Bloomberg:
- European Stocks Drop After G-20 Fails to Agree on IMF Funding. European stocks fell, capping the first weekly decline in six weeks, after the Group of 20 failed to agree on boosting the International Monetary Fund’s resources and German factory data fueled concern the region is slipping into recession. Alcatel-Lucent SA, France’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, slumped to the lowest price in more than two years as it cut its full-year profit margin forecast. Commerzbank AG (CBK) dropped 6.3 percent after reporting a bigger- than-estimated quarterly loss on Greek-debt writedowns. The benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 Index fell 1 percent to 239.76 at the close in London. The gauge has retreated 3.7 percent this week, the first weekly drop since Sept. 23, as Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s now-abandoned referendum call spurred concern the country may go into disorderly default. “Investors will certainly need to digest the latest developments in Greece and the outcome of the latest G-20 summit over the weekend,” said Jean-Maurice Ladure, head of investment strategy at Coutts & Co Ltd. in Zurich. “Hence, investors are likely to remain in ‘wait-and-see’ mode.” Global policy makers are awaiting more details of a week- old rescue package before they commit fresh cash to the IMF which could then lend to Europe’s bailout facility, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the end of a G-20 summit in Cannes, France. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said it may take until February for a deal.
- Greek Lawmakers Seek Route to National Government as Confidence Vote Nears. Greek politicians are trying to map out a plan to put in place a new government to ratify last week’s European Union bailout agreement as Prime Minister George Papandreou struggles to keep his majority in parliament. With Papandreou facing a confidence vote at midnight Athens time, opposition leader Antonis Samaras is refusing to share power with the premier. Samaras wants a caretaker government chosen by the president. Should Papandreou win the vote, his options this weekend include handing over power to a national unity government or fighting on. Papandreou’s Pasok party currently controls 152 seats in the 300-member legislature. “The issue is how to keep the country going and then evolve the current government into a broader government that takes on board other political forces,” Energy Minister George Papaconstantinou told Bloomberg Television’s Nicole Itano in an interview. “We need broader support and approval for the kind of measures that were taken.”
- ECB's Stark Says Economy May Not Expand at All in Fourth Quarter of 2011. European Central Bank Executive Board member Juergen Stark said the euro-area economy may not grow at all in the final three months of the year. “Possibly we will see, and I say this with all caution, a red zero in the fourth quarter,” Stark said in a speech in Frankfurt today. Growth will be “very weak” going into 2012 and “there are consequences for price and wage developments,” he said. Stark also said he assumes the ECB will end its bond purchases “as soon as possible” as they set the wrong incentives.
- European CEOs Prepare for Recession Risk Amid Greek Flipflopping on Euro. The squabbling over Greece’s future in the euro zone may push Europe’s economy into recession and reduce companies’ ability to compete internationally, according to executives of some of the region’s biggest corporations. “There are legitimate reasons to be worried,” Alexey Mordashov, chief executive officer of Russia’s second-biggest steelmaker OAO Severstal, said in an interview in Cannes, France, where leaders of the Group of 20 economic powers are meeting. “We expect it to undermine growth in Europe.”
- U.S. Payrolls Rose in October; Jobless Rate 9%. The U.S. jobless rate unexpectedly fell in October while employers added fewer workers than forecast, illustrating the “frustratingly slow” progress cited by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke this week. The unemployment rate fell to a six-month low of 9 percent from 9.1 percent, even as the labor force grew. The 80,000 increase in payrolls followed gains in the prior two months that were revised up by 102,000, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Average hourly earnings rose 0.2 percent to $23.19, while the workweek held at 34.3 hours, today’s report showed. The so-called underemployment rate -- which includes part- time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking -- dropped to 16.2 percent from 16.5 percent. The number of people jobless for 27 weeks or more fell to 42.4 percent as a share of all those without work from 44.6 percent. It was last lower in November 2010. The number of temporary workers increased 15,000 after rising 21,100 the prior month.
- Germany Worried About Libya Missile Proliferation, Bild Says. Germany’s Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation is concerned about the spread of surface-to-air missiles from Libya that may fall into the hands of terrorists, Germany’s Bild-Zeitung newspaper reported. The bureau issued a warning to German customs authorities that Russian-made SA-7 missiles have been offered illegally in countries including Egypt, Bild reported, without saying where it got the information. Hundreds of shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missiles were probably stolen from Libyan stocks during the revolutionary turmoil, Bild cited the bureau as saying. Rainer Wendt, head of Germany’s union of police officers, called for tighter controls around German airports, Bild said.
- Baum: You Can't Fix a Burst Bubble With More Hot Air.
- Groupon(GRPN) Surges After Pricing IPO Above Range. Groupon Inc. jumped as much as 56 percent in its trading debut after the online-coupon company raised $700 million in an initial public offering that limited the amount of shares typically available to investors. The shares of the Chicago-based company, listed under the symbol GRPN, climbed $7.22, or 36 percent, to $27.22 at 12:07 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading, after surging to $31.14. Yesterday, Groupon sold 35 million shares at $20 each, the biggest IPO by a U.S. Internet company since Google Inc. (GOOG) raised $1.9 billion in its 2004 initial offering.
- China Summons Internet Executives. Executives from China's top Internet companies have been summoned for an unusual policy-training session by the Communist Party's propaganda department, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest move in the government's campaign to increase oversight of the nation's fast-growing Internet sector. The executives are participating in a multiple-day policy-training event held on the outskirts of Beijing this week, similar to training sessions often held for government officials to review new regulations, the people said.
