Nuns Accuse Banks in $5m Lawsuit
THE TELEGRAPH: Germany's Deutsche Bank and US investment bank Morgan Stanley are facing a $5m lawsuit led by a group of Irish nuns.

No banker is likely to risk describing what they do as "God's work", but they might hope at least not to get on the wrong side of His earthly followers.

Unlucky then for Germany's Deutsche Bank and US investment bank Morgan Stanley, who are facing a $5m (£3.2m) lawsuit led by a group of Irish nuns.

The Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary, the Holy Faith Sisters and the Irish Veterinary Benevolent Fund are among a group of 88 Irish individuals suing the two banks.

The nuns allege the two banks profited at their expense by failing to redeem an investment linked to the debt of German financial group Dresdner Bank and in so doing cost them millions of pounds. >>> Harry Wilson, Financial Services Correspondent | Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Morgan Stanley Fears German Exit from EMU
THE TELEGRAPH: Morgan Stanley has warned that the Greek debt crisis is setting off a chain of events that may prompt German withdrawal from the eurozone, with grim implications for investors caught off-guard.

"The backstop package for Greece and the ECB's climb-down on its collateral rules set a bad precedent for other euro area states and make it more likely that the euro area degenerates into a zone of fiscal profligacy, currency weakness, and higher inflationary pressures over time," said Joachim Fels, head of research, in a note to clients.

The US bank said a bail-out for Greece may be necessary to avoid a crisis for Europe's financial system, but warned that it also "sows the seeds for potentially even bigger problems further down the road".

Mr Fels said weak states cannot easily leave EMU because they would pay a stiff penalty in higher rates, would be stuck with euro debt contracts, and might need controls to stem capital flight. It is a different calculus for Germany, which would see lower rates and might view EMU exit as the only way to ensure monetary stability. >>> Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | Thursday, April 15, 2010

Wall Street Giants Pay Staff $100bn
THE SUNDAY TIMES: FOUR of Wall Street’s biggest banks will this week reveal plans to pay their staff a total of close to $100 billion (£62 billion), reigniting the row over bankers’ bonuses.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are all expected to announce bumper pay awards for staff alongside full-year results.

Wall Street’s big payouts come as the remuneration committee at Royal Bank of Scotland prepares to meet this week to determine the size of its bonus pot.

RBS — 84%-owned by British taxpayers — has indicated it wants to pay its investment bankers about £1.5 billion in bonuses, even though it will make a loss this year at group level. The figure could creep higher if it attempts to shelter its bankers from the impact of Alistair Darling’s 50% tax on bonuses. >>> Iain Dey | Sunday, January 17, 2010

Big Banks Paid Billions in Bonuses Amid Wall St. Crisis
NEW YORK TIMES: Thousands of top traders and bankers on Wall Street were awarded huge bonuses and pay packages last year, even as their employers were battered by the financial crisis.

Nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008, according to a report released Thursday by Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general.

At Goldman Sachs, for example, bonuses of more than $1 million went to 953 traders and bankers, and Morgan Stanley awarded seven-figure bonuses to 428 employees. Even at weaker banks like Citigroup and Bank of America, million-dollar awards were distributed to hundreds of workers.

The report is certain to intensify the growing debate over how, and how much, Wall Street bankers should be paid.

In January, President Obama called financial institutions “shameful” for giving themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses as the economy was faltering and the government was spending billions to bail out financial institutions.

On Friday, the House of Representatives may vote on a bill that would order bank regulators to restrict “inappropriate or imprudently risky” pay packages at larger banks.

Mr. Cuomo, who for months has criticized the companies over pay, said the bonuses were particularly galling because the banks survived the crisis with the government’s support.

“If the bank lost money, where do you get the money to pay the bonus?” he said.

All the banks named in the report declined to comment. >>> Louise Story and Eric Dash | Thursday, July 30, 2009

Big City Bonuses Are Back
MAIL Online: City banks are preparing to lavish record bonuses on staff less than a year after bringing the world economy to the brink of meltdown.

