Archive - Feb 4, 2009

• Alleged Saks acquisition candidate Baugur files for bankruptcy (Bloomberg)
• Toxic asset guarantees have won over bad bank: Senate to take easy yet ineffective way out as usual (Bloomberg)
• Financial triage means ta
  

• Good summary of Obama's first two weeks in office (New Editor)
• Live Nation and Ticketmaster merging (NY Post)
• Kyrgyzstan to force closure of airbase critical to US Afghanistan presence (NYT)
• UBS tried to sell Paine Webber as recently as few weeks ago (

Good to know that we are not the only ones scratching our heads over why the market was so much higher today. Goldman Sachs is also confused, but they are better than we are at goalseeking arguments to conclusions, so we present their commentary uninterrupted:

Last week's significant net rerisking in consumer services has continued and has now spread to the basic materials and consumer goods sectors. The only sector which saw a notable derisking was financials, with $25 billion in net notional, or 5,546 contract increase. Net single-name notional did not change from last week at $1.4 trillion, however the reduction in gross single-name notional continues and has dropped by $200 billion to $14.2 trillion this week.

Last week's significant net rerisking in consumer services has continued and has now spread to the basic materials and consumer goods sectors. The only sector which saw a notable derisking was financials, with $25 billion in net notional, or 5,546 contract increase. Net single-name notional did not change from last week at $1.4 trillion, however the reduction in gross single-name notional continues and has dropped by $200 billion to $14.2 trillion this week.

Och-Ziff filed its January results in an 8-K today. After a somewhat weak 2008 performance (granted, few can repeat Prentice Capital's 88% drop), which saw the flagship fund down 15.51%, its European fund down 17%, its Asian fund down 30.38%, and special situations down 8.01%, the fund had strong January results as follows:

Och-Ziff filed its January results in an 8-K today. After a somewhat weak 2008 performance (granted, few can repeat Prentice Capital's 88% drop), which saw the flagship fund down 15.51%, its European fund down 17%, its Asian fund down 30.38%, and special situations down 8.01%, the fund had strong January results as follows: