Hardly a day goes by without major news about climate risk and how companies are responding to it. Amid this onslaught it can be hard to spot what’s truly significant. In just the past week, a group of investors sounded the alarm about the financial risks of climate change, Microsoft’s billion-dollar climate innovation fund joined […]
History has a way of repeating itself, particularly in finance. In the last financial crisis a dozen years ago, banks received taxpayer-backed bailouts and paid hefty bonuses to their executives. The uproar was loud and lasting. Now Wall Street seems poised for a repeat, after a massive federal coronavirus stimulus and a liquidity jolt from […]
Goldman Sachs has had a string of ugly news headlines lately over its dealings with Libya’s sovereign wealth fund, its role in the collapse of a British retailer and its ties to an investment fund in Malaysia embroiled in a corruption probe. But this post is not about those things.
For a business that makes its living from intermediating disruption, Wall Street is remarkably inept at dealing with its own ebbing fortunes. Just look at the recent announcements from two big banks.
You almost feel sorry for Tidjane Thiam, the CEO of Credit Suisse. According to a New York Times article, he offended the firm’s princely investment bankers, apparently by speaking harshly to them and insisting they stop losing the shareholders’ money. Now they are throwing their Gucci loafers at him and warning the castle is about […]
Here’s a new investment strategy: sell shares of any company that trots out new advertisements that reek of self-importance. Morgan Stanley and Apple – which both have new campaigns running now – would top the list.
The sinners continue to repent in the great Investment Banking Reformation. The latest penitent is Andrea Orcel, the head of investment banking at UBS, who appeared before Britain’s Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and promised to ‘put integrity before profit.’ But it is brutal economics, not soul cleansing, that is changing UBS and other institutions.
No one is covering themselves in glory in the aftermath of the Facebook IPO. Lead underwriter Morgan Stanley is battling allegations that it priced the deal too richly. Facebook insiders are being called greedy for the last-minute increase in the number of shares they sold in the offering. Facebook’s management is being criticized for signaling […]
The note earlier today by Morgan Stanley CEO Jim Gorman addressing what he called “confusion and misinformation” about the firm wasn’t too reassuring. It’s not likely to quell the rumors about the firm, nor does it do much to improve Gorman’s stature. By penning such a short memo (a mere 218 words), Gorman clearly did […]