BrokerDealer Icon “Ace” Greenberg; Frmr Bear Stearns Chief is Dead

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Courtesy of AP

Courtesy of AP

BrokerDealer.com blog post courtesy of extract from Bloomberg LP

July 25- Alan C. “Ace” Greenberg, who as chief executive officer of Bear Stearns Cos. transformed a small bond shop into the fifth-largest U.S. securities firm before it collapsed in 2008 in one of the key events of the global credit crisis, has died. He was 86.

He died Friday at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York of complications from cancer, his son, Ted Greenberg, said in an e-mail.

An amateur magician and bridge player, Mr. Greenberg took over New York-based Bear Stearns in 1978, when it was a private partnership with about 1,000 employees and $46 million in capital. He expanded shareholders’ equity to $1.8 billion and headcount reached 6,300 by 1993, when he handed power to James “Jimmy” Cayne, himself a one-time professional bridge player. Mr. Greenberg stayed on with Bear Stearns as an equities trader.

The forced sale of 85-year-old Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase & Co. in March 2008 followed a bank run by clients that left Bear Stearns on the brink of bankruptcy. The firm’s troubles traced to 2007, when two of its hedge funds tied to the real estate market collapsed. In a 2010 book, Mr. Greenberg said the run on Bear Stearns in 2008 stemmed from “a groundless rumor” that it had a liquidity problem at a time when it had $18 billion in cash reserves.

Chairman emeritus

On March 16, 2008, JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon agreed to buy Bear Stearns for $2 per share, later raised to $10. The stock had traded at $172 in January 2007. After the sale, Mr. Greenberg became vice chairman emeritus of JPMorgan.

“It’s hard to imagine a financial services industry without Ace,” Mr. Dimon and the firm’s head of asset management, Mary Erdoes, said Friday in a memo to employees.

Facebook, Inc. $FB Founder Mark Zuckerberg Now Worth $33 Billion as Shares Surge

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Mark Zuckerberg is now richer than Google Inc. co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, despite the company’s contentious IPO just 2 years ago with lead investment banker and brokerdealer Morgan Stanley.

According to Bloomberg, the Facebook Inc. chairman has added $2 billion (USD1.6 billion) to his fortune after the world’s largest social network closed at a record $74.98, and a rose further to $75.07 in after-hours trading.

The stock surge has pushed Zuckerberg’s net worth to $33.3 billion, taking him past Brin, 40, and Page, 41.

He has also surpassed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, 50, on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The index ranks Zuckerberg at No. 16 now with the Google founders at 17th and 18th respectively. Bezos occupies the 20th spot.

“He’s just getting started,” David Kirkpatrick, author of “The Facebook Effect,” told Bloomberg in a telephone interview. “He’s going to become the richest person on the planet.”

BrokerDealer Legg Mason Acquires Global Equity Specialist Martin Currie

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Brokerdealer Legg Mason has acquired Martin Currie Investment Management, a U.K.-based active global equity specialist, according to a press announcement by the firm.

The transaction is scheduled to close during the fourth quarter of 2014. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Martin Currie will become an independent investment affiliate of Legg Mason, along with Brandywine Global, ClearBridge Investments, The Permal Group, QS Investors, Royce & Associates and Western Asset Management.

Martin Currie has $9.8 billion in AUM, which would bring Legg Mason’s total to $713.8 billion.

Also as part of this transaction, Legg Mason Australian Equities, an active Australian equities manager, will become part of Martin Currie. LMAE’s strategies include small cap, property/infrastructure, income and large-cap value. LMAE’s investment teams will continue to manage these strategies.

More details to come.

Original Story Link: http://www.pionline.com/article/20140724/ONLINE/140729919/legg-mason-acquires-martin-currie

Biggest Swiss Bank/BrokerDealer UBS Busted For Money Laundering: Must Post $1bil Bond

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Below BrokerDealer.com blog post courtesy of extract from flash news story published 07.23 at NYT Deal Book

PARIS – UBS, the largest Swiss bank, was placed under formