Weekend Headlines
Bloomberg:
- Germany to Confront United Euro Bloc as Leaders Head to Summit. Germany will confront an increasingly united bloc of euro-area nations demanding more ambitious policies to save the currency union this week, as European leaders prepare for a summit setting the course for the currency’s preservation or ultimate demise. As concern mounts over their banking systems and finances, Spanish and Italian leaders have added their voices to those calling for more decisive action, a counterpoint to Germany’s more incremental approach to solving the 2 1/2-year-old crisis. European Union leaders will attend pre-summit meetings as they work to to narrow differences before the June 28-29 gathering in Brussels. “We are too close to the edge of the cliff for comfort, and the time to make big changes is awfully short,” Erik Nielsen, chief economist at UniCredit SpA (UCG) in London, wrote in a note to clients yesterday. Chancellor Angela Merkel last week resisted attempts by the leaders of France, Italy and Spain to persuade Germany to accept faster action to ease sovereign-debt worries in the financial markets, delineating divisions on greater euro-area integration. The friction between Germany and the rest of Europe was illustrated on June 22 by the Bundesbank’s opposition to European Central Bank plans to help ailing banks.
- Germans Show Lowest Support for Keeping Euro in Four-Nation Poll. Germans showed the lowest support for the euro among the four largest nations using the currency, according to a poll published in four European newspapers today. The poll shows 39 percent of Germans favor leaving the euro, versus 28 percent of Italians, 26 percent of French and 24 percent of Spaniards, according to the survey, conducted by Ifop-Fiducial and published in Madrid-based ABC, Germany’s Bild, Italy’s Corriere della Sera and Le Journal du Dimanche. In all four countries, majorities said that loans to Greece will never be paid back, even as most said that not saving Greece would increase the euro region’s difficulties “dangerously,” ABC said. In France and Germany, most of those polled said Greece should leave the euro if it can’t pay back its loans, while in Italy and Spain about half shared that view. The surveys were carried out from June 18 to June 21 and questioned 976 people in Spain, 1001 in France, 1003 in Germany and 967 in Italy, ABC said.
- Merkel Woos German States to Back Fiscal Pact, Spiegel Says. Chancellor Angela Merkel is offering federal aid to Germany’s states in a bid to win their parliamentary support for the European Union’s fiscal pact, Der Spiegel reported, without saying how it got the information. Merkel proposed this month that the federal government pick up all of any fine that’s due if Germany’s total public deficit exceeds limits set in the pact, the magazine said today. The federal government normally pays just 65 percent of such fines with the rest falling to the states. Merkel lacks a majority in the upper house of parliament, or Bundesrat, which groups delegates of Germany’s 16 states. Two-thirds majorities in both houses are needed for Germany to ratify the fiscal pact.
- VW Finance Arm Hedges Against Euro Breakup, Automobilwoche Says. Volkswagen AG (VOW)’s finance arm is making risk provisions for the possible exit of some euro-area countries from the currency union, Automobilwoche quoted Frank Witter, the unit’s head, as saying in an interview. Braunschweig, Germany-based VW Financial Services AG is running possible scenarios and aims to protect itself against major turmoil in the euro area, Witter, the unit’s chief executive officer, was quoted as saying in comments on the magazine’s website. While the euro wouldn’t necessarily collapse if Greece left the currency union, the contagion risks can’t be forecast reliably, Witter was quoted as saying.
- HP Plans 8,000 Job Cuts in Europe by the End of 2014, WiWo Says. Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) plans to cut 8,000 jobs in Europe, including as many as 1,000 German positions, as part of a restructuring it announced in May, WirtschaftsWoche said, citing an unnamed worker representative. Hewlett-Packard confirmed the European cuts, saying that it told executives two weeks ago the restructuring would affect workforces in the region, Africa and the Middle East, WirtschaftsWoche said. The company declined to comment on losses in Germany, the magazine said.
- Soros on the EU Summit, a Greek Exit, and Merkel. (video)
- U.S. Banks Aren’t Nearly Ready for Coming European Crisis. The euro area faces a major economic crisis, most likely a series of rolling, country-specific problems involving some combination of failing banks and sovereigns that can’t pay their debts in full. This will culminate in systemwide stress, emergency liquidity loans from the European Central Bank and politicians from all the countries involved increasingly at one another’s throats.
