” Amit Chatwani, the 26-year-old behind the satirical Wall Street [...]
Citigroup on Thursday reported a $2.8 billion loss for its third quarter, as the banking giant took more than $13.2 billion in charges related mostly to its store of toxic mortgage assets. The quarterly loss, Citi’s fourth in a row, was a stark reversal from the $2.2 billion it earned at the same time last [...]
As the financial crisis continued to roll through world markets despite massive bailouts, UBS and Credit Suisse said Thursday that they had secured support totaling some $14.1 billion, either from the Swiss authorities or from outside investors including the Qatar Investment Authority. At the same time, the Swiss National Bank said it had set up a [...]
Things are bad at Citadel Investment Group, but they’re not as bad as rumor would have it. That, at least, is what the hedge fund’s chief, Kenneth C. Griffin, reportedly sought to convince investors in Citadel, whose flagship fund is said to have dropped more than 26 percent this year. “September was a devastating month for financial [...]
Big investors will be required to disclose their short positions to the Securities and Exchange Commission under an interim final rule the commission issued Wednesday night, Reuters reports. The commission said short-sale reports provide it with important information about sizes and changes of short sales. The S.E.C. rule extends a temporary short sale disclosure rule until [...]
Tesla Motors,the Silicon Valley electric car start-up, said Wednesday that it would lay off employees and delay production of its second car, the Model S. Tesla. The company also removed yet another of its chief executives, Ze’ev Drori, and appointed Elon Musk, the company’s chairman and principal investor, to the position, The New York Times’s [...]
GMAC, the former financing arm of General Motors, has “limited if any access to funding” for its mortgage and auto lending units, its chief executive, Al de Molina, has told employees. GMAC may trim auto lending in some international markets, Mr. de Molina said in an e-mail message to employees on Tuesday. The company is considering [...]