- ECRI Leading Index: Another Tick Higher. (graph) For the third week in a row, the Economic Cycle Research Institute’s weekly leading index has ticked a little bit higher, pushing its rolling growth rate up for the first time since July. The ECRI’s leading index edged up to 122.1 from 121.2 the prior week, and its rolling growth rate rose to -9.4% from -10.1%. That’s still a low growth rate, but hasn’t gotten worse in a couple of weeks now.
- Corzine's Ungraceful Exit. Commentary: Former CEO expresses ‘sadness’ but not regret.
- After Greece, Italy Could Be Next Focus for Markets. The eyes of the world have been trained on Greece for most of this week, but, as the Hellenic crisis approached breaking point, signs are that Italy will be the next focus. "The whole stability of Europe depends on whether Italy gets its act together," Commerzbank Chief Financial Officer Eric Strutz told analysts in a conference call on Friday.
- Greek Drama Not Over Yet: What May Happen Next.
Zero Hedge:
- Back to European Sov Exposure: Moody's Will Downgrade Austria's Erste Over Attempt To Hide Billions In Sovereign CDS.
- Jefferies Releases Yet Another Set Of Numbers On Its European Exposure That Differ From 24 Hours Ago.
- Making Sense Of The Chaos: Europe's Calendar Of Events For The Rest Of November.
- Former Bundesbank President Weber Warns Germany Will Be On The European Bailout Hook For Up To 314% Of Its GDP With Levered EFSF.
- RenTec Fund Has Rebirth. Renaissance Technologies, the super-secretive $19 billion hedge fund started by math whiz Jim Simons, is doing just fine without its founder. Almost two years after Simons stepped back from day-to-day operations, the firm’s most troubled fund, the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund, is staging a major comeback. RIEF, with assets of $6.1 billion, is up 31 percent this year, notching returns of nearly 5 percent last month, sources said. Ironically, the stellar returns finally place RIEF in the same rank as its older, more famous fund sibling, the Medallion fund, which is up 32 percent this year net of fees, one investor said.
- Index Has Hedge Funds Up 1.85% In Oct. Hedge funds bounced back last month with most posting positive returns. But they still have a ways to go if they're to end 2011 in anything but the red. The average fund rose 1.85% in October, the Dow Jones Credit Suisse Core Hedge Fund Index shows. But after a rough August and September—the benchmark fell more than 4% in the latter month—the index remains down 6.13% on the year, with just two months to go. Long/short equity hedge funds had the best month, rising 5.27% to cut their average year-to-date loss to 4.37%. Event-driven funds also did well, adding 2.66%, but they remain down an average of 11.01%. By contrast, managed futures funds had the worst October, dropping 5.07%, leaving the strategy down 5.18% on the year.
- Italy Govt Hangs by Thread as Coalition Crumbles. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi refused to step down on Friday despite growing desertions from his crumbling centre-right coalition in protest over the ruling party's handling of an accelerating economic crisis. Berlusconi is widely believed to have already lost the numbers he needs to survive in parliament but he told reporters at a G20 summit in France: "We have a majority which I continue to believe is solid and so we will continue to govern."
- Bunds Rise on EFSF Worries, Italy Under Pressure. German Bund futures rose on Friday as worries over a lack of commitment from G20 countries to participate in Europe's bailout fund and heightened political tension in Italy forced investors towards perceived safer assets. Italian two-year government bond yields jumped and the spread of Italian 10-year yields over Bunds hit a new lifetime high after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he had refused an offer of financial support from the International Monetary Fund.
- Pricing CDS on the EFSF. Dealers are shying away from offering quotes on credit default swaps referencing the European Financial Stability Fund, despite customer demand for the instruments. Five major dealers contacted by IFR all denied quoting CDS on Europe’s sovereign bailout fund, citing the potential political fallout of doing so.
- The epistemology of US banks’ European exposure. Can we really know anything about US banks exposure to Europe? A familiar epistemological question, which is being asked again in the wake of MF Global’s demise and Jefferies’ circuit-breaking slide. We’ve taken a depressingly long look at some of the data and if you don’t want to read the splurge below, in sum, we don’t think we can confidently say very much ex ante about the extent and form of US banks’ exposure to European sovereigns, banks and corporations.
- Eurozone Trapped in 'Straitjacket', Says Rio Tinto(RTP) Chairman Jan du Plessis. The nations of the eurozone are trapped in a "straitjacket" of a shared currency with no way out, the chairman of mining giant Rio Tinto has warned.
- Debt Crisis: Live.
- Greek net budget revenue in October fell 6.9% from the same month in 2010 to 4.22 billion euros. For the 10 months through Oct. 31, budget revenue declined 4.4% to 39.17 billion euros, implying Greece needs to find 12.4 billion euros in the last two months of the year to reach the revenue target for 2011 of 51.58 billion euros.
- Italy doesn't want to use a credit line from the IMF after having had contacts with the fund, citing European sources.
- The bad-loan ratio for banks in China's Wenzhou city, a hub of smaller exporters, rose in September for the first time in ten years. Total outstanding bad loans for Wenzhou's banks may be 3.4 billion yuan at the end of September, based on total credit of 619.2 billion yuan. Non-performing loans may continue to increase after "some government agencies" asked lenders to be more tolerant of bad loans for smaller businesses, citing a person from the banking industry. Wenzhou banks reported declines in property lending, bank acceptance and consumer credit, reflecting cooling property purchases and weaker business activity and consumer demand, according to the report. Deposits by stock and futures investors plunged as some investors withdrew funds to repay borrowings from informal lending channels.
- Ninety percent of Chinese polysilicon makers may halt operations by the end of November because of declining spot prices.
No comments:
Post a Comment