- Central Banks Face Power Limit as Debt Persists, BIS Says. Central banks in developed nations are confronting the limits of their ability to aid economic recovery as government efforts to strengthen their finances fall short, the Bank for International Settlements said. “Central banks are being cornered into prolonging monetary stimulus as governments drag their feet and adjustment is delayed,” the Basel, Switzerland-based BIS said in its annual report, published yesterday. “Both conventionally and unconventionally accommodative monetary policies are palliatives and have their limits.” While central banks’ actions were key to limiting damage from the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., interest rates are now “as low as they can go” and debt purchases have swollen central bank balance sheets, the BIS said. “In the middle of all this we find the overburdened central banks, pushed to use what power they have to contain the damage,” Stephen Cecchetti, BIS economic adviser, said on a conference call. “There are very clear limits to what central banks can do. It’s critical for the health of the global economy to break the vicious cycles and reduce the pressure on central banks.”
- BRICs Biggest Currency Depreciation Since 1998 to Worsen. The largest emerging markets, whose economies grew more than four-fold in the past decade, are making losers out of everyone from central bankers to Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) as their currencies post the biggest declines since at least 1998. For the first time in 13 years, the real, ruble and rupee are weakening the most among developing-nation currencies, while the yuan has depreciated more than in any other period since its 1994 devaluation. P&G, the world’s largest consumer-goods maker, cut its profit (PG) forecast for the second time in two months last week in part because of currency losses. Brazil’s Fibria Celulose SA (FIBR3), the biggest pulp producer, asked banks to loosen restrictions on dollar loans after the real hit a three-year low. Investors are fleeing the four biggest emerging markets, known as the BRICs, after Brazil’s consumer default rate rose to the highest level since 2009, prices for Russian oil exports fell to an 18-month low, India’s budget deficit widened and Chinese home prices slumped. Investors are bracing for more losses as economic growth slows. “I am quite bearish,” Stephen Jen, a managing partner at hedge fund SLJ Macro Partners LLP and a former economist at the International Monetary Fund, said in a phone interview from London. “When the global economy and capital flow slow down, it’s going to expose a lot of problems in these countries and make people stop and ask questions. A run on the currency could be particularly ugly.”
- Publicis Hit by Stagnant China Budgets as Europe Crisis Spreads. Publicis Groupe SA (PUB) Chief Executive Officer Maurice Levy said advertisers in China, a market that has helped France’s biggest marketing company to make up for slower growth in Europe, aren’t increasing their budgets from last year. Publicis has made more than a dozen acquisitions this year in countries such as China, India and the Middle East as high unemployment and austerity programs by European governments crimp spending by consumers and companies at home. The economic slowdown in China, where Publicis’s first-quarter sales excluding purchases grew by 15.3 percent, is now one of his top concerns as the European crisis is spreading to the industry’s more stalwart growth regions, Levy said. “What we have seen in the market are some profit warnings,” the CEO said in an interview last week at the Cannes advertising conference when asked about his clients’ marketing spending. “When you have clients facing some difficulties, this is a little bit worrisome.”
- India Prepares to Counter Rupee’s Slide. India plans to unveil measures today to support the rupee as its slump to a record low against the dollar threatens to intensify price pressures and boost the cost to companies of repaying foreign debt. The government and central bank will make the announcement, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters in Kolkata on June 24. The ruling Congress party’s nominee for president, Mukherjee told the Press Trust of India he will resign from his current post tomorrow. A group of federal and state legislators elects the next president July 19.
