Jin Liqun, chairman of China Investment Corp.
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For 10 years, Daniela Ballico has been knocking on Romans
JPMorgan Chase’s multi-billion dollar trading blunder dragged down bank stocks Friday, undermining investor confidence in other Wall Street finance firms.
JPMorgan (, Fortune 500) led the bank stock declines, with its stock dropping nearly 9%.
The bank revealed Thursday, after the close of markets, that it suffered trading losses of $2 billion since the start of April.
The problems affected other major bank stocks. Morgan Stanley (, Fortune 500), Citigroup (, Fortune 500) and Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500) fell about 4%. Bank of America (, Fortune 500) declined less than 2% and Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500) managed to eke out modest gains, recovering from earlier losses.
JPMorgan suffers massive trading loss
"The problem is that there’s going to be a massive backlash," said Christopher Wheeler, bank analyst for Mediobanca in London.
Wheeler mentioned that the debacle was unfolding amid an ongoing debate over the Volcker Rule, which limits banks on investing with their money.
"The regulators are going to have a field day," he said guaranteed online personal loans.
Bank stocks were already under siege. The KBW () index of bank stocks has fallen 1.7% over the last five trading sessions, without even showing the impact of JPMorgan’s bad trade. On Friday, the index was down about 1%.
Who is the White Whale?
The trade prompted an unusual impromptu teleconference with Chief Executive Jamie Dimon and analysts, at which he divulged that net losses could exceed $800 million by the end of the second quarter for the company’s corporate unit. Before that announcement, a net gain of $200 million was forecast for the unit.
Dimon told analysts that the losing trades were the result of "sloppiness" and "bad judgment," but he shrugged off a question about whether other banks were affected.
"Just because we’re stupid doesn’t mean everyone else was," said Dimon on the call.
(Corrects euro bond holdings in ninth paragraph in story that was published on May 4.)
Norway
Ralcorp Holdings will restate its full-year 2011 and first quarter 2012 earnings related to an impairment charge from the spin-off of its Post brand cereal business that was understated.
St. Louis-based Ralcorp said today that a previously disclosed $364.8 million non-cash goodwill impairment charge related to the Post spin-off was understated by about $54 million that should have been reflected in its fourth quarter 2011 earnings report. The Post cereal business was spun off as a separate company effective Feb. 3.
Ralcorp said it is delaying the release of its second quarter 2012 earnings, which was set for May 8 payday loans in one hour. The company’s second quarter results will be released instead on May 15, and the company will hold a conference call on May 16 to discuss the results.
Ralcorp’s private label foods include cereal, pasta, crackers, cookies, frozen biscuits and other frozen bread products.
No one took issue with Antonio Hegwood’s dreadlocks when he worked for the temp service. Or the fast food restaurant before that.
But in mid-April, four months after a service station and convenience store hired him as an overnight clerk, Hegwood learned his hair style had suddenly became a problem.
Hegwood, 24, hasn’t been fired. But he hasn’t collected a paycheck since.
His supervisors at a St. Louis Petro Mart have told Hegwood that he’s welcome to return to work — if he shears the dreadlocks that run about halfway down his neck.
Hegwood doesn’t understand the fuss.
“It’s a gas station,” he said. “People aren’t going to not buy gas just because the clerk has dreads.”
Policies on the personal grooming habits of employees land on the edge of state and federal employment discrimination laws.
Companies doing business in Missourihave the right to terminate or suspend any employee that doesn’t meet established guidelines addressing hair, tattoos or dress.
“An employer may condition a job on an employee’s compliance with the employer’s hair styling preferences, unless the employee’s alternative hair styling preference is connected with the employee’s inclusion in a protected category,” Missouri Department of Labor spokeswoman Amy Susan explained in an e-mail. “For example, a particular hair style may be a tenet of the employee’s religion, or the employer may decline to hire a prospective employee because the employee is considered to be disabled because of his or her hair style (such as believing someone without hair to be suffering from cancer).”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is a bit more exacting. It looks at how various groups of people wearing various hairstyles are treated in comparison to other groups.
“The baseline for evaluating grooming policies is to look at their overall burden on different groups of employees,” EEOC spokeswoman Justine Lisser wrote in a general overview of the Petro Mart matter.
“…If an employer prohibits a range of hair styles, such as both corn rows and mohawks, and the no cornrows/dreadlocks policy affects 30% of its African-American employees while the no mohawks affects only 3% of its white employees, we could say that the policy had a disparate impact on African-Americans, even if it applies to all employees.”
Hegwood has sported dreads on and off for years. The dreadlocks were in place when he applied for and was offered the $8.50-an-hour position at Petro Mart late last year.
“They didn’t say anything about it then,” he said.
Nor, Hegwood added, was there any mention of the dreads posing a threat to safety or the health of co-workers.
Owned and operated by Western Oil Co. in Earth City, Petro Mart does have a written policy stipulating that hair should be “kept neat and clean…immoderate styles… such as corn rows, braids etc. must be approved by a supervisor…dreadlocks and mohawks are unacceptable.”
Western Oil did not respond to requests for a response.
A father of three, Hegwood doesn’t know how long he can take a principled stand against Petro Mart and its grooming policy.
He needs a salary to support his children and pay for the remainder of his education at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park, where Hegwood hopes to earn a degree in business.
The worst of the job crisis may be over — unemployment in the St. Louis region dropped to 8.1 percent in March.
But back in the hunt four months after starting a job “I really liked,” Hegwood fears landing employment remains a challenge.
