NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Here’s the news and headlines that could drive action in the big financial stocks today.
Bank of America(BAC) said in its annual 10K filing with the SEC that it will stop selling new home loans to Fannie Mae(FNMA), citing an ongoing dispute with the housing giant over mortgage repurchase claims. According to press reports, the bank has said its move will not affect customers seeking home loans as it will continue to sell new mortgages to Freddie Mac(FMCC) or retain them in their own books. It will continue to offer loans refinanced and modified through government programs to Fannie Mae. Bank of America has been scaling back its presence in the mortgage origination business. Last year it exited the correspondent mortgages business. The bank also disclosed that it still faces “reasonably possible losses” of $3.6 billion in addition to what it has accrued. http://tourism9.com/ http://vkins.com/
Citigroup(C) is in the process of winding down its nearly 10% stake in India’s HDFC (Housing Development and Finance Corporation). The bank will sell 145.26 million shares in the leading housing finance company as part of a block trade, with an offer range of 630 and 730 rupees, according to Financial Times. At the upper range, the bank will raise $2.1 billion from the sale. The final price will be announced Friday morning. Citigroup had already pared its stake in HDFC from 11.4% to under 10% last June. At that time, the bank had said it was a mere response to the anticipated changes to its capital structure under Basel III and was not a reflection of its outlook on HDFC or the Indian market. Analysts believe the sale may be linked to an anticipated writedown the bank may have to take if Morgan Stanley(MS) exercises its option to buy an additional 14% stake in Morgan Stanley Smith Barney joint venture.
Friday also brings economic data in the form of new homes sales data at 10:00 a.m. St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard will be speaking in New York about housing and monetary policy. His comments may get attention in light of the Fed’s recent calls for policy action to boost housing.
2012年2月24日星期五
2012年1月19日星期四
Mutual Funds Invest in Brazilian Online Deals Company
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Peixe Urbano, Brazil’s first online daily deal company, has closed a series C round of financing with mutual funds and institutional accounts managed by Morgan Stanley Investment Management and T. Rowe Price Associates. General Atlantic and Tiger Global Management, who had previously backed the company, also participated. The size of investment was not disclosed.
Julio Vasconcellos, Peixe Urbano’s chief executive and co-founder, told DealBook in an interview that the new capital would be used to finance research and development and product development. He said the company, based in Rio de Janeiro, planned to develop new features and seek to improve the daily deal business model, including a push into local e-commerce.
Mr. Vasconcellos says Peixe Urbano also plans to hire engineers and fill out its senior leadership team.
The site started in March 2010, when Brazil had no daily deal market.
Its founders, Mr. Vasconcellos, Emerson Andrade and Alex Tabor, met while at Stanford University.
Early investors in the company are Chamath Palihapitiya, Benchmark Capital and Monashees Capital, based in São Paulo. Matt Cohler of Benchmark and Eric Acher of Monashees continue to serve on Peixe Urbano’s board of directors.
The company has grown rapidly in its brief history. It says that by the end of 2010, in its first nine months, it had sold two million coupons and employed 270 people. By early this month, it had sold roughly 12 million coupons and had 1,000 employees. It has also expanded in Latin America, and is now present in more then 80 cities.
Brazil’s daily deal market initially exploded following Peixe Urbano’s founding. More than 2,000 similar sites developed, according to Guilherme Stocco, vice president of business development at the Buscapé Company, which owns intelligence-gathering units.
The market has since experienced a significant correction: there are now just 1,000 sites, and only 300 generate revenue.
While Peixe Urbano does not disclose its revenue, Mr. Stocco told DealBook that in 2011 the total daily deal market in Brazil was about $843 million. He says the top three companies — Peixe Urbano, Groupon and Click On — have been running neck and neck in the market’s brief history. The top three sites account for 40 percent of total market revenue, he said, while the top eight account for 70 percent.
Mr. Stocco said that while there had been a lot of consolidation, “the market is still growing,” adding that “the companies doing well are picking up business from those that failed.”
Benchmark’s Mr. Cohler said in an interview that he continued to see an “unbounded upside” to Peixe Urbano’s growth.
http://tourism9.com/ http://vkins.com/
Julio Vasconcellos, Peixe Urbano’s chief executive and co-founder, told DealBook in an interview that the new capital would be used to finance research and development and product development. He said the company, based in Rio de Janeiro, planned to develop new features and seek to improve the daily deal business model, including a push into local e-commerce.
Mr. Vasconcellos says Peixe Urbano also plans to hire engineers and fill out its senior leadership team.