- Bulls Proven Wrong as Prices Slump Into Bear Market: Commodities. Speculators increased bets on a rally in commodities for a second consecutive week, just as prices tumbled into a bear market after the Federal Reserve refrained from expanding monetary stimulus. Hedge funds and other money managers raised net-long positions across 18 U.S. futures and options by 7 percent to 628,560 contracts in the week ended June 19, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. That’s the highest in four weeks and the first consecutive gain since the end of February. Commodities slumped into a bear market June 21, a day after the Fed extended its Operation Twist program while refraining from a third round of debt buying known as quantitative easing. Reports last week showed that Americans filed for more jobless claims than forecast, sales of previously owned U.S. homes fell in May and manufacturing in the Philadelphia region contracted this month at the fastest pace in almost a year. “People were thinking that we’d see the next stimulative event, and they started to front-run the trade, and that got reversed quickly,” said Jeffrey Sherman, who helps manage $37 billion of assets for DoubleLine Capital in Los Angeles. “We’re in for a volatile time in commodities as people try to ascertain what’s going to drive growth.”
- UN Reaps Sustainability Pledges Worth $513 Billion in Rio. The United Nations obtained pledges worth $513 billion from governments and companies for projects aimed at reducing the strain on the planet’s resources, the biggest accomplishment at a meeting that world leaders and environmentalists assailed for not setting strong enough goals. The 692 individual commitments from governments are for projects that cut fossil fuel use, boost renewable energy, conserve water and alleviate poverty, Sha Zukang, secretary- general of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, said yesterday in Rio de Janeiro.
- Issa Says ‘Clearly a Cover-Up’ on Fast and Furious Operation. U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said the Justice Department’s refusal to turn over documents related to a failed gun-smuggling operation was “clearly a cover-up” by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration. “It was deny, delay and recuse,” Issa, a California Republican, said on ABC’s “This Week” of his panel’s clash with the administration. “Lying to Congress is a crime,” he said. “We have every right to see documents that say, did you know, when did you know, what did you know, including even the president.”
- Coal-Plant Plunge Threatens Billions in Pollution Spend. The coal-fired power industry is facing the biggest plunge in asset values in a decade, putting at risk billions in pollution-control spending by Exelon Corp. (EXC), American Electric Power Co. (AEP) and other U.S. utilities. An indication of how much new emissions rules and cheaper natural gas have hammered the value of coal-burning generation will come when Exelon announces the results of the first big sale of U.S. coal-fired power plants in four years. Exelon, the largest U.S. power company, may have to take a 40 percent discount for three Maryland plants it’s seeking to sell by the end of August. Bidders including NRG Energy Inc. (NRG) have offered $600 million to $700 million for the units, which have a fair value of $1 billion, said Travis Miller, Chicago- based director of utilities research for Morningstar Inc.
- Hong Kong Puts at Highest Since 2007 on China Concern: Options. China's longest manufacturing slump since the global financial crisis and the broadest deterioration in housing on record are driving the cost of protecting Hong Kong shares from losses to a five-year high. Puts priced 10% below the Hang Seng Index cost 1.41 times more than calls betting on a 10% rally, according to data on three-month options compiled by Bloomberg. The price relationship known as skew touched 1.5 on May 30, its highest level since March 2007, the data show.
Wall Street Journal:
- Islamist Wins Egyptian Vote. Egyptian election officials declared the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi the country's first freely elected president on Sunday, propelling an Islamist to power and marking another milestone in the Arab world's tumultuous democratic transition. It sets up what is likely to be an uneasy ruling alliance between two longtime rivals, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military, which has been the country's backbone of power and has ruled Egypt since former President Hosni Mubarak stepped down last year.
- A Spanish Leader Emerges as a Crusader for Austerity. Thrown a lifeline to shore up its banks, Spain must now show it can fix its public finances—or face an even bigger bailout. In the trenches of that struggle is Maria Dolores de Cospedal, an up-and-comer in Spain's ruling party who inherited the deepest deficit of the country's 17 regional governments when she became president of Castilla-La Mancha a year ago.
- Bunds Lose Some Standing As Haven. Yields Rise on One of the Few Remaining Havens as Big-Name Investors Become Sellers. Investors are breaking free of their bunds. After flocking to the safety of German government debt since the onset of the European debt crisis, some of the biggest names in the bond market have started cutting back. Among their concerns: whether Germany can continue to provide shelter should the European crisis deepen. A change in sentiment would signal the loss of one of the few remaining havens for investors. Central banks in Switzerland and Japan are trying to deter investors from plowing money into their countries to keep the value of their currencies from escalating. And while some money is finding its way to Denmark and other northern European countries, those markets aren't big enough to provide true havens. In many cases, investors would likely send their money into U.S. Treasurys.