“Maybe I’ll start my own business,” he said, looking ahead. “That way I can wear my hair anyway I want.”
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We’re all technology companies at heart. Whether you’re a law firm or a bank, the core of your company is technology. And that is kind of shaking the core of the office today.” — Thomas Vecchione, head of Workplace Design at Gensler, the global architectural firm, on the work space evolution that includes “free range” offices in which employees take a seat each day at whatever desk is available.
Source: The Point, WBUR/Boston
BY THE NUMBERS
3.9 million - The population of Oregon — and the number of Americans who continue to suffer the effects of unemployment lasting more than a year. The long-term unemployed represent 29.5 of the nation’s jobless.
Source: The Pew Charitable Trusts
FINAL WORD
“You know, how could you not look?” - Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III on whether he tracks the struggles of a former employee, Albert Pujols, in the box scores each day.
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you can’t be robbed.
Identity thieves steal the personal information of about 2.4 million deceased Americans each year, according to a new report from fraud prevention firm ID Analytics. That amounts to a rate of more than 2,000 thefts per day.
Using these stolen identities, criminals typically apply for credit cards, cell phones and anything else requiring a credit check, the report found.
About 800,000 deceased Americans get their identities stolen intentionally, and another 1.6 million identities are stolen by chance — when an identity thief uses a Social Security number that happens to match that of a deceased individual, for example.
Debt after death: Banks chase down mourners
Lenders are typically the main victims when thieves use identities of deceased people to apply for credit products. But surviving family members should also be careful, said Stephen Coggeshall, chief technology officer at ID Analytics bad credit personal loan lenders.
"Surviving family members can also be the victims of this identity fraud as they are left to manage the estates of their deceased loved ones," he said. "It’s important for people to monitor their deceased family member’s identities for at least one year."
Social Security pays millions to dead people
To determine how many deceased people get their identities stolen each year, ID Analytics collected the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers on 100 million credit applications.
It then calculated how many of these applications used information that was associated with deceased individuals listed in the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File — a government database of deceased Americans.
Goldman Sachs more than doubled its first-quarter profits and announced plans to raise its dividend Tuesday.
The strong results masked other problems, including a 16 percent decline in revenue. To make up for that, and to propel earnings higher, Goldman turned to cost-cutting.
The storied investment bank slashed 3,000 workers over the year, or about 8 percent of its work force. It cut back on salaries, trimmed occupancy costs and paid less in brokerage fees, cutting total expenses by 14 percent.
Revenue from financial advising, where the bank advises big companies and investors on mergers and acquisitions, was one of the few areas to record a revenue gain, 37 percent.
Revenue from underwriting stock and bond sales fell 27 percent. Revenue from trading fell 14 percent, hurt by lower fees and revenue from the division that trades bonds, currencies and commodities. Total revenue fell to $9.9 billion from $11.9 billion, though that beat the $9.4 billion that analysts polled by FactSet had been expecting.
Goldman Sachs said its net income available to common shareholders rose to $2.1 billion, or $3.92 per share. That was a jump of about 128 percent from $908 million, or $1.56 per share, a year ago. The per-share earnings also beat expectations of analysts, who had been predicting $3.52.
The bank also announced it would raise its quarterly shareholder dividend to 46 cents per share from 35 cents. Though the bank didn’t say so, that’s a particular sign of strength in the current market, because it’s also a reminder that Goldman, unlike some of its peers, got permission to do so after passing the government’s most recent round of stress tests.
CEO Lloyd Blankfeink called the quarter a “solid performance.” In a prepared statement, he noted that “client activity remains relatively low in certain areas,” but said that “our mix of businesses gives the firm significant room for revenue growth as economic and market conditions continue to improve.”
For decades, Goldman has been known for beating its Wall Street competitors and churning out executives who go on to high leadership positions.
But the past few years have left it bruised. Last fall, it recorded a quarterly loss, only its second since going public in 1999. In 2010 and 2011, its net income fell year-over-year in six of the eight quarters.
Investors are trying to piece together whether the troubles are a short-term annoyance or a sign of deep-rooted problems. They wonder if the bank needs a new game plan.
Like the rest of the banking industry, Goldman has to figure out how to navigate a world of stricter government controls that will dry up some of its key revenue streams. Goldman has made big profits trading for its own account, especially when markets are volatile. But regulations taking effect this year will reduce Goldman’s ability to make those trades.
Unlike much of the banking industry, Goldman doesn’t have a large consumer banking arm to fall back on when trading and investment banking get bumpy. Its clients are largely hedge funds and multinational corporations that need to hedge their bets on foreign currencies, fluctuating interest rates and commodities.
Return on equity was about 12 percent, in line with a year ago. That was a big change from 38 percent five years ago, before the global economic meltdown.
Goldman also has public-relations problems to worry about. In the era of Occupy Wall Street, Goldman has been the target for much of the vitriol of people who blame the financial crisis on reckless practices in the banking industry. Last month, the vitriol came to a head when a mid-level executive resigned via a blistering editorial in the New York Times, where he accused the bank of losing its “moral fiber” and caring only about its own profits rather than its clients’.
The accusations are still swirling. Last week, the bank agreed to pay $22 million to settle regulators’ charges that Goldman analysts shared confidential research with favored clients. In the first quarter, the bank set aside $59 million for litigation and regulatory proceedings.
Goldman Sachs’ stock fell slightly in pre-market trading, down 73 cents to $117.
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