The site started in March 2010, when Brazil had no daily deal market.
Its founders, Mr. Vasconcellos, Emerson Andrade and Alex Tabor, met while at Stanford University.
Early investors in the company are Chamath Palihapitiya, Benchmark Capital and Monashees Capital, based in São Paulo. Matt Cohler of Benchmark and Eric Acher of Monashees continue to serve on Peixe Urbano’s board of directors.
The company has grown rapidly in its brief history. It says that by the end of 2010, in its first nine months, it had sold two million coupons and employed 270 people. By early this month, it had sold roughly 12 million coupons and had 1,000 employees. It has also expanded in Latin America, and is now present in more then 80 cities.
Brazil’s daily deal market initially exploded following Peixe Urbano’s founding. More than 2,000 similar sites developed, according to Guilherme Stocco, vice president of business development at the Buscapé Company, which owns intelligence-gathering units.
The market has since experienced a significant correction: there are now just 1,000 sites, and only 300 generate revenue.
While Peixe Urbano does not disclose its revenue, Mr. Stocco told DealBook that in 2011 the total daily deal market in Brazil was about $843 million. He says the top three companies — Peixe Urbano, Groupon and Click On — have been running neck and neck in the market’s brief history. The top three sites account for 40 percent of total market revenue, he said, while the top eight account for 70 percent.
Mr. Stocco said that while there had been a lot of consolidation, “the market is still growing,” adding that “the companies doing well are picking up business from those that failed.”
Benchmark’s Mr. Cohler said in an interview that he continued to see an “unbounded upside” to Peixe Urbano’s growth.
http://tourism9.com/ http://vkins.com/
2012年1月12日星期四
Bank profit reports could be lifted by business loans
(Reuters) – A recent rise in loans to businesses is spurring hope that U.S. bank earnings reports, which begin on Friday, will show the outlook for this economically critical industry is better than battered stock prices and weak investment banking volumes suggest.
Loans by large banks to commercial and industrial companies picked up sharply through the last week of the year, according to Federal Reserve data, and in recent days have started to catch the attention of investors.
“Loan growth will be one of the hottest topics throughout the earnings season,” said David Long, a bank stock analyst at Raymond James & Associates.
A lasting upturn in demand for loans to finance investment would be good for the economy and, in turn, rebuild profits from consumer lending, investment banking and asset management.
Promising signs in loan portfolios, though, are expected to be countered by another rough patch for capital markets businesses. Banks are also still trying to shake off mortgage-related losses tied to the housing bust and struggling to increase revenue in the face of new regulations that crimp the fees they can charge for debit card swipes.
JPMorgan Chase & Co, the biggest U.S. bank, is scheduled to report fourth-quarter and full-year results on Friday morning, kicking off the earnings season for financial companies. The report will break out results from JPMorgan’s large investment banking, business lending, and consumer franchises, which could foreshadow earnings reports in the next two weeks from companies concentrated in those segments.
Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc , Wells Fargo & Co , Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley report the following week after the Martin Luther King holiday.
JPMorgan is expected to report earnings per share that are 18 percent lower than in the same period a year earlier, according to analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Estimates for Bank of America, on the other hand, call for the bank to rebound from a loss at the end of 2010 amid a raft of unusual charges for bad mortgages.
Quarterly earnings for the broader financial sector represented by about 80 large companies, including insurance companies and money management firms, are expected to be down about 1.6 percent from a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Bank analysts and investors, though, will be looking beyond year-ago profit comparisons to what institutions reveal about current profit margins for lending, cost controls, regulatory burdens and any change in demand from borrowers for money.
Weak demand from consumers who borrowed too much during the housing bubble has combined with tougher requirements from governments for financial safety to push bank stocks down to record lows compared with the companies’ earnings and net worth, also known as book value.
That is why solid new business loan growth could alter the industry’s outlook. In fact, bank stocks are off to a strong start this year on hopes the worst is behind the industry. The KBW Bank Index is up 10 percent this year, while Bank of America shares, down nearly 60 percent in 2011, have surged 24 percent.
“If we do see some loan growth, that starts to reflect that the economy is starting to stabilize and we’re starting to see some growth,” said Marty Mosby, analyst with Guggenheim Partners. “As banks start to see some lending growth that turns into some job growth.”
Outstanding loans to commercial and industrial businesses by large banks grew 5.2 percent in the fourth quarter through December 28, according to Federal Reserve data. That is more than a 20 percent annualized rate and an acceleration from the 3.1 percent and 3.4 percent increases in the two previous quarters, said Long.
To be sure, much of the increase was likely not so much additional demand from companies as it was a shift in market share of existing borrowings, said Long. European banks lending to U.S. companies backed away to trim their balance sheets in the sovereign debt storm. And bond investors in the capital markets gave up some of the business when they were unwilling to refinance large loans as cheaply as large U.S. banks.
“It isn’t an indication of super-charged growth,” Mike Mayo, an analyst with CLSA and author of “Exile on Wall Street: One Analyst’s Fight to Save Big Banks from Themselves,” said in an interview.
CONTINUING CHALLENGES
More business loans are especially important because loans to consumers and loans for commercial and residential real estate have declined from their levels a year ago, according to Paul Miller, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets.
Miller cautions the earnings reports could include unpleasant surprises. For example, some banks may decide to take charges to clear their books of inflated values on assets before they start the new year. Charges like those will not be as easily offset as in recent quarters, when improving consumer creditworthiness allowed banks to reverse the large reserves they booked for bad loans.
“I don’t think we will get the improvements in credit like we’ve seen in the past,” said Miller.
Other challenges for banks in the fourth quarter, according to Miller, include reduced income from debit card swipe fees and tighter net interest margins – the spread between what banks make on loans versus what they pay on deposits.
To make up for lost revenue, banks are tightening their belts. Bank of America said it will eliminate 30,000 jobs in the consumer bank and staff functions over the next few years. It is also preparing for cutbacks in capital markets and wealth management operations, starting this spring. Wells Fargo is looking to reduce quarterly expenses by $1.5 billion by the fourth quarter of this year through a wide-ranging efficiency program, that also includes job cuts.
EUROPEAN UNCERTAINTY REMAINS
Analysts expect Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to report the worst annual earnings since the financial crisis, due to tremendous market volatility stemming from the European sovereign debt crisis. Big swings in stock and bond prices led clients to pull back sharply on trading and deal-making.
Overall investment banking revenue declined 9 percent across Wall Street compared with the third quarter, which was already weak, according to a report by JPMorgan analyst Kian Abouhossein. He expects banks to report a quarterly decline of 17 percent in deal-making revenue, with a 3 percent drop in fixed income trading revenue and a 2 percent drop in equities trading revenue.
Investors remain concerned about Wall Street’s exposure to Europe, as well as whether big banks’ trading desks can earn more than their cost of capital, given market stress and new regulations that aim to cut back on risk-taking.
Goldman Sachs is expected to report fourth-quarter earnings of $1.50 per share, less than half of what it earned in the year-ago period, according to Thomson Reuters data. Morgan Stanley is expected to report a loss of 56 cents per share due to a special charge related to a settlement with MBIA Inc. It earned 41 cents a share in the year-earlier quarter.
Analysts do not see an end to the investment banking woes any time soon, which explains why both Goldman and Morgan Stanley have outlined plans to lay off staff and are expected to cut bonuses by billions of dollars to trim costs. Fourth-quarter reports will provide more insight on the compensation the firms have set aside for the year.
“Unfortunately, we do not anticipate a robust capital markets recovery in 2012,” Brad Hintz, an analyst at the brokerage Sanford Bernstein & Co and a former Morgan Stanley treasurer, said in a recent report.
(Reporting by David Henry in New York and Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina. Additional reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra in New York; editing by Andre Grenon)
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Loans by large banks to commercial and industrial companies picked up sharply through the last week of the year, according to Federal Reserve data, and in recent days have started to catch the attention of investors.
“Loan growth will be one of the hottest topics throughout the earnings season,” said David Long, a bank stock analyst at Raymond James & Associates.
A lasting upturn in demand for loans to finance investment would be good for the economy and, in turn, rebuild profits from consumer lending, investment banking and asset management.
Promising signs in loan portfolios, though, are expected to be countered by another rough patch for capital markets businesses. Banks are also still trying to shake off mortgage-related losses tied to the housing bust and struggling to increase revenue in the face of new regulations that crimp the fees they can charge for debit card swipes.
JPMorgan Chase & Co
Bank of America Corp
JPMorgan is expected to report earnings per share that are 18 percent lower than in the same period a year earlier, according to analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Estimates for Bank of America, on the other hand, call for the bank to rebound from a loss at the end of 2010 amid a raft of unusual charges for bad mortgages.
Quarterly earnings for the broader financial sector represented by about 80 large companies, including insurance companies and money management firms, are expected to be down about 1.6 percent from a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Bank analysts and investors, though, will be looking beyond year-ago profit comparisons to what institutions reveal about current profit margins for lending, cost controls, regulatory burdens and any change in demand from borrowers for money.
