The EU should be stronger and more united. Great Britain should belong to the Union.
Die EU sollte stärker und geeinter sein. Großbritannien sollte der Union angehören.
L'UE devrait être plus forte et plus unie. La Grande-Bretagne devrait appartenir à l'Union.
Showing posts with label investment banking sector. Show all posts
Showing posts with label investment banking sector. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
HSBC Doubles Salaries Of Investment Bankers
SKY NEWS: Banking giant HSBC is doubling the basic pay of hundreds of its senior investment bankers, Sky News can reveal.
Sky's City editor Mark Kleinman reports that the bank began informing staff in London, Hong Kong and New York about the pay rises last week.
A source close to the bank said some senior managers outside the global banking and markets (GBM) division were also being handed the pay increases.
HSBC's move comes ahead of the annual bank bonus round in the New Year.
"As UK politicians intensify warnings about the payment of mega-bonuses, HSBC may legitimately be able to point to a sharply reduced bonus pot by virtue of the fact that it will have only recently awarded large salary increases," noted Kleinman. Read on and comment >>> Hazel Baker, Sky News Online | Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Bankers 'Caused Credit Crisis for Kicks'
THE TELEGRAPH: Forget the thorny problems of risk, regulation and even reward: bankers blew up the financial system for the thrill of it, according to one British academic.
A New York trader holding his head in his hands in 2008, as the Dow Jones dropped below 9,000 for the first time in five years Photo: The Telegraph
With a theory that will alarm Business Secretary Vince Cable, Dr Paul Crosthwaite of Cardiff University has argued that bankers and other investors took on excessive risks not just to make money but for the "desire" and "exhilaration" of destruction.
"For its participants and speculators alike, the crash is not simply an object of fear or anxiety, or even of mere fascination, but also of an inchoate but urgent desire," Dr Crosthwaite wrote in an article published in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. Continue reading and comment >>> Louise Armitstead, Chief Business Correspondent | Saturday, October 23, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: One of the biggest bonuses seen this year for any London-based banker was revealed today as HSBC announced it had given Stuart Gulliver, its head of investment banking, a £9.8 million package.
Mr Gulliver was awarded a £9 million bonus on top of his £800,000 base pay for his "exceptional performance" in trebling the profits of his division to $10.5 billion, HSBC said.
The payment came as Michael Geoghegan, HSBC chief executive, confirmed that he will give his £4 million bonus to charity.
HSBC disappointed investors after full-year profits fell by 24 per cent to $7.1 billion (£4.7 billion) following a big write down of the value of its own bonds. Its shares lost more than 5 per cent, down 37.1p, to 682.46p. >>> Patrick Hosking and Catherine Boyle | Monday, March 01, 2010
Monday, February 01, 2010
Why Don’t They Jail the SOBs and Wipe the Smile Off Their Faces?
Lloyd C. Blankfein was paid $67.9 million in 2007. His bank’s profits in 2009 were higher than that year. Photograph: Times Online
TIMES ONLINE: Goldman Sachs, the world’s richest investment bank, could be about to pay its chief executive a bumper bonus of up to $100 million in defiance of moves by President Obama to take action against such payouts.
Bankers in Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) told The Times yesterday they understood that Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman bankers outside Britain were set to receive some of the bank’s biggest-ever payouts. “This is Lloyd thumbing his nose at Obama,” said a banker at one of Goldman’s rivals.
Goldman Sachs is becoming the focus of an increasingly acrimonious political and financial showdown over the payment of multimillion-pound bonuses.Last week the US President described bonuses paid out by some banks as “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful”.
“The American people understand that we have a big hole to dig ourselves out of, but they do not like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole, even as they are being asked to fill it up,” he said last week. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs 'Expecting $100 Million Bonus' >>> Helen Power in Davos | Monday, February 01, 2010
Sunday, November 08, 2009
The Man We Love to Hate: Mr Goldman Sachs
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
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
No Whiff of PC in Japanese Investment Banks!
MAIL ONLINE: Two women City high-flyers who claim they were hounded out of their jobs by sexist Japanese bosses are both suing a leading investment bank for £1.5 million.
Maureen Murphy, 30, alleges that a woman trader at Nomura bank had to endure her breasts being referred to as 'honkers' during a meeting.
She says that a male colleague claimed that women 'belong at home cleaning the floors'.
And another allegedly said that the key to cheating on wives was 'not getting caught'.
Miss Murphy, a senior analyst earning £55,000 a year, and Anna Francis, 37, a director on £250,000 including bonus, had worked in Asian equities sales at Lehman Brothers in Canary Wharf before the bank collapsed in September last year.
The two women moved to Nomura as part of a buyout by the Japanese bank and expected equally prominent roles.
But they claim sexist Japanese bosses withheld work and fired them because they were female and non-Japanese.
A Year After the Crunch, It's Boom Time Again for Bankers
A year after the global economy was brought close to collapse by reckless lending, investment banks are preparing to announce huge profits. Photo: Times Online
TIMES ONLINE: Investment bankers are about to enjoy a record bonus season as confidence surges in the financial markets.
Just 12 months after the global economy was brought close to collapse by reckless lending — forcing banks to turn to taxpayers for help — stock markets in London and New York are enjoying one of the strongest bull runs in decades and investment banks are preparing to announce huge profits.
In Britain, job losses slowed in the three months to August. Unemployment rose by 88,000 to 2.47 million, the lowest rise since July last year, and youth unemployment fell slightly. China reported strong trade figures and oil hit a high for the year.
Goldman Sachs, which employs 5,500 people in London, is expected to report a sharp rise in third-quarter profits today. Analysts estimate that, barring a major setback, the average London worker at Goldman will receive about $748,000 (£467,000) in salary and bonuses — 13 per cent higher than 2007 and more than double the 2008 average. >>> Patrick Hosking and Christine Seib | Thursday, October 15, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: Andrea Orcel, a London-based banking executive who worked for Merrill Lynch, is under investigation after receiving $36 million (£25.5m) in pay and bonuses last year.
Andrea Orcel, one of seven senior executives from investment bankers Merrill Lynch, is now under investigation. He received $36 million in pay and bonuses last year alone
Mr Orcel is one of seven senior executives from investment bankers Merrill Lynch subpoenaed by the New York Attorney General over bonuses.
Andrew Cuomo is investigating $3.6 bn (£2.5 bn) in bonuses paid by Merrill shortly before it was bought out by Bank of America (BoA) last September.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr Orcel, 45, the company's top investment banker, and nine other colleagues got a total of $209m (£148m) in cash and stocks in 2008 at a time when Merrill's net loss rose to $27.6 bn (£19.5bn) and it had to be bailed out by the American taxpayer.
Mr Orcel has worked on some of the world's biggest investment-banking deals in recent years, including the highly damaging Royal Bank of Scotland takeover of the Dutch bank ABN Amro in 2007, a deal for which he was paid a $12m (£8.5m) bonus.
