Financial News

[candlelight1228]

In case you are wondering:

WaMu ratings downgraded to "junk" [FT]

Thain/Montag (of Merrill Lynch) may stand to net $47 million if they leave after BofA buys them out. WTF!? That really upsets me. If your company fails because you made bad decisions the last thing you should get is a multimillion dollar payout! [Bloomberg]

Analysis on the bank

Comments

[miskatonic01]

Yeah I have been writing about this stuff for the last few years. ;)

[candlelight1228]

I saw it coming when I was in the industry. I guess actually watching it especially when you have people asking you about America just makes it that much harder to watch.

[the_axel]

To be fair on the Merrill Lynch execs, they were hired in December 07 and August 08 respectively to fix up the mess the company was already in.

The CEO's primary achievement is to have found someone willing to buy the company and preventing it from going bankrupt - which given what happened to Lehmann's could well have been in.

[candlelight1228]

Ah. That's fair then.

[hex61]

Corrections are not delicate snowflake times.

This was a long time coming, and may actually settle out ok. It's not like it was unexpected or surprising. However there is money to be made by over exaggerating the harm - and thus getting tax payer money poured into the hole created by "enterprising" investment houses and banks.

[candlelight1228]

Yep, I saw it coming when I was working in finance. Still I have a lot of people here asking me about it and it makes it a bit harder to deal with. Even when you know it's just a correction.