Weak demand from consumers who borrowed too much during the housing bubble has combined with tougher requirements from governments for financial safety to push bank stocks down to record lows compared with the companies’ earnings and net worth, also known as book value.
That is why solid new business loan growth could alter the industry’s outlook. In fact, bank stocks are off to a strong start this year on hopes the worst is behind the industry. The KBW Bank Index is up 10 percent this year, while Bank of America shares, down nearly 60 percent in 2011, have surged 24 percent.
“If we do see some loan growth, that starts to reflect that the economy is starting to stabilize and we’re starting to see some growth,” said Marty Mosby, analyst with Guggenheim Partners. “As banks start to see some lending growth that turns into some job growth.”
Outstanding loans to commercial and industrial businesses by large banks grew 5.2 percent in the fourth quarter through December 28, according to Federal Reserve data. That is more than a 20 percent annualized rate and an acceleration from the 3.1 percent and 3.4 percent increases in the two previous quarters, said Long.
To be sure, much of the increase was likely not so much additional demand from companies as it was a shift in market share of existing borrowings, said Long. European banks lending to U.S. companies backed away to trim their balance sheets in the sovereign debt storm. And bond investors in the capital markets gave up some of the business when they were unwilling to refinance large loans as cheaply as large U.S. banks.
“It isn’t an indication of super-charged growth,” Mike Mayo, an analyst with CLSA and author of “Exile on Wall Street: One Analyst’s Fight to Save Big Banks from Themselves,” said in an interview.
CONTINUING CHALLENGES
More business loans are especially important because loans to consumers and loans for commercial and residential real estate have declined from their levels a year ago, according to Paul Miller, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets.
Miller cautions the earnings reports could include unpleasant surprises. For example, some banks may decide to take charges to clear their books of inflated values on assets before they start the new year. Charges like those will not be as easily offset as in recent quarters, when improving consumer creditworthiness allowed banks to reverse the large reserves they booked for bad loans.
“I don’t think we will get the improvements in credit like we’ve seen in the past,” said Miller.
Other challenges for banks in the fourth quarter, according to Miller, include reduced income from debit card swipe fees and tighter net interest margins – the spread between what banks make on loans versus what they pay on deposits.
To make up for lost revenue, banks are tightening their belts. Bank of America said it will eliminate 30,000 jobs in the consumer bank and staff functions over the next few years. It is also preparing for cutbacks in capital markets and wealth management operations, starting this spring. Wells Fargo is looking to reduce quarterly expenses by $1.5 billion by the fourth quarter of this year through a wide-ranging efficiency program, that also includes job cuts.
EUROPEAN UNCERTAINTY REMAINS
Analysts expect Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to report the worst annual earnings since the financial crisis, due to tremendous market volatility stemming from the European sovereign debt crisis. Big swings in stock and bond prices led clients to pull back sharply on trading and deal-making.
Overall investment banking revenue declined 9 percent across Wall Street compared with the third quarter, which was already weak, according to a report by JPMorgan analyst Kian Abouhossein. He expects banks to report a quarterly decline of 17 percent in deal-making revenue, with a 3 percent drop in fixed income trading revenue and a 2 percent drop in equities trading revenue.
Investors remain concerned about Wall Street’s exposure to Europe, as well as whether big banks’ trading desks can earn more than their cost of capital, given market stress and new regulations that aim to cut back on risk-taking.
Goldman Sachs is expected to report fourth-quarter earnings of $1.50 per share, less than half of what it earned in the year-ago period, according to Thomson Reuters data. Morgan Stanley is expected to report a loss of 56 cents per share due to a special charge related to a settlement with MBIA Inc
Analysts do not see an end to the investment banking woes any time soon, which explains why both Goldman and Morgan Stanley have outlined plans to lay off staff and are expected to cut bonuses by billions of dollars to trim costs. Fourth-quarter reports will provide more insight on the compensation the firms have set aside for the year.
“Unfortunately, we do not anticipate a robust capital markets recovery in 2012,” Brad Hintz, an analyst at the brokerage Sanford Bernstein & Co and a former Morgan Stanley treasurer, said in a recent report.
(Reporting by David Henry in New York and Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina. Additional reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra in New York; editing by Andre Grenon)
http://tourism9.com/
2012年1月2日星期一
Investment bankers eye Facebook IPO job
The Irish Times – Saturday, December 31, 2011
INVESTMENT BANKERS are warming up for the race to land what promises to be one of next year’s most lucrative initial public offering (IPO) advisory jobs – Facebook.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that bankers and venture capitalists had named long-time rivals Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as frontrunners.
