Market Currents

• Monday, December 21, 2009

• 09:26 AM Sources say UBS (UBS) and Credit Suisse (CS) may have to almost triple their cash holdings relative to customer deposits (to 45%) under new proposals being considered by Swiss regulators. The banks, not surprisingly, are said to be in talks to soften the requirements. Comment!

• Saturday, December 5, 2009

• 16:26 PM In one of the first cases to be heard involving the sale of Lehman notes, Finra awards $200,000 to an investor who claimed her UBS (UBS) broker inappropriately sold her the risky notes. Her lawyer says he's representing a dozen clients in similar situations around the country. Comment!

• Thursday, December 3, 2009

• 17:10 PM Standard & Poor's (MHP) appeals to a growing interest by introducing a gold hedged index, which overlays long S&P 500 positions with rolling one-month near-term gold futures to isolate the equity returns from dollar moves. [[UBS]] has already licensed the index for new products. Comment!
• 12:17 PM CME Group (CME +0.7%) announces all top OTC dealers sign on to its credit default swap clearing initiative, including: Barclays (BCS), Citi (C), Goldman (GS), JPMorgan (JPM), Deutsche Bank (DB), Morgan Stanley (MS), UBS (UBS) and Credit Suisse (CS). A pre-launch program will begin clearing CDS by Dec. 15. Comment!
• 10:50 AM Sources say CME Group (CME +0.8%) is near a breakthrough deal with some of the world's biggest banks to clear credit default swaps. The CME has held talks with the world's main OTC dealers - Barclays (BCS), Citi (C), Goldman (GS), JPMorgan (JPM), Deutsche Bank (DB), Morgan Stanley (MS), UBS (UBS) and Credit Suisse (CS) - though it remains unclear how many of them are ready to ink the proposed deal. Comment!

• Monday, November 30, 2009

• 13:29 PM UBS is still a below average bank: True to its word, S&P takes another look (first shot) at banks' RAC ratios, and revises UBS's (UBS -1.1%) end-June ratio - by a whopping 20 bps, to 2.4% from 2.2% (.pdf). 1 Comment
• 07:14 AM Thirty giant financial institutions were selected by the FSB for cross-border systemic-risk oversight, and will be asked to write "living wills" that outline wind-down plans in the aftermath of a crisis. They include: AEG AXA AZ BAC BCS BFR CS DB GS HBC ING JPM MFG MTU NMR RBS RY STD UBS. 1 Comment

• Friday, November 27, 2009

• 08:45 AM UBS (UBS) whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld, soon to begin a 40-month prison term for aiding tax evasion, hopes to use a new federal whistleblower law to claim a multibillion-dollar reward from the American government. Legal experts say his odds are good. 2 Comments

• Wednesday, November 25, 2009

• 08:01 AM S&P admits its damning ranking (.pdf) of banks' capital strength, which sparked concerns over low rankings at UBS (UBS) and Citigroup (C), failed to take into consideration actions banks have taken since June to clean up their books. Insiders say S&P will issue a supplementary statement in the next few days. 3 Comments

• Tuesday, November 24, 2009

• 14:25 PM UBS (UBS) disputes Monday's report from S&P, which ranked UBS near the bottom of the world's biggest banks according to their risk-adjusted capital ((RAC)) ratios, at 2.2%. UBS says S&P glossed over two important balance sheet components, including which its RAC jumps to 7.1%. Nomura's Jon Peace sides with the Swiss. 7 Comments

• Monday, November 23, 2009

• 07:31 AM Most major banks still don't have enough capital to comfortably maintain their credit ratings, S&P says, releasing the first global comparison of risk-adjusted capital adequacy for the world's top banks. Mizuho (MFG), Citigroup (C), UBS (UBS) and BBVA all came in well below the global average RAC of 6.7%; Mizuho's was just 2%, Citigroup's was 2.1%, UBS's 2.2%, and BBVA's 5.4%. Banks with stronger than average balance sheets included HSBC (HBC) (9.2%) and Goldman Sachs (GS) (8.3%). 2 Comments

• Tuesday, November 17, 2009

• 09:23 AM UBS (UBS) CEO Oswald Gruebel asks investors to be patient, assuring them the bank's on the come-back track. In a reference to the bank's history of helping rich foreigners evade taxes, Gruebel said he was building "a new UBS: one that performs to the highest standards and behaves with integrity and honesty." Shares -0.6% premarket. 1 Comment

• Monday, November 16, 2009

• 20:03 PM The New York Fed failed to use its "considerable leverage" to force [[AIG]] counterparties into concessions on credit-default swaps, says TARP special inspector Neil Barofsky in a new report - severely limiting the bank's ability to save taxpayer money. Of eight counterparties contacted by the Fed, [[UBS]] was willing to make a 2% concession, but the Fed decided all would be paid in full. 4 Comments

• Saturday, November 14, 2009

• 16:30 PM UBS (UBS) may only need to hand over a small number of client records to the IRS following its successful amnesty program, which was a precondition to the Swiss bank outing its U.S. clients. 6 Comments

• Thursday, November 12, 2009

• 16:33 PM Using data acquired during their Swiss crackdown, U.S. prosecutors now shift their focus to Hong Kong. A former prosecutor: "They must have reason to believe this is a target-rich environment." [[UBS]] clients who pleaded guilty have implicated locations from Singapore to Mexico to Liechtenstein. Comment!

• Thursday, November 5, 2009

• 14:21 PM U.K. fines UBS (UBS) £8M after staff used customer accounts to make thousands of unauthorized trades. The bank has also paid more than $42M to compensate clients for their losses. The employees "were able to take advantage of UBS' inadequate systems and controls, giving them free rein to make unauthorized trades with customer money that they were then able to conceal," FSA says. Another blow to UBS's reputation. 1 Comment