deleveraging

The term deleveraging is one bandied about a lot in the press recently. But, what does it actually mean? De-leveraging is the process by which financial institutions and investors reduce the relative size of their assets to equity ratio.…

This is a story I caught over at Michael Panzner's site this morning. Apparently Paramax, a hedge fund, entered into a swap arrangement with UBS based on the value of a subprime CDO back in February 2007. Under the terms of the swap, the…

The Times reports today that Bradford and Bingley was rescued from the verge of collapse by private equity investors. This follows their report at the weekend on the dismissal of the Chief Executive and the profit warning they have issued.…

The President of the Boston Fed, Eric Rosengren, has in effect said that small and regional banks are at risk in the next wave of writedowns for U.S. financial institutions. He sites construction loan exposure in particular as a place to…

Along with the residential housing bust in Ireland, a commercial real estate (CRE) bust is definitely on the table. According to the newspaper the Irish Independent up to 10 billion euros of writedowns are possible for the Irish property…

This in from the Times today: Bradford & Bingley is in big trouble. They are trying to do a rights issue and issue a profit warning at the same time. Can anyone tell me how one gets shareholders to pony up another 88p to buy a stock…

The bloggers over at Calculated Risk have reported on a story making the rounds in the Internet. This story involves S&P's downgrade of Alt-A Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBSs). The crux of the matter is that S&P…

I am on record for expecting a serious downturn after the Tech Bubble crashed in 2001. We muddled through for a few years, but ultimately most of the damage was done and gone by 2004. The Tech Bubble was a bubble of asset prices that had…

The Lex column in Yesterday's FT highlights what many market players are thinking about the company's £4 billion ($8 billion) rights issue: the economic outlook in the UK is worse than feared."The main potential explanation for the apparent…

RBS, the second largest British bank behind HSBC, has finally come clean on the credit crisis. The price? An enormous $24 billion in new capital needed. This is a huge story because this does not even begin to discount the credit problems…