“Facebook’s stock sale could be as big as $10 billion [€7.72 billion], valuing the company at $100 billion or more,” the Wall Street Journal said in a technology blog.
“Fees for IPOs of that size have averaged 2.2 per cent, according to Dealogic, which tracks new issues. That would mean a possible total pay-off of as much as $220 million, though the company could negotiate lower fees because the Facebook deal is such a trophy.”
Data compiled by Bloomberg shows that the value of internet flotations could reach $11 billion next year, which would only be second to the $18.5 billion raised at the height of a tech bubble in 1999.
Fourteen such companies are considering flotations next year. While surging sales growth may lure investors to Facebook, the biggest social-networking site, heightened stock volatility and Europe’s sovereign debt crisis could temper the pace of global IPOs after a 38 per cent decline in 2011.
Even internet companies may cut valuations for their offerings after Zynga, the largest developer of games for Facebook, and online radio company Pandora slumped following share sales this year, according to research firm Morningstar.
“Technology is still a place where you can get outperformance in terms of growth against a tepid market backdrop,” said David Erickson of Barclays. “You might see more IPOs emerge if we get resolution in Europe or stability that makes investors more comfortable with the overall market.”
IPOs raised $155.8 billion in 2011, compared with $252 billion a year earlier, and US initial offerings generated $38.8 billion, about 10 per cent less than in 2010. In Asia, IPOs this year have raised $79.2 billion, less than half the $176.5 billion last year.
While funds raised in Europe rose for the year, they sank more than 95 per cent since August from a year earlier. – (Additional reporting: Bloomberg)
INVESTMENT BANKERS are warming up for the race to land what promises to be one of next year’s most lucrative initial public offering (IPO) advisory jobs – Facebook.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that bankers and venture capitalists had named long-time rivals Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as frontrunners.
“Facebook’s stock sale could be as big as $10 billion [€7.72 billion], valuing the company at $100 billion or more,” the Wall Street Journal said in a technology blog.
“Fees for IPOs of that size have averaged 2.2 per cent, according to Dealogic, which tracks new issues. That would mean a possible total pay-off of as much as $220 million, though the company could negotiate lower fees because the Facebook deal is such a trophy.”
Data compiled by Bloomberg shows that the value of internet flotations could reach $11 billion next year, which would only be second to the $18.5 billion raised at the height of a tech bubble in 1999.
Fourteen such companies are considering flotations next year. While surging sales growth may lure investors to Facebook, the biggest social-networking site, heightened stock volatility and Europe’s sovereign debt crisis could temper the pace of global IPOs after a 38 per cent decline in 2011.
Even internet companies may cut valuations for their offerings after Zynga, the largest developer of games for Facebook, and online radio company Pandora slumped following share sales this year, according to research firm Morningstar.
“Technology is still a place where you can get outperformance in terms of growth against a tepid market backdrop,” said David Erickson of Barclays. “You might see more IPOs emerge if we get resolution in Europe or stability that makes investors more comfortable with the overall market.”
IPOs raised $155.8 billion in 2011, compared with $252 billion a year earlier, and US initial offerings generated $38.8 billion, about 10 per cent less than in 2010. In Asia, IPOs this year have raised $79.2 billion, less than half the $176.5 billion last year.
While funds raised in Europe rose for the year, they sank more than 95 per cent since August from a year earlier. – (Additional reporting: Bloomberg)
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PE fund Suffolk (Mauritius) raises stake in Patni
Mumbai, Dec 28:
Private equity fund Suffolk (Mauritius) has raised its stake in Patni Computer Services to 5.03 per cent after acquiring shares of the company worth Rs 5.04 crore through open market transactions.
Suffolk (Mauritius) has acquired a total of over 1.13 lakh shares of IT firm Patni Computer Systems, totalling Rs 5.04 crore, Patni Computer said in a filing to the BSE.
Suffolk purchased 31,068 shares of the IT firm for Rs 1.37 crore and 82,464 shares for Rs 3.67 crore, the filing added.
Prior to the acquisition, Suffolk held a 4.95 per cent stake in Patni, but now it holds a 5.03 per cent stake in the IT firm.
Yesterday, foreign fund house Morgan Stanley & Co International Plc sold nearly 21 lakh shares of IT firm Patni Computer Systems for over Rs 92 crore in the stock market.
Shares of Patni Computer were trading at Rs 444.40, up 0.08 per cent from their previous close.
