Archive

Fox Pitt analyst Gary Ransom says to be very wary when Berkshire posts earnings tomorrow, warning results may be the worst since Buffett took over the company in 1965. As a result of equity losses and writedowns on derivative bets, the Oracle of Omaha's book value per share, or intrinsic value may have dropped by 8.5%, which will be only the second time this metric has declined under Buffett's command, the only previous time being 6.1% in 2001.

In an 8-K filed early today, MGM announced that on February 24 it had requested a full drawn down on its $4.5 billion revolver, which the banks satisfied yesterday.

In an 8-K filed early today, MGM announced that on February 24 it had requested a full drawn down on its $4.5 billion revolver, which the banks satisfied yesterday.

In a historic event that went largely unnoticed, last night ISDA disclosed it is open sourcing JP Morgan's legendary CDS Standard Model which it got ownerships of on January 29, thereby issuing a challenge to the global community of financial white hats to decompile the code and figure out just what the voodoo is the wizards in JP Morgan's Quantitative Research group have put

In a historic event that went largely unnoticed, last night ISDA disclosed it is open sourcing JP Morgan's legendary CDS Standard Model which it got ownerships of on January 29, thereby issuing a challenge to the global community of financial white hats to decompile the code and figure out just what the voodoo is the wizards in JP Morgan's Quantitative Research group have p

• Hungary wants $230 billion bailout package for Eastern Europe (Bloomberg)
• Citi will need a bigger boat (PR)
• Blackstone has $827 million Q4 loss, misses estimates, on real-estate asset writedowns (PR)
• Rosy assumptions hold down deficit (WSJ) [we jus
  

Economy's wheels are coming off.

Citi common diluted 74%. Fed converts up to $25 billion of preferred to common, as expected, however with the twist that other private preferred investors have to agree to terms. C shares down 42% post announcement... Did people not see this coming??? Although this was worse than expected. Government keeps making rules up on the fly.

• BofA served with bonus subpoena after Ken Lewis' 4 hour interrogation (Bloomberg)
• 14,000 additional layoffs at JPM (Reuters)
• The financial terrorist system to demand another $750 billion soon (Reuters)
• Regulatory investigation into shady European "dark pools" (

Rumor of the night, as reported by our friends at Debtwire, is that everyone's favorite private jet company Textron, which we brought to people's attention before anyone cared about it, has hired former Masters, now merely Janitors, of the Universe, Goldman Sachs, and makers of fine, fine left bank Burgundy, Rothschild to sell the businesses that make up TXT's industrial division.

The acrimony over the world's largest DIP is reaching fever pitch. For a second day in a row, Judge Gerber said he will listen to yet another round of arguments tomorrow before deciding whether to approve the Debtor in Possession loan. As we wrote previously, the fate of the company (at least over the next 6 months) hangs in the approval of the DIP, as without it Lyondell will proceed straight to liquidation.

Well, at least he didn't blow the 90% of AUM in his PSIV fund for nothing.

Letter to investors attached below, mostly as pertains to SHLD. We are going through this now, but at first read some very odd and disjointed ramblings...Eddie sure ain't no Howard Marks

Um, if the story met all those criteria Ken would be out of a job by 6 pm today... Regardless, we look forward to hearing his story too and providing "objective perspective."