EU Markets Chief Barnier Warns the City Casino Days Are Over
THE TELEGRAPH: The deceptively quiet Phoney War between Brussels and Anglo-Saxon finance is coming to an end. Life is about to change for hedge funds, commodity traders, and the 'prop desks' of global banks in the City of London.
Michel Barnier said the new European Single Market Authority will have sweeping powers to control derivatives. Photo: The Telegraph
"We want to know who is doing what with short-selling," said Michel Barnier, the European single market commissioner and the Frenchman in charge of the EU's new machinery of regulation.
"We need markets, and we need financial institutions that create value-added, but everyone has to be able to answer for what they are doing. People taking crazy risks linked to crazy rewards have to be brought back to their senses," he said, in a wide-ranging interview with The Daily Telegraph at the annual Ambrosetti conference on the shores of Lake Como.
Mr Barnier said the new European Single Market Authority (ESMA) endorsed in principle last week - along with EU banking and insurance watchdogs - will have sweeping powers to control derivatives.
"The EU authorities are going to look at every product. ESMA can restrict leverage, or in exceptional circumstances even ban a product altogether," he said. The Commission is introducing a text on derivatives next week as part of a new oversight machinery covering the gamut of finance and investment, including controls on private equity, hedge funds, as well as oil and currency trading.
Mr Barnier said there was no plan for a blanket ban on the short-selling of stocks or on the use of derivatives such as credit default swaps (CDS), famously exploited by funds to short Greek, Irish, Portuguese, Spanish bonds during Europe's debt crisis this year.
"It is not a question of prohibiting. Short-selling is useful, if used well, but we want to avoid abusive naked short-selling, and be able to take action in emergencies," he said. >>> Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Como | Thursday, September 09, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
UK Credit Rating Set for Downgrade Under Lib-Lab Deal, City Analysts Warn
THE GUARDIAN: Lab-Lib government the least liked option by markets and would almost guarantee a downgrade of UK debt – BNP Paribas
Britain would most likely suffer an expensive and potentially damaging downgrade to its debt rating if the Liberal Democrats form a coalition with Labour, City analysts warned today amid ongoing uncertainty about the creation of a new government.
As the Institute of Directors called on political parties to focus on the economy rather than the need for electoral reform, analysts at BNP Paribas reckoned that a "Lab-Lib government is the least liked option by markets and would almost guarantee a downgrade of the UK sovereign [debt]".
The top-notch AAA debt rating that the UK currently holds ensures that the country achieves the most competitive rates when raising money on the financial markets. If the rating is cut then the country would be forced to pay more to borrow money - although it has a long way to fall before reaching the junk status assigned to Greece, the recipient of a €110bn (£94bn) bailout package from the International Monetary Fund and eurozone countries. >>> Jill Treanor | Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Thursday, December 03, 2009
La City redoute une régulation à la "française"
LE MONDE: Michel Barnier se serait bien passé de cette empoignade. Le prochain commissaire au marché intérieur craint de voir son début de mandat empoisonné par l'opposition entre le Royaume-Uni et la France au sujet de la régulation financière. Entre Paris et Londres, le ton est monté de plusieurs crans depuis la nomination du Français par le président de la Commission européenne, José Manuel Barroso, à un poste stratégique en ces temps de crise, puisqu'il chapeaute les services financiers.
Les Britanniques s'inquiètent du sort de la City de Londres, la principale place financière européenne. Ils ont tout fait pour empêcher M. Barroso de nommer à cette fonction une personnalité soucieuse de pousser les feux de la régulation. Ils n'ont ensuite pas apprécié que Nicolas Sarkozy présente leur pays, dans un commentaire accordé au Monde, comme le "grand perdant" de la récente répartition des postes bruxellois. Et jette ensuite de l'huile sur le feu en affirmant que ce sont "les idées françaises de régulation qui triomphent en Europe".
Cette "guéguerre" complique la formation des cabinets des commissaires, à Bruxelles. Déjà flanqué, à la demande du premier ministre britannique, Gordon Brown, d'un directeur général britannique, M.Barnier refuse de recruter un conseiller proche des intérêts de la City. Ce qui déplaît à Londres, lequel a fait pression sur Catherine Ashton, la toute nouvelle haute représentante de l'Union européenne pour la politique étrangère, afin qu'elle renonce à ce st.ade à recruter un Français dans son cabinet. >>> Philippe Ricard et Marc Roche | Jeudi 03 Décembre 2009
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
We Are in Charge Now, Sarkozy Tells the City
TIMES ONLINE: Alistair Darling has delivered a blunt warning to the EU’s new French finance chief against meddling with the City of London.
