French police arrest former EADS chief -Guardian
Two judges and the French market regulator, AMF, have been investigating allegations that 17 current and former EADS executives, including Forgeard, exercised stock options when they were party to privileged information about deteriorating profits at Airbus.
Landowners trampled in gas rush -CNN Money
Unsuspecting property owners around the country are getting trampled in an old-fashioned land rush by natural gas companies and speculators trying to lock up long-ignored drilling rights quickly and cheaply.
Dutch insurer’s U.S. unit draws scrutiny from regulators -IHT
Aegon itself, with headquarters in The Hague and subsidiaries throughout Europe, is less eager to talk about exactly how World Financial makes money.
One thing about the unit, based in Duluth, Georgia, that sets it apart from traditional sales forces is structure. As a pyramidlike, multilevel sales organization, World Financial produces the big compensation for its agents not from their sales of products so much as their recruitment of new agents, according to the company’s marketing materials.
More layoffs expected at financial firms -IHT
From Tokyo to London to New York, financial companies have announced plans to shed more than 83,000 jobs since last July as revenue and compensation pools evaporate, according to Bloomberg estimates. The dismissals range from 90 jobs, or 0.1 percent of the total, at HBOS in London to about 9,160 jobs, or 66 percent of the work force, at Bear Stearns in New York, which is being acquired by JPMorgan Chase.
Fed Keeps Watch on Wall St. — From the Inside -Washington Post
New York Fed employees are working inside major investment banks every day, alongside the Securities and Exchange Commission staff members who are the firms’ main regulators. The Fed employees are trying to gather information the central bank can use to make sure the billions of dollars it is lending the investment firms, through a special emergency loan program enacted in March, are not being put at undue risk.
Debt From Beyond the Grave -WSJ MarketBeat
According to a report by Bloomberg, put options that many companies in Russia used to help lure investors back following the 1998 Russian default (which helped trigger the collapse of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management) are now coming back to haunt companies who will be forced to shell out higher interest payments.
“Investors rarely exercised the puts until last year because the interest they received was higher than what they could get on new bonds,” Bloomberg explains.
JP Morgan Will Wait A Couple Weeks Before Ripping Bear Stearns Name From Building -Dealbreaker
"The name generally will go away," says a J.P. Morgan insider. "What kind of brand value does Bear Stearns have at this point, anyway?"
It’s worth noting here that JP Morgan got the whole kit and caboodle that was Bear for less than a third of what James Cayne, former Bear CEO, was worth prior to the collapse.
The Run On Bear Started Earlier Than You Think -Dealbreaker
On December 20th, after Bear recorded its first quarterly loss ever, we reported that money managers were beginning to move business away from Bear Stearns. We called the item "Bear Stearns: Toxic Counterparty?"
The Great Bear Conspiracy -Portfolio
It is tempting to think that there was a conspiracy to bring down Bear Stearns.
Wall Street is a cutthroat place anyway, and Bear was never the most popular. People still remembered how Bear walked away when the rest of Wall Street organized a bailout of the tottering hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998.
Villains steal arrogant businessman’s social security number -Geeks are Sexy
…he tried to prove how effective his service was by widely advertising his Social Security number in all his advertisements. In fact he dared people to steal it. He wanted people to try and steal his identity so his fraud alerts would get set off and he could boast about how super his service was.
So all the villains decided to take him up on his offer and his fraud alerts failed him big time.
There have been at least 87 attempts to steal his identity, including 20 driving license applications. One guy successfully got a $500 loan and now Davis is stuck with repaying it. Unhappy Lifelock customers are now suing him because the fraud alerts didn’t work for them either…
Dumb ass!
Did Roger Stone Take Down Eliot Spitzer? (Ans: Who Knows) -Gawker
It’s hard to tell if he acts like a buffoon because it throws people off the scent or simply because he is a buffoon. The New Yorker sent Jeffrey Toobin to investigate, but all he really uncovered was that Stone is a gross old pervert.
Gawker post links to:
The Dirty Trickster -New Yorker
Miami Velvet is the leading “swingers’ club” in Miami, and Roger Stone took me there to explain the role he may have played in the fall of Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York.
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