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Private equity fund Suffolk (Mauritius) has raised its stake in Patni Computer Services to 5.03 per cent after acquiring shares of the company worth Rs 5.04 crore through open market transactions.
Suffolk (Mauritius) has acquired a total of over 1.13 lakh shares of IT firm Patni Computer Systems, totalling Rs 5.04 crore, Patni Computer said in a filing to the BSE.
Suffolk purchased 31,068 shares of the IT firm for Rs 1.37 crore and 82,464 shares for Rs 3.67 crore, the filing added.
Prior to the acquisition, Suffolk held a 4.95 per cent stake in Patni, but now it holds a 5.03 per cent stake in the IT firm.
Yesterday, foreign fund house Morgan Stanley & Co International Plc sold nearly 21 lakh shares of IT firm Patni Computer Systems for over Rs 92 crore in the stock market.
Shares of Patni Computer were trading at Rs 444.40, up 0.08 per cent from their previous close.
http://tourism9.com/
Credit Agricole quits commodity trade as crisis bites
(Reuters) – Credit Agricole will stop trading commodities and will also slash its financing of the multi-billion-dollar market, the most sweeping commodity cuts yet among European banks strained by the euro zone crisis.
Credit Agricole, the formerly farm-focused bank that had boosted its energy trading in recent years, warned on Wednesday of losses and write-downs as it struggles to cope with the credit crunch. The cuts come just weeks after rival Societe Generaleshut down its year-old U.S. gas and power trading desk, and leader BNP Paribas consolidated.
The deepening euro zone debt crisis has hit French banks hard as traditional sources of dollar funding have evaporated and as they face pressure to meet tougher capital requirements.
Volatile commodity prices, dimmer growth prospects and tougher regulation are also forcing some firms to question the outlook for the decade-long boom in trading raw materials.
Cargill Inc., which has voiced a bleaker economic outlook for next year than most of its peers, is cutting 125 jobs worldwide from its energy, transportation and metals operations as part of plans to reduce 2,000 or 1.4 percent of its global workforce over the next six months.
Trade sources said more companies may follow.
“What is happening with Credit Agricole is certainly a major trend across banking where the entire commodities trading business is shrinking,” said a senior commodities trader who recently left a major bank for an independent trading house.
“It is happening because of regulations, as proprietary trading is not allowed any more and because people have overspeculated in the past years and got badly burnt.”
Credit Agricole’s commodities trading employs around 100 staff globally, including traders, analysts, marketing teams and technical staff, sources close to Credit Agricole said.
A source in the bank said many employees had only learned of the closure of the commodities trading unit on Wednesday:
“It has all happened very quickly. It is a shock.”
CREDIT PRESSURE
On Wednesday, Credit Agricole Chief Executive Jean-Paul Chifflet said the bank was pulling out of commodities because it had less expertise in the field than other core areas:
“We preferred to stop it completely and devote our energy to other activities,” he said.
But Chifflet told Les Echos newspaper the bank would not sell its holding in Newedge, a commodities futures and clearing brokerage it co-owns with Societe Generale.
Last year, the head of Credit Agricole’s commodities trading division, Martin Fraenkel, told Reuters energy was a key growth area because “clients of the bank have ever more need for hedging services in these markets”. The bank had just secured a potentially potent tie-up with power trading giant ETF Trading.
But nearly two years on, European banks are under enormous pressure in credit markets and only very large banks have scope to expand. Credit Agricole may be the first of several banks to drop commodities trading, said the senior commodities trader:
“The major players – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank – are still hiring to replace people who leave to funds and trading houses. But small and medium-sized banks are just shutting everything down.”
Morgan Stanley said on Wednesday it would cut 1,600 employees in the first quarter; it did not say how many, if any, would be in its commodities division, which ranks with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as one of the three largest in the world.
A senior oil trader at a major European bank said only very large players could now survive in commodities: “They (Credit Agricole) wanted to have a commodities arm but the appetite for risk was so small it was impossible to do big deals.”
Credit Agricole, which has expanded from its agricultural origins in recent years, said on Wednesday it would cut 2,350 jobs and exit 21 of the 55 countries where it operates and shutter entire businesses including equity derivatives.
BNP Paribas, Europe’s trade finance leader in commodities, has been cutting its trade finance portfolio, drastically reducing exposure to small and medium sized oil and metals firms and reselling part of that exposure, bankers say. A spokeswoman declined to comment.
In November, traders said the bank would close its Houston energy trading office and move some of the team to New York. It has also lost a senior metals trader.