Many high-flying traders and dealmakers are looking forward to ' mindblowing' payouts on a par with the rewards handed out at the height of the banking boom in 2007.

This is despite many of the banks only being able to turn a profit because they have been bailed out with taxpayers' money.

Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs is expected to confirm next week that it will pay an average of almost £400,000 in pay and bonuses to each of its 5,500 London-based staff - a total of £2.2billion.

Its profits are soaring on the back of the $6.2billion it received from the U.S. taxpayer last year.

Royal Bank of Scotland recently revealed chief executive Stephen Hester was in line for a £9.7million pay package if he brings the bailed-out bank's share price up to 70p.

Another bailed- out financial giant, Citigroup, is raising basic pay for many of its investment bankers and traders by up to 50 per cent, to make up for the loss in bonus pay.

Nationalised U.S. insurance firm AIG is planning to pay millions of dollars more in bonuses to dozens of top bosses across the world.

Last year it paid out more than £100million despite being rescued by the U.S. government after racking up £60billion in losses from reckless bets on toxic debt.

Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Barclays are also planning major rewards.

This is despite their actions triggering a recession which is expected to cost a million Britons their jobs.

The return of 'business as usual' to the banking sector makes a mockery of the Government's claim to have stamped out the culture of greed and reckless risk taking in the banking industry. Big City bonuses are back! Less than a year after banks took billions in taxpayer-funded bailouts... >>> Simon Duke | Saturday, July 11, 2009

RBS, Morgan Stanley and UBS to Axe 6,500 Jobs
Royal Bank of Scotland, Morgan Stanley and UBS are cutting more than 6,500 jobs in the latest blow to the ailing financial services industry.

RBS said it was in consultation with staff over plans to make 2,300 UK employees redundant. The cuts will affect about 2pc of UK staff.

Morgan Stanley kicked off its latest redundancy programme as part of a global restructuring that will see as many as 2,000 staff lose their jobs, hundreds of whom are likely to be UK based.

The majority of the RBS and Morgan Stanley redundancies are expected to come from back-office operations.

UBS said it would axe a further 2,200 jobs in its troubled investment bank. The Swiss institution expects staff numbers in the division to have shrunk to 15,000 by the end of this year, down from 26,000 in October 2007.

RBS, which claimed compulsory redundancies would be kept to a minimum, said the cuts would not affect customer-facing branch staff.

"It is essential that we consistently review our business to ensure that we are able to operate as efficiently as possible, especially in the current economic circumstances," said Alan Dickinson, chief executive of RBS UK. >>> By Jonathan Sibun | Tuesday, February 10, 2009

TIMES ONLINE:
Unemployment hits 12-year high of 1.97m >>> Grainne Gilmore | Wednesday, February 11, 2009

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The Greedy Bastards at ‘Goldmine’ Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Dresdner Kleinwort Just Can’t Steal Enough of Your Money!
BANKERS at four City firms have collected bonuses of more than £6.4billion this year, despite the worst financial crisis since 1929, it emerged yesterday.

While the rest of the country struggles under the ravages of the recession, London-based traders at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Dresdner Kleinwort have been notified of their bumper payouts.


They come despite the banks having reported a dramatic fall in profits and the Government bail-out of the banking sector.



Goldman Sachs has taken billions of taxpayer funds, as has Morgan Stanley.



And the huge payouts will hand further ammunition to those critics who blame the greed of bankers for the global economic crisis.



They believe such large bonuses have created a culture of short-termism and recklessness which fuelled the excesses in the run-up to the credit crunch and led to millions of jobs being lost. What Recession? £6.4bn Bonuses for City Bankers >>> By Mark Reynolds and Michael Pickard | Monday, December 22, 2008

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Sobering Up: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to Transform Themselves into Holding Companies
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last big independent investment banks on Wall Street, will transform themselves into bank holding companies subject to far greater regulation, the Federal Reserve said Sunday night, a move that fundamentally reshapes an era of high finance that defined the modern Gilded Age.