As Nicolas Sarkozy gloated over impending curbs on the City, the Chancellor said that such moves would drive financial services out of Europe.
The French President’s glee at the appointment of Michel Barnier as Commissioner for the Single Market took on an edge of menace yesterday when he said that unfettered City practices must end.
“Do you know what it means for me to see for the first time in 50 years a French European commissioner in charge of the internal market, including financial services, including the City [of London]?" he said yesterday.
"I want the world to see the victory of the European model, which has nothing to do with the excesses of financial capitalism," he said. >>> Francis Elliott, Suzy Jagger, Martin Waller and David Charter | Wednesday, December 02, 2009
THE SUNDAY TIMES: Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured office block in lower Manhattan, doesn’t look like a place to stop and stare, and that’s just the way the people who work there like it. The men and women who arrive in the watery dawn sunshine, dressed in Wall Street black, clutching black briefcases and BlackBerrys, are very, very private. They walk quickly from their black Lincoln town cars to the lobby, past, well, nothing, really. There’s no name plate on the building, no sign on the front desk and the armed policeman stationed outside isn’t saying who works there. There’s a good reason for the secrecy. Number 85 Broad Street, New York, NY 10004, is where the money is. All of it.
It’s the site of the best cash-making machine that global capitalism has ever produced, and, some say, a political force more powerful than governments. The people who work behind the brass-trim glass doors make more money than some countries do. They are the rainmakers’ rainmakers, the biggest swinging dicks in the financial jungle. Their assets total $1 trillion, their annual revenues run into the tens of billions, and their profits are in the billions, which they distribute liberally among themselves. Average pay this recessionary year for the 30,000 staff is expected to be a record $700,000. Top earners will get tens of millions, several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm. When they have finished getting "filthy rich by 40", as the company saying goes, these alpha dogs don’t put their feet up. They parachute into some of the most senior political posts in the US and beyond, prompting accusations that they "rule the world". Number 85 Broad Street is the home of Goldman Sachs.
The world’s most successful investment bank likes to hide behind the tidal wave of money that it generates and sends crashing over Manhattan, the City of London and most of the world’s other financial capitals. But now the dark knights of banking are being forced, blinking, into the cold light of day. The public, politicians and the press blame bankers’ reckless trading for the credit crunch and, as the most successful bank still standing, Goldman is their prime target. Here, politicians and commentators compete to denounce Goldman in ever more robust terms — "robber barons", "economic vandals", "vulture capitalists". Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, contrasts the bank’s recent record results — profits of $3.2 billion in the last quarter alone — and its planned bumper bonus payments with what has happened to ordinary people’s jobs and incomes in 2009.
It’s even worse in the US. There, Rolling Stone magazine ran a story that described Goldman as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money". In his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore drives up to 85 Broad Street in an armoured Brinks money van, leaps out carrying a sack with a giant dollar sign on it, looks up at the building and yells: "We’re here to get the money back for the American people!"
Goldman’s reputation is suddenly as toxic as the credit default swaps and other inexplicably exotic financial instruments it used to buy with glee. That’s bad for the one thing it values more than anything else: business. Being the prime target for popular and political outrage could put Goldman first in line for draconian new regulation. So it has, reluctantly, decided that the time has come to speak out, to fight its corner. That’s how, on one of those bright autumnal New York mornings when anything seems possible — even an invitation to break bread with the masters of the universe — I find myself walking past the security guard who held up Michael Moore and into the building with no name. I'm doing 'God's work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs >>> John Arlidge | Sunday, November 08, 2009
Michael Moore – Capitalism: A Love Story – Trailer
BBC: Two gay clergymen have had their partnership blessed in a church.
The Reverend Martin Dudley gave the rites at St Bartholomew the Great Church in the City of London for the Reverend Peter Cowell and the Reverend Dr David Lord.
He told the BBC that there is a 'very large number' of gay people and gay clergy in the Church of England. [Source: Vicar: 'No Regrets' on Gay Vows] | June 15, 2008
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: An Anglican church has held a homosexual "wedding" for the first time in a move that will deepen the rift between liberals and traditionalists, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.