- J.P. Morgan(JPM) Unit Shifts Operations. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. will improve risk management of the unit that racked up more than $2 billion of trading losses, while avoiding big bets on derivative and private-equity investments. But the unit intends to stick with a strategy permitting a wide variety of other, potentially risky investments, according to people close to the bank.
- Law Grads Face Brutal Job Market. Members of the law-school class of 2011 had little better than a 50-50 shot of landing a job as a lawyer within nine months of receiving a degree, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of new data that provides the most detailed picture yet of the grim market for law jobs. Under pressure from disillusioned graduates and some professors, the American Bar Association for the first time released a tally of the previous year's graduates who have secured full-time, permanent jobs as lawyers.
- Fund Chiefs Grow Gloomier. Euro-Zone Crisis, Increased Regulation Darken Mood of Industry CEOs, Survey Finds. Chief executives of fund-management companies are far more pessimistic than last year, weighed down by the euro-zone debt crisis and increasing regulation, according to a the annual CEO Snapshot Survey by Financial News, a sister publication of The Wall Street Journal.
Marketwatch.com:
- China steel sector slows, profits down: report. Growth of China's crude-steel output slowed in the first five months as demand dropped amid a cooling domestic economy, according to data from the country's top economic planner. Crude-steel output increased by 2.2% year-on-year to 296.26 million tonnes during the January-May period, down from 8.5% growth during the same period last year, data with the National Development and Research Commission showed. In May, crude-steel output rose 2.5% from a year earlier, 5.3 percentage points lower than last year. Aside from output, the sector's profits also slipped. Steel producers had profit drop 49.5% from a year earlier to 39.5 billion yuan (6.27 billion U.S. dollars) in the first four months.
- China retailer C.P. Lotus dives on profit warning. Shares of mainland China hypermarket chain C.P. Lotus Corp. dropped 3.8% in Monday morning trade in Hong Kong after the company's board announced a record loss for the January-June half, citing slowing sales, rising wage costs and costs associated with the opening of new stores.
Zero Hedge:
CNBC:
- Some in US See Shades of 2008 in Euro Crisis. While growth has been slowing in China and the United States and companies warn about the effect on earnings, there is a mounting sense among the financial community that politicians and markets are operating on two completely different timelines.
- Bank Chiefs Enjoy Double-Digit Pay Rises. Top U.S. and European bankers, including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit, have enjoyed double-digit annual pay rises averaging almost 12 percent, despite widespread falls in profits and share prices, Financial Times research shows.
Wall Street All-Stars:
NY Times:- Chinese Data Mask Depth of Slowdown, Executives Say. As the Chinese economy continues to sputter, prominent corporate executives in China and Western economists say there is evidence that local and provincial officials are falsifying economic statistics to disguise the true depth of the troubles. Record-setting mountains of excess coal have accumulated at the country’s biggest storage areas because power plants are burning less coal in the face of tumbling electricity demand. But local and provincial government officials have forced plant managers not to report to Beijing the full extent of the slowdown, power sector executives said. Electricity production and consumption have been considered a telltale sign of a wide variety of economic activity. They are widely viewed by foreign investors and even some Chinese officials as the gold standard for measuring what is really happening in the country’s economy, because the gathering and reporting of data in China is not considered as reliable as it is in many countries. Indeed, officials in some cities and provinces are also overstating economic output, corporate revenue, corporate profits and tax receipts, the corporate executives and economists said. The officials do so by urging businesses to keep separate sets of books, showing improving business results and tax payments that do not exist. The executives and economists roughly estimated that the effect of the inaccurate statistics was to falsely inflate a variety of economic indicators by 1 or 2 percentage points. That may be enough to make very bad economic news look merely bad. The executives and economists requested anonymity for fear of jeopardizing their relationship with the Chinese authorities, on whom they depend for data and business deals.