The firms requested the change themselves, even as Congress and the Bush administration rushed to pass a $700 billion rescue of financial firms. It was a blunt acknowledgment that their model of finance and investing had become too risky and that they needed the cushion of bank deposits that had kept big commercial banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase relatively safe amid the recent turmoil.

It also is a turning point for the high-rolling culture of Wall Street, with its seven-figure bonuses and lavish perks for even midlevel executives. It effectively returns Wall Street to the way it was structured before Congress passed a law during the Great Depression separating investment banking from commercial banking, known as the Glass-Steagall Act.

By becoming bank holding companies, the firms are agreeing to significantly tighter regulations and much closer supervision by bank examiners from several government agencies rather than only the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, the firms will look more like commercial banks, with more disclosure, higher capital reserves and less risk-taking.

For decades, firms like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs thrived by taking bold bets with their own money, often using enormous amounts of debt to increase their profits, with little outside oversight.

They were the envy of Wall Street, dominating the industry’s most lucrative businesses, landing headline-grabbing deals and advising companies and governments around the world on mergers, stock offerings and restructurings.

But that brash model was torn apart over the last several weeks as investors lost confidence in the way they made those bets during the recent credit boom, when investment banks expanded with aplomb into esoteric securities, the risks of which were not easily understood. Radical Shift for Goldman and Morgan >>> By Andrew Ross Sorkin and Vikas Bajaj | September 21, 2008

BBC:
Morgan Stanley in 20% Stake Sale: Japanese banking giant Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group has said it will buy a stake in its bruised Wall Street rival Morgan Stanley.

The firm said the stake will account for 10% to 20% of Morgan Stanley's common shares.

A price has not yet been decided. Further details will be revealed after the group has completed due diligence. >>> | September 22, 2008

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Morgan Stanley vor Übernahme durch Wachovia
DIE PRESSE: Die nächste große US-Investmentbank steht offenbar kurz vor der Übernahme. Morgan Stanley sei in Gesprächen mit Wachovia, berichten Medien. Auch von der chinesischen CITIC ist die Rede. Die Aktie brach zuvor um 40 Prozent ein.

Die US-Investmentbank Morgan Stanley ist in Vorgesprächen über eine Übernahme durch die Bank Wachovia, wie eine mit der Angelegenheit vertraute Person am Mittwoch der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters mitteilte. Daneben berichtete der Sender CNBC, Morgan Stanley sei in Gesprächen mit der von China kontrollierten Bank CITIC. Von Morgan Stanley war zunächst niemand für eine Stellungsnahme dazu erreichbar. Morgan Stanley vor Übernahme durch Wachovia >>> | 18. September 2008

DIE PRESSE:
Preis für Gold steigt weiter rasant: Die Krise der Finanzmärkte hat Investoren zu einer regelrechten Flucht in sicher geltende Anlageformen getrieben. Der Preis für eine Feinunze legte innerhalb eines Tages um mehr als 100 Dollar zu. >>> | 18. September 2008

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GCC Islamic Banks Assets Hit $300bn
ISLAMONLINE: A new report by Morgan Stanley has found that the 22 Islamic banks in the GCC have over $300bn of Sharia-compliant assets and were poised for double digit growth sustainable over the next decade, reported Bahrain Tribune. The report also forecasts that Islamic assets in the GCC would grow to 18% of system assets by 2012 from its current 13%.

A new report by Morgan Stanley has found that the 22 Islamic banks in the GCC have over $300bn of Sharia-compliant assets and were poised for double digit growth sustainable over the next decade, reported Bahrain Tribune. The report also forecasts that Islamic assets in the GCC would grow to 18% of system assets by 2012 from its current 13%. [Source: GCC Islamic banks assets hit $300bn]

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
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