Archives: May 2009

Cuomo's Latest Target: Debt Collectors

Posted by: Adrienne Carter on May 29, Categories: investigations

This from a finance colleague, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, who will soon be joining the Unstructured Finance blog: Rising unemployment, surging gas prices and a prolonged recession have created the perfect storm...

The Tapeworm in the Stock Market

Posted by: David Henry on May 27, Categories: stocks

A plate full of nutritious food has been put before the stock market the last couple of months in the form of $200 billion of new cash. But many of...

Moving On

Posted by: Matthew Goldstein on May 20, Categories: jobs

No. Unstructured Finance isn't going anywhere, but I am. Friday's my last day at BusinessWeek. It's been a good run, but I'm moving to Reuters where I'll be a columnist...

No More Cards for Tots

Posted by: Matthew Goldstein on May 20, Categories: banking

There's a lot to like about the long overdue credit card reform bill. The measure will make it more difficult for banks to take advantage of consumers by jacking-up interest...

Faulty Numbers

Posted by: David Henry on May 19, Categories:

Aside from however much the government’s stress tests say about individual banks, they point to failures in the accounting rules that investors and the financial system rely on. The flaws...

Private Equity's Banking Problem

Posted by: Adrienne Carter on May 19, Categories: private equity

Here's a follow on to yesterday's post about private equity playing in the banking sector from our finance colleague and guest blogger, Peter Carbonara: One deal that people in private...

Private Equity's Regulatory Arbitrage

Posted by: Adrienne Carter on May 18, Categories: private equity

Call it regulatory arbitrage. Bloomberg reports today that the Office of Thrift Supervision gave buyout firm MaitlinPatterson Global Advisers the OK to buy Flagstar Bancorp, a struggling bank in Troy,...

Derivatives and the Blizzard of Paperwork

Posted by: Matthew Goldstein on May 15, Categories: regulation

Frank Partnoy, who has been warning about the dangers of derivatives for years, makes some good points in an op-ed in The New York Times about the Obama administration's plan...

Pension Bailouts

Posted by: Matthew Goldstein on May 15, Categories: pensions

It was only a matter of time before some company would ask the federal government for a bailout to help meet its pension funding obligation. But don't bank on cash-strapped...

Stanford's Ex-Lawyer is on the Hot Seat

Posted by: Matthew Goldstein on May 13, Categories: scandals

Thomas Sjoblom, the hot-shot securities lawyer, who once represented disgraced financier R. Allen Stanford, is increasingly finding himself mired in a legal pickle. The Proskauer Rose partner does not come...

Stanford Official Indicted

Posted by: Matthew Goldstein on May 12, Categories: scandals

It's not the big news that R. Allen Stanford's investors have been waiting for the past three months. But Laura Pendergest-Holt, the former chief investment officer for Stanford's now-defunct financial...

Bull Market for Bear Books

Posted by: Matthew Goldstein on May 12, Categories: scandals

Bear Stearns may be long gone, but a lot of trees are being killed to tell the story of its final days. The latest Bear book to hit the shelves...

The Shrinking Chrysler Holdouts

Posted by: Matthew Goldstein on May 08, Categories: hedge funds

The list of Chrysler holdouts keeps getting smaller. OppenheimerFunds, one of the original members of the so-called Chrysler Non-Tarp Lenders, is pulling out of the group opposed to the federal...

Pension Woes Coming Home to Roost

Posted by: Matthew Goldstein on May 07, Categories: pensions

The problems in the multi-employer pension world are starting to cause big headaches for companies that contribute to these group retirement plans. Rating agency Standard & Poor's, on May 6,...

Chrysler Opponents Unmasked

Posted by: Matthew Goldstein on May 06, Categories: hedge funds

Thanks to a ruling from a US Bankruptcy judge, the dissident hedge funds that helped pushed Chrysler into bankruptcy have been unmasked. The hedge fund managers had tried to remain...