Friday, July 20, 2007

Catching up on some interesting news/posts

Time to clean up my "desktop" a bit...so here are some of the interesting stories that have accumulated there:


FT.com / Lex - Investment banks and private banking: "But surely investment banking and private banking are a natural fit? In the world’s fastest growing markets, the development of capital markets and the increase in personal wealth are interlinked. Arranging an initial public offering then managing the proceeds for the seller has obvious synergies: UBS estimates that between 8 and 9 per cent of new referrals to its private bank come from its investment bankers....Institutional asset management is, on the face of it, harder to justify. For one thing, tight regulatory restrictions to avoid conflicts of interest prevent banks from exploiting potential synergies."

DealBooks suggests Sears may be ready to buy Safeway. Personally I do not see many synergies, but who knows? DealBook also writes that Google is getting into wireless to the tune of a possible $4.6 billion deal.

Not all IPOs go up. Not only was Orbitz priced below its planned price range, it then fell further in the secondary market.

In the Washington Post Jim Angel (Georgetown Finance Professor) disagrees with, but can not persuade the author, as to what a reader should do with an "extra" $21,000. Jim, FWIW I agree with you! lol...

Fed Governor Kevin Warsh gave an interesting speech last month (yeah sorry I just got around to reading it this week) on Financial Intermediation and Complete Markets. It is best introduced by him with the following visual bite: "...I will discuss how liquidity and financial innovation are making markets more complete--or more precisely, less incomplete--than in earlier periods."

In an article that will assuredly be used in many finance classes, MSNBC compares and contrasts the Dow and S&P 500.


Time to run! Have a great weekend! :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That Google deal is insane. I think sooner or later, Google is pretty much going to own everything online :) haha