Two male priests exchanged vows and rings in a ceremony that was conducted using one of the church's most traditional wedding rites – a decision seen as blasphemous by conservatives.
The ceremony broke Church of England guidelines and was carried out last month in defiance of the Bishop of London, in whose diocese it took place. News of the "wedding" emerged days before a crucial summit of the Anglican Church's conservative bishops and archbishops, who are threatening to split the worldwide Church over the issue of homosexual clergy.
Although some liberal clergy have carried out "blessing ceremonies" for homosexual couples in the past, this is the first time a vicar has performed a "wedding ceremony", using a traditional marriage liturgy, with readings, hymns and a Eucharist.
THE TELEGRAPH: Canon Michael Ainsworth, a priest and colleague of mine just a couple of miles from my rectory in the City of London, was recently attacked in his churchyard by three youths. Michael suffered two black eyes, cuts and bruises. He was taken into hospital and his wife Janina, also a priest, said: "It's obvious that the attack on Michael does contain a religious element." It certainly is obvious: his attackers shouted, "You f------ priest!" as they beat him up.
This is the second time that Michael's church has been attacked. After the Good Friday service last year, louts threw bricks through the windows. A parishioner, Susan Crocker, said: "It's not out of the blue - it's a recurrent problem."
Well, it's clear that the yobs who attacked Michael were Muslims. To their credit, the local Muslim leaders have tacitly admitted this by publicly deploring the crime. So why were the police, and much of the media, so vague as to call these thugs "Asians"? If I smashed the windows of a Brick Lane curry house and gave the manager two black eyes, you can be sure the police and the papers wouldn't describe me as a "European".
Of course the authorities excuse their evasiveness by saying it's to preserve good racial and community relationships, forgetting that it was Michael's attackers who first damaged these relationships and that appeasement always encourages worse violence in the long run.
This attack was one small example of the persecution being endured by the Church worldwide. On four continents Islamic militants are attacking and sometimes murdering Christians and burning down churches. Why do the archbishops and bishops not lead mass Christian demonstrations against these atrocities? Instead, we have to observe the filigree intelligence of the Archbishop of Canterbury as it operates on the precise relation between English law and some "unavoidable" accommodation with sharia. He, with his whole hierarchy, strains at gnats and swallows camels.
Meanwhile, a Nigerian archbishop said that Dr Williams's words hardly made things better for Christians persecuted under sharia in his country. "Their lives," he said, "are at the very least unbearable." If Dr Williams is so intelligent, shouldn't he have known beforehand that his remarks would only give encouragement to the fanatics? If I tried to walk down the main street in Riyadh wearing my clerical collar, the religious police would throw me into jail. In Britain we allow Muslims to build huge mosques in prominent places such as Regent's Park. What does this say about the relationship between Christianity and Islam worldwide? Without Christianity, our society is doomed >>> By Peter Mullen | 21/03/2008
THE SUNDAY EXPRESS: JEMIMA Khan will reunite with her former husband tomorrow – for a noisy protest outside 10 Downing Street.
Imran Khan, the Pakistan cricket hero turned politician, is expected to join his ex-wife’s demonstration in a bid to disrupt President Pervez Musharraf’s meeting with the Prime Minister.
In an exclusive interview, Ms Khan, 33, said: “I will be protesting against Gordon Brown’s continued support for Pakistan’s dictator. I will be joined by politicians, lawyers, doctors, human rights activists, journalists and ordinary Pakistanis.
“We want to know why our Prime Minister is hosting a constitutionally illegal leader when many hundreds of political activists, lawyers and judges in Pakistan remain in prison or under house arrest and when the media there is still restricted.” Khans Unite to Stage Demo >>> By Camilla Tominey
Is the Party Over for the City of London? Probably Only for the Unlucky Ones
THE TELEGRAPH: Peter Taylor investigates a new report that predicts the credit crisis will see 6,500 financial jobs axed and the total bonus pool cut by 15pc
The City should brace itself for more than 6,000 job cuts and a significant fall in bonuses as the credit crisis weighs down on the financial services industry, according to a leading research group.
City firms will cull 2,000 professional positions by Christmas with employment to fall by 6,500 into 2008, the Centre for Economics and Business Research says in a report released today.
CEBR economist Sarah Bloomfield said one job would be cut for about every two that had been added so far this year.
But the redundancies will have only a small impact on what is otherwise a sector in robust health, with a record 349,100 jobs registered in the City this month.