- Hedge Fund Manager to Pay $405 Million in Madoff Settlement. Clients of J. Ezra Merkin, a prominent Wall Street hedge fund manager who invested his clients’ money in Bernard L. Madoff’s epic Ponzi scheme, will recover more than $400 million under a civil settlement negotiated by the New York State attorney general’s office.
Forbes:
- Spain: Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire. Do they think we’re stupid? In theory all is well. We received the jubilant news from Roland Berger Strategy Consultants barely 48 hours ago. The Spanish banks need a “maximum” of only $78 billion and their funding crisis will be over. Methinks this estimate puny by $200 billion or so.
- Harder Times Coming For Brazil, Says Bank For International Settlements. Brazil is not going to escape the onrushing collapse of the developed economies, warns the Central Bank of Central Banks, known as the Bank for International Settlements. In its 214 page annual report released over the weekend, BIS said that Brazil and India, in particular, would suffer an accentuated decline in economic growth due to the problems in the Western powers, most notably in Europe.
The Detroit News:
- GM(GM) Salaried Retirees Still Protesting Pension Shift. General Motors executives held an hour-long conference call Friday with salaried retirees to answer questions about a planned pension buyout offer to 42,000 salaried retirees. GM is off-loading $26 billion of its $134 billion in pension obligations to Prudential Insurance Co., which means about 118,000 retirees will see their pensions swapped for lump-sum payments or paid by Prudential - and not GM. GM's decision to terminate its salaried pensions and transfer them has drawn anger from many retirees - and some have threatened to stop buying GM vehicles.
Rasmussen Reports:
- Daily Presidential Tracking Poll. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Mitt Romney attracting 48% of the vote, while President Obama earns 43%. Five percent (5%) prefer some other candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided.
Reuters:
- Rating Agencies Under New Pressure In Italy. Italian state auditors are investigating whether downgrades of Italy by the three major rating agencies last year hurt the debt-laden country's finances by making it accelerate austerity measures that have deepened its recession. European policymakers, struggling to shore up state finances, have accused analysts of being too quick to cut euro zone sovereign ratings despite bailouts and their spending cuts and tax increases. The rating agencies already face a separate criminal probe in a southern Italian town. "It is not right for agencies to speak so irreverently about Italian sovereign debt, causing economic consequences that everybody can see," Angelo De Dominicis, who heads the prosecutors' office of the Rome state audit court, told Reuters on Friday.
- Asia's investment banks launch round of job cuts. Investment banks and brokerages across Asia have launched a sweeping round of job cuts as Europe's debt crisis and China's economic slowdown bite into the region's financial activity. Speaking to bankers and other industry sources, Reuters was able to confirm at least 50 people were let go in the past three weeks, a cull that includes senior expatriates as well as junior bankers. The cuts mainly target the equities business, with more layoffs expected in coming weeks. CLSA , Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and UBS were among the banks and brokerages that cut jobs, the sources said.
- Wells Fargo's(WFC) Mushrooming Mortgage Risk. The new center of U.S. mortgage lending is a nondescript office building in the American heartland, far from the California subprime lenders and the New York investment banks that drove the housing market into a bust. One out of every three home loans in the United States is now funded by Wells Fargo & Co, whose mortgage operation sits in a business park next door to a country club on the outskirts of Iowa's capital city.
- Storm Debby shifts east, may miss U.S. Gulf oil patch. U.S. companies shut in roughly 23 percent of the nation's oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico on Su nday as a precaution due to Tropical Storm Debby, even as forecasters revamped projections to show the storm could head north and miss the vital offshore energy facilities. The U.S. National Hurricane Center reported late Sunday afternoon that the storm's expected path toward Florida, away from the U.S. Gulf waters that are home to about 20 percent of U.S. oil and 6 percent of natural gas output. The latest forecast showed Debby failing to gain hurricane strength moving due north to landfall on Thursday at Port St Joe, Florida. Debby is the first storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season forecast to threaten the Gulf.
- U.S. gas prices drop 14 cents in two weeks - survey.
