Cucinelli
MF Global report blames Corzine
Jon Corzine helped bring down MF Global with a dangerous trading strategy and inadequate risk controls, according to the court-appointed trustee to the collapsed brokerage’s bankruptcy.
Mr Corzine, the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs who ran MF Global from March 2010 to its failure in October 2011, embarked on a “risky business strategy” of betting on European government debt and ignored “glaring deficiencies” in controls, found Louis Freeh, the trustee.
Unusually for a chief executive, Mr Corzine executed some of the trades personally, “even placing trades in the middle of meetings”, Mr Freeh found.
In a report to the court, he wrote that “negligent conduct” perpetrated by the collapsed brokerage’s management contributed to the company’s 2011 failure, in which about $1bn of customers’ money went missing.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c53d6f24-9d33-11e2-a8db-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2PXV5mu5N
The big Wall Street banks are among the last Twitterless bastions of the American workplace. But even their high walls are crumbling thanks to a new Bloomberg terminal product — and perhaps a recent U.S. Securities and Exchange decision on Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.
Today,…
Wall Street Sheriff bagged NY’s corrupt politicians
The latest Sheriff of Wall Street has a real flair for the theatrical.
Preet Bharara, the crime-busting US Attorney who bagged another seven corrupt New York pols this week alone, knows the value of a good sound bite
“Greed, sometimes, is not good,” he memorably cracked after getting an insider trading indictment against Raj Rajaratnam, spinning Gordon Gekko’s memorable line from the flick “Wall Street.”
This week, he used a chart to explain the complex bribery scheme that led to the arrest of state Sen. Malcolm Smith, whose picture was in the center.
“And you have Malcolm in the middle,” he deadpanned in a reference to the classic Fox sitcom the married father of three likely watched with his kids in their Westchester home.
Bharara set the tone when he was sworn in after President Obama nominated him in 2009, telling the 220 prosecutors who work for him that they would be getting to know his children - especially at Halloween.
“They will be coming to ask you for candy,” he said. “Lots of candy.”
Not that he isn’t deadly serious about his job.
Bharara has targeted a growing number of corrupt politicians, including state Sens. Carl Kruger, Hiram Monserrate and NYC Councilman Larry Seabrook, along with Smith, Assemblyman Eric Stevenson, Councilman Dan Halloran and four others this week.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/wall_street_sheriff_who_bagged_0ZeBWWKzcWWYiYliXB8rAP
Wall Street banks don’t have many bankers on their boards
It’s a heavy responsibility being a company board member, and it’s an even heavier one being on the board of a bank. So says the independent review of Barclays released yesterday, which recommends that because of the higher risks and complex regulation around banking, a decent number of a bank’s directors ought to have worked in finance themselves. But in practice, not many directors at the biggest banks have.
After a scandal, boards are often accused of being too complacent or acting as rubber stamps for management. The Barclays review, which was commissioned after the Libor interest-rate rigging affair that landed the bank with a record fine, says a board, and especially its chairman, should create an atmosphere that welcomes differing views.
In 2010, Barclays set a goal of having 50% of its non-executive directors come from a banking or financial background. It has now exceeded that target. Quartz examined the boards of the world’s largest banks using the bios provided on their web sites, and found most of them have a few directors with a background at financial firms. Some also have government central banking or regulatory experience. But most of the directors come from outside finance. As on other company boards, many are executives of other corporations in diverse sectors, former government officials, and academics.
The chart above shows how many non-executive members of the biggest banks’ boards came from banking or finance (a broad definition that includes private equity, accounting and investments funds), or a related government background. Only senior-level experience was counted.
http://qz.com/70427/wall-street-banks-dont-have-many-bankers-on-their-boards/
Hedge funds set up to profit from huge market slides are falling out of favour, signalling that investors are increasingly confident leading central banks can avert the kind of meltdown that followed the Lehman Brothers’ collapse.
Investors are pulling out of such “tail…
(Reuters) - Teenage pop sensation Justin Bieber has been given a month to provide German authorities with the papers they need to release his pet monkey “Mally.”
To paraphrase Billy Madison: You get your ass out there and you save that fuckin’ monkey.
Hang on. Bieber had a monkey? And it was seized in Germany? Call this guy.
But yeah, claim your poor monkey, dude. Srsly.
Since the Street is in such pain, acing these questions is more important than ever. That’s why we’ve gone through our files, to find questions that stick in people’s heads.
These questions get remembered because they tend to trip people up, whether it’s because they’re hard, they’re…
A U.S. marine drinks the blood of a cobra during a jungle survival exercise with the Thai Navy as part of the “Cobra Gold 2013” joint military exercise, at a military base in Chon Buri province February 20, 2013.
About 13,000 soldiers from seven countries, Thailand, U.S., Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia are participating in the 11-day military exercise. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj
PHOTOS: U.S. Marines drink cobra blood during survival exercise