Last week, Societe Generaletold employees it would shut down its Stamford, Connecticut-based physical gas and power operation and lay off most of the 140 or so employees at the trading unit it bought less than a year earlier from RBS Sempra.
“VERY, VERY STRONG REDUCTION”
Many details of the changes only emerged on Thursday.
The bank’s commodities derivatives business, trading oil, gas, metals and softs, is based in London and Hong Kong. It also has market representatives in Tokyo, Singapore and New York.
Credit Agricole has been active in oil hedging, traders said, and does not have a reputation for taking on major risk.
“It was very flow-based, rather than proprietary,” said a London-based trader with a bank. He said the bank hedged oil positions for airlines, taking positions on over-the-counter jet fuel derivatives and gas oil on the IntercontinentalExchange.
Sources close to Credit Agricole say the bank also plans to cut dramatically its commodities trade financing, which involve commitments of tens of billions of euros, but the exact scale of the retrenchment was unclear.
“In terms of commodities financing, they plan a very, very strong reduction in their activities,” a source close to Credit Agricole said, adding the full array of short-term and longer-term letters of credit and export credit would be affected.
The bank’s Geneva-based trade finance activities have about 120 people spread around the world, according to a former head of a commodities unit at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Banking who left the company just months ago.
Credit Agricole’s commodities financing activities concern around 600 people, of which at least half are in France, and involve commitments of tens of billions of euros.
TOUGH MARKETS
Cargill is not alone among trading houses responding to a disappointing 2011 performance, Swiss-based coal traders said.
Coal has been a particularly tough market for traders this year because prices have been largely stagnant and liquidity has been lower. Without liquidity and volatility, trading profits have been hard to come by.
“We can confirm that as a result of the internal structural changes there have been some personnel changes which will affect around 125 employees in our Energy, Transportation and Metals operations around the world,” a Cargill spokesman said.
Cargill has 600 employees in its Geneva office and around 1,100 worldwide in the non-oil Energy Transportation Industrial (ETI) business group.
Cargill will keep the split in its energy business between oil and non-oil with a global non-oil division made up of coal, gas, power and carbon trading and headed by Frank Rivendal, formerly head of power and gas in the U.S. for Cargill.
“Broadly speaking, the big changes are over and very few have been fired so far but there may be a few more job cuts,” one source said.
“In 2008-2009 everybody made money because prices were so volatile but this year prices have been stagnant and for the first time in a decade, even the big trading houses are facing a downturn in earnings,” he added.
Last month Cargill former head of coal based in Geneva, Patrick Bracken, left to return to the U.S. and Peter Biston, Geneva-based head of power and gas, a junior gas trader and a power trader lost their jobs.
Cargill Ferrous International in November shut its physical steel trading desks in Hong Kong and Geneva and its top sugar trader, Jonathan Drake, left in early December.
“That (restructuring) makes sense. In the previous structure oil made a lot of money and they couldn’t bonus traders as power and gas were down. Now oil can live or die by its own performance,” said Peter Henry, senior consultant with Commodity Search Partners.
(Additional reporting By Jonathan Leff; Editing by David Gregorio)
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Credit Agricole, the formerly farm-focused bank that had boosted its energy trading in recent years, warned on Wednesday of losses and write-downs as it struggles to cope with the credit crunch. The cuts come just weeks after rival Societe Generale
The deepening euro zone debt crisis has hit French banks hard as traditional sources of dollar funding have evaporated and as they face pressure to meet tougher capital requirements.
Volatile commodity prices, dimmer growth prospects and tougher regulation are also forcing some firms to question the outlook for the decade-long boom in trading raw materials.
Cargill Inc.
Trade sources said more companies may follow.
“What is happening with Credit Agricole is certainly a major trend across banking where the entire commodities trading business is shrinking,” said a senior commodities trader who recently left a major bank for an independent trading house.
“It is happening because of regulations, as proprietary trading is not allowed any more and because people have overspeculated in the past years and got badly burnt.”
Credit Agricole’s commodities trading employs around 100 staff globally, including traders, analysts, marketing teams and technical staff, sources close to Credit Agricole said.
A source in the bank said many employees had only learned of the closure of the commodities trading unit on Wednesday:
“It has all happened very quickly. It is a shock.”
CREDIT PRESSURE
On Wednesday, Credit Agricole Chief Executive Jean-Paul Chifflet said the bank was pulling out of commodities because it had less expertise in the field than other core areas:
“We preferred to stop it completely and devote our energy to other activities,” he said.