- Credit boom stokes risks in emerging markets -BIS. Loose global monetary conditions are stoking credit and asset price booms in some emerging markets that could lead to a new financial crisis, the Bank for International Settlements warned on Sunday. Such a boom-and-bust cycle might have severe global repercussions, not least due to the increased weight of emerging markets in the world economy and in investment portfolios, the BIS said in its annual report. It urged central banks to pay more attention to the global spillovers from their domestic policies, an echo of complaints from Brazil and others that the ultra-loose monetary stance in older economies has touched off large, destabilising flows of capital into emerging markets in search of higher yields. "This creates risks of rising financial imbalances similar to those seen in advanced economies in the years immediately preceding the crisis," the BIS said.
- Hollande may lose euro battle as Merkel holds firm. French President Francois Hollande may have set himself up for a fall this week, as Germany's Angela Merkel shows no sign of yielding to his push to provide more financing guarantees to stabilise the euro zone. The Socialist leader has raised the stakes for a June 28-29 European Union summit with his drive for a bank deposit guarantee scheme to protect euro zone savers and governments and for steps towards mutualising debt and reviving growth.
- Compliance costs of €33bn loom for EU financial industry. The EU financial services industry is on track to spend €33.3bn over the next three years simply to comply with new regulatory demands, a study by the JWG regulatory think-tank has found. The projected costs, which will be spread across 8,500 institutions in the 27-nation bloc, could balloon to €50bn once Basel III bank capital requirements and Solvency II insurance safety rules kick in, the think-tank said, based on a detailed survey of 87 financial services groups in 10 countries.
- US earnings warnings cast shadow over shares outlook. A string of earnings warnings from US companies that are a barometer of the broader economy is casting a shadow over the outlook for equities. Worries of a slowing global economy are resonating more strongly with investors after Procter & Gamble, FedEx and Bed, Bath & Beyond last week saw their shares hit hard by downward revisions to their growth outlook for the remainder of 2012.
ORF:
- European Central Bank Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said a financial transaction tax makes sense, according to a radio interview. "Very simple models" that don't tax long-term transactions and instead focus on speculative short-term transactions would be reasonable, Nowotny said.
- ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said there no longer are joint goals in the second part of the crisis, according to a radio interview. "At the start of the crisis we really had clear joint actions that worked," Nowotny said when asked whether the impression was right that decision makers didn't have common goals. "Now in the second phase, where we have much more differentiated problems, this no longer is the case."
Bild am Sonntag:
- A delay in Germany's ratification of Europe's permanent bailout fund would send a "fatal signal" to makers, Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer said in an interview.
WirtschaftsWoche:
- Germany and its banking system don't have enough capital to rescue southern Europe's banks, Hans-Werner Sinn, president of the Munich-based Ifo economic institute, wrote in a commentary. Sinn proposed compensating banks' creditors with debt-equity swaps, according to an e-mailed preview of his commentary.
China Securities Journal:
- China should impose a "reasonable" property tax to ensure the sustainable development of the housing market, according to a State Information Center report published today. China should expand the property tax base while reducing tax rates to help ease high prices, the report said.
Weekend Recommendations
Barron's:- Made positive comments on (RLD), (AMBO) and (CXW).
- Made negative comments on (WAG).
Night Trading- Asian indices are -1.25% to +.25% on average.
- Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 180.5 -.5 basis point.
- Asia Pacific Sovereign CDS Index 145.75 +2.25 basis points.
- FTSE-100 futures +.17%.
- S&P 500 futures -.41%.
- NASDAQ 100 futures -.26%.
Morning Preview LinksEarnings of NoteCompany/Estimate- (FUL)/.55
- (APOL)/.97
- (SNX)/.90
Economic Releases8:30 am EST- The Chicago Fed National Activity Index for May is estimated to fall to -.40 versus .11 in April.
10:00 am EST
- New Home Sales for May are estimated to rise to 346K versus 343K in April.
10:30 am EST
- Dallas Fed Manufacturing Activity for June is estimated to rise to -1.0 versus -5.0 in May.
Upcoming Splits
Other Potential Market MoversBOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are mostly lower, weighed down by commodity and technology shares in the region. I expect US stocks to open mixed and to weaken into the afternoon, finishing modestly lower. The Portfolio is 50% net long heading into the week.
