Archive - Feb 23, 2009 - Story

Cameraphilles rejoice: liquidation sales at the electronics retailer are poised to surge after Ritz Camera filed for bankruptcy in Wilmington over the weekend. The bankrupt company put itself on course for self destruction when it paid $85 million to buy Wolf Camera out of bankruptcy in 2001, only to see itself suffer the same fate 8 years later.

Cameraphilles rejoice: liquidation sales at the electronics retailer are poised to surge after Ritz Camera filed for bankruptcy in Wilmington over the weekend. The bankrupt company put itself on course for self destruction when it paid $85 million to buy Wolf Camera out of bankruptcy in 2001, only to see itself suffer the same fate 8 years later.

Rabid downgrader of everything leveraged, S&P, just woodshedded Denver mutual fund Janus Capital, downgrading its rating from BBB- to BB+ , resulting in its stock plunging to a new all time low. The downgrade will only make refinancing the company's over $1 billion in debt all that more interesting. At least current and soon to be former employees have full access to the Denver club scene, cheap rents and local ski slopes.

Short answer - just go back to work for a mutual fund. Or at least that is what David Glancy did, when he decided to leave the treacherous world of hedge funds, in which he managed to plant a nice little frag grenade in the form of Andover Capital, and jumped back on the mutual fund wagon. On Thursday Putnam announced it was willing to receive the former Andoverite and Fidelitite with open arms, despite his shady recent track record. According to the press release:

Cars and financials not happy

Cars and financials not happy

In an 8-K filing sneaked late on Friday after close, the highly leveraged mall operator General Growth Proprties announced that as a result a termination on February 12 of several forbearance agreements with lenders, and being unable to enter into forbearance agreements for some other loans it is in default under several of its loans. As noted in the 8-K:

• US Government seeking $40 billion DIP Loan for GM and Chrysler (WSJ)
• The extent of Obama's bank nationalization plan (Bloomberg)
• Newspaper dominoes: Philadelphia Inquirer files for bankruptcy (FT)
• U.A.E.
  

As the futures market is gleefully unaware of just how horrible everything really is, Japanese small business lender SFCG filed for bankruptcy today. This represents the largest Japanese bankruptcy by a public company in almost 7 years. The company listed $3.6 billion in liabilities at filing, and among its creditors is none other than the latest addition to the portfolio of Taxpayer Capital LLC, Citigroup itself, which was owed 71 billion Yen.

Developing story: The Financial Times has just broken that Citigroup is pressing the U.S. government to take a 40% stake - a nationalization, but not quite... Obviously everyone would be convinced that the government stopping short of owning another 11% would be oh so critical. The fact that futures are up on this news is conclusive evidence that traders and bloomberg terminals have been supplanted by monkeys and typewriters.