But Chifflet told Les Echos newspaper the bank would not sell its holding in Newedge, a commodities futures and clearing brokerage it co-owns with Societe Generale
Last year, the head of Credit Agricole’s commodities trading division, Martin Fraenkel, told Reuters energy was a key growth area because “clients of the bank have ever more need for hedging services in these markets”. The bank had just secured a potentially potent tie-up with power trading giant ETF Trading.
But nearly two years on, European banks are under enormous pressure in credit markets and only very large banks have scope to expand. Credit Agricole may be the first of several banks to drop commodities trading, said the senior commodities trader:
“The major players – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank – are still hiring to replace people who leave to funds and trading houses. But small and medium-sized banks are just shutting everything down.”
Morgan Stanley said on Wednesday it would cut 1,600 employees in the first quarter; it did not say how many, if any, would be in its commodities division, which ranks with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as one of the three largest in the world.
A senior oil trader at a major European bank said only very large players could now survive in commodities: “They (Credit Agricole) wanted to have a commodities arm but the appetite for risk was so small it was impossible to do big deals.”
Credit Agricole, which has expanded from its agricultural origins in recent years, said on Wednesday it would cut 2,350 jobs and exit 21 of the 55 countries where it operates and shutter entire businesses including equity derivatives.
BNP Paribas, Europe’s trade finance leader in commodities, has been cutting its trade finance portfolio, drastically reducing exposure to small and medium sized oil and metals firms and reselling part of that exposure, bankers say. A spokeswoman declined to comment.
In November, traders said the bank would close its Houston energy trading office and move some of the team to New York. It has also lost a senior metals trader.
Last week, Societe Generale
“VERY, VERY STRONG REDUCTION”
Many details of the changes only emerged on Thursday.
The bank’s commodities derivatives business, trading oil, gas, metals and softs, is based in London and Hong Kong. It also has market representatives in Tokyo, Singapore and New York.
Credit Agricole has been active in oil hedging, traders said, and does not have a reputation for taking on major risk.
“It was very flow-based, rather than proprietary,” said a London-based trader with a bank. He said the bank hedged oil positions for airlines, taking positions on over-the-counter jet fuel derivatives and gas oil on the IntercontinentalExchange.
Sources close to Credit Agricole say the bank also plans to cut dramatically its commodities trade financing, which involve commitments of tens of billions of euros, but the exact scale of the retrenchment was unclear.
“In terms of commodities financing, they plan a very, very strong reduction in their activities,” a source close to Credit Agricole said, adding the full array of short-term and longer-term letters of credit and export credit would be affected.
The bank’s Geneva-based trade finance activities have about 120 people spread around the world, according to a former head of a commodities unit at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Banking who left the company just months ago.
Credit Agricole’s commodities financing activities concern around 600 people, of which at least half are in France, and involve commitments of tens of billions of euros.
TOUGH MARKETS
Cargill is not alone among trading houses responding to a disappointing 2011 performance, Swiss-based coal traders said.
Coal has been a particularly tough market for traders this year because prices have been largely stagnant and liquidity has been lower. Without liquidity and volatility, trading profits have been hard to come by.
“We can confirm that as a result of the internal structural changes there have been some personnel changes which will affect around 125 employees in our Energy, Transportation and Metals operations around the world,” a Cargill spokesman said.
Cargill has 600 employees in its Geneva office and around 1,100 worldwide in the non-oil Energy Transportation Industrial (ETI) business group.
Cargill will keep the split in its energy business between oil and non-oil with a global non-oil division made up of coal, gas, power and carbon trading and headed by Frank Rivendal, formerly head of power and gas in the U.S. for Cargill.
“Broadly speaking, the big changes are over and very few have been fired so far but there may be a few more job cuts,” one source said.
“In 2008-2009 everybody made money because prices were so volatile but this year prices have been stagnant and for the first time in a decade, even the big trading houses are facing a downturn in earnings,” he added.
Last month Cargill former head of coal based in Geneva, Patrick Bracken, left to return to the U.S. and Peter Biston, Geneva-based head of power and gas, a junior gas trader and a power trader lost their jobs.
Cargill Ferrous International in November shut its physical steel trading desks in Hong Kong and Geneva and its top sugar trader, Jonathan Drake, left in early December.
“That (restructuring) makes sense. In the previous structure oil made a lot of money and they couldn’t bonus traders as power and gas were down. Now oil can live or die by its own performance,” said Peter Henry, senior consultant with Commodity Search Partners.
(Additional reporting By Jonathan Leff; Editing by David Gregorio)
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