Barclays

Update via CNBC:

• CITADEL, KRR SAID NO LONGER TO BE LOOKING AT KNIGHT
• KNIGHT CAPITAL CLOSE TO FUNDING DEAL, CNBC'S KATE KELLY SAYS
• KNIGHT MAY GENERATE ABOUT $400 MLN FROM INVESTORS, KELLY SAYS
• GETCO, TD AMERITRADE LIKELY PART OF INVESTMENT GROUP: KELLY

Knight Capital is scrambling: it has a few hours to convince any potential suitors that it is worth some $300 million more alive than having its carcass picked off at a cost of $0.01 over its debt (which itself will likely be materially impaired) in a Chapter 11 Stalking Horse sale. If the Sunday before the Lehman, and MF Global, bankruptcy filings is any indication, the third time will not be the charm for the company whose 1400 employees may have no place to call work at 9am tomorrow. Sadly, in a world in which entire countries and continents have taken on the patina of Schrödingerian felinism, constantly shifting between alive and dead states depending on who is looking, we would take the under on the probability that the firm's lawyers will not be visiting 1 Bowling Green at some point in the next 16 hours.

What a difference a revisionist market rally makes. Remember when everyone was involved in Libor manipulation? No? Curious what a few hundred DJIA points will do especially when the corporate revenues and supporting them simply are not there, and one goes all in on multiple expansion. One entity which, however, has not forgotten about Lieborgate is Pimco parent and Europe's largest insurance firm, Allianz. And they are not happy: "Europe's biggest insurer, Allianz, is worried about the role central banks may have played in an interest rate rigging scandal that has enveloped some leading international lenders, the insurer's chief financial officer said on Friday. "We do not find it funny, what has happened, in particular the arising implication that it is not just the banks but central banks being involved in this," Oliver Baete told a conference call with analysts. "That really gives us cause for concern," Baete added." Of course, neither the ECB nor the FED could care much, considering that Allianz would be immediately insolvent if the same central banks who manipulated Libor stopped manipulating interest rates... which is implicitly what Allianz is unhappy about.

Earlier we said that Knight better sell itself today or it's lights out. Sure enough, here come the rumors via the WSJ:

Knight Capital is in talks with Virtu Financial, a big player in high-speed trading and "designated market maker" on the NYSE, about a potential merger or infusion of capital

And more from Dow Jones:

• WSJ: Knight in Discussions About Possible Deal With Electronic-Trading Firm Virtu — Sources
• WSJ: Talks Also Involve Silver Lake Partners, An Investor in Virtu — Sources
• WSJ: Talks in Early Stages and No Deal Guaranteed — Sources
• WSJ: Knight Also in Talks With Other Potential Funders, Partners — Sources

Will it happen? Maybe. Although we doubt it - why pay for equity value when one can pick up the functioning assets in a Chapter 363 asset sale which also sticks the creditors with all the crappy assets? Just like Barclays did with Lehman for millipennies on the dollar.

Just when you thought the Li(e)bor scandal had jumped the shark, Germany's Spiegel brings it back front-and-center with a detailed and critical insight into the 'organized fraud' and emergence of the cartel of 'bottom of the food chain' money market traders. "The trick is that you can't do it alone" one of the 'chosen' pointed out, but regulators have noiw spoken "mechanisms are now taking effect that I only knew of from mafia films." RICO anyone? "This is a real zinger," says an insider. In the past, bank manager lapses resulted from their stupidity for having bought securities without understanding them. "Now that was bad enough. But manipulating a market rate is criminal." A portion of the industry, adds the insider, apparently doesn't realize that the writing is on the wall.

What Would Jesus – Or the Rabbis of Old – Do?

Despite record low coupon issuance and a net negative issuance that is enabling technical flow to dominate any sense of releveraging risk in favor of the 'safety' of corporate bonds, the credit cycle is deteriorating rather rapidly in both the US and Europe. As these charts of the upgrade/downgrade cycle from Barclays show, things are as bad as they have been since the crisis began in terms of ratings changes among investment grade and high-yield credit. Combine that with the historically dismal seasonals for credit in the next three months and we urge caution.

The catalyst for the major turnaround in markets last week was comments from ECB President Draghi that he was prepared to do whatever it takes to preserve the Euro and ensure monetary policy transmission. While this is nothing more than stating his mandate (and that water is wet), the focus on 'transmission' caught the attention of many and Barclays provides a succinct flowchart of just where those transmission channels are broken. However, with SMP empirically a losing proposition for sovereign spreads, LTROs having had no impact on loans to non-financial corporates, and rate cuts not reaching the peripheral economies (and in fact signaling further divergence); it seems that short of full-scale LSAP (which JPM thinks will need to be a minimum EUR600bn to be in any way effective), whatever Draghi says will be a disappointment and perhaps that explains the weakness in European sovereigns this week as exuberance fades (or is the game to implicitly weaken the EUR to regain competitiveness).

Previously we presented an expose on various Geneva-based hedge funds traders, all of whom were implicated in Libor manipulation in their current or prior positions, which promptly resulted in the halting of trading privileges of one of the named individuals. Tonight it is time to back away from the buyside and to refocus on the banking sector, in the process jumping a few hundred kilometers to the northeast and that other Swiss banking capital, Zurich, where we get to do a quick run through several UBS Libor traders. Pardon, make that ex-traders. And make that "short-term interest rate" traders which naturally means OIS, IRS, FRA, Money Markets and, sometimes Euribor. In other words, all the other various IR derivatives which will blow up next as the Libor inquiry gets deeper and deeper into the Swiss rabbit hole. But before the global media juggernaut gets there, in about 6-8 weeks, we will do a quick roster of several voluntarily "retired" UBS traders, all of whom are now "looking for new challenges" and a rather amusing finding.

So we have two weeks of sport to take our minds off the global financial malaise. The EU commissars have all gone on holiday, but not before Mario Draghi (ECB Chairman) announced that he will do whatever it takes to save the euro. Really? His statement did knock the Spanish 10 year bond yield back below 7%, but this had become a one way and illiquid trade that was due for break. We have seen it all before with Greece. Denial, denial, denial all the way until days before default restructuring. Talking of which, the Greeks think they are in line for a further handout. Those whirring sounds you can hear in the distance are printing presses knocking out “new” drachma.

While anticipation of the election cycle's 'can't lose' perspective on markets is widespread, there is a somewhat more concerning cycle that accompanies it that we suspect will be much more critical this election year than in recent times. As Barclays notes, the 'policy uncertainty cycle' into presidential elections is very notable - especially in the 4-5 months immediately prior to the election. The reason this is concerning is simple - in recent years 'policy-uncertainty' has been extremely highly correlated to market-uncertainty (VIX, for example) suggesting that we are due for a rather large risk flare over the next few months. Believing in the omnipotent capabilities of central banks (or governments) to levitate markets in an election year is all well but if the path to that 'outperformance' includes a 20% dip, does anyone stay to benefit? With fiscal drags of $200bn to $650bn based on election-outcomes, it seems the policy-uncertainty cycle is not priced in at all.

• Bundesbank Maintains Opposition to ECB Bond Buying (WSJ)
• Greek Budget Talks Stumble as EU Urges Samaras to Deliver (Bloomberg)
• Fortified by euro, Finns take bailouts on the chin (Reuters)
• China Job Market for Graduates Shows Stress on Slowdown (Bloomberg)
• China Exports Fade as Inflation Eludes Targets: Cutting Research (Bloomberg)
• Japan Falters as Ito Calls for Euro Buys to Rein in Yen: Economy (Bloomberg)
• Government weighs social insurance reforms (China Daily)
• Colombia’s Split Central Bank to Weigh First Rate Cut Since 2010 (Bloomberg)

• Draghi Says ECB To Do Whatever Needed As Yields Threaten Europe (Bloomberg)
• Spain not mulling seeking further EU help (Reuters)... and it won't need a Bank bailout either. Oh wait
• Weak lending adds pressure for ECB action (Reuters)
• Sweden's economy still resilient to eurozone woes (Reuters)
• Bo Xilai’s Wife, Zhang Xiaojun, Prosecuted for Homicide (Xinhua)
• China’s Changsha City Unveils $130 Billion Investment Plan (Bloomberg)
• Foreclosure Filings Increase in 60% of Large U.S. Cities (Bloomberg)
• Free ECB’s hand to aid states, says minister (FT)
• Hungarian Premier Says Aid Deal Not Near (WSJ)
• Nomura Chief Resigns Over Insider Trading Scandal (NYT)

The guy who openly admitted he was getting notification from the BOE to manipulate Libor, and was advising his traders appropriately, Barclays' COO Jerry del Missier, and who quit the same day as his boss Bob Diamond, has finally had his pay package revealed. The payoff to get him out and shut him up? £8,750,000.

Well not really, but it will be someone else's fault of course that there was gambling going on here. There is no way the head of the New York Fed at the time could have possibly known that Barclays was manipulating its Libor rate. Recall: : “Barclays: You know, LIBORs being set too low anyway, but uh, yeah, that-that is correct. Fed person: “Yeah.” Supposedly Geithner is not the Fed person. Anyway, the scheduled topic of today's hearing in the House Financial Services Committee is the annual report of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) but the hearing seems likely to be dominated by questions about manipulation of LIBOR rate. Watch it live here.

• ECB's Nowotny - ESM banking license could be advantageous (Reuters) - just keep regurgitating headlines until they generate a short squeeze
• IMF Says China Downside Risks Significant as Growth Slows (Bloomberg)
• Moody's cuts outlook on EU stability facility to negative (Reuters)
• Rome places spending controls on Sicily (FT)
• Big banks' glory days feared to be gone for good (Reuters)
• China's CNOOC scoped Nexen, partnered, then pounced (Reuters)
• Germany backs Spanish austerity plans (FT)
• Are 2012 Games one too many for London? (Reuters)
• Euro Crisis Spreading East Damps Growth, Development Bank Says (Bloomberg)
• Japan Flags Yen-Sales Impact as BOJ Eyes More Easing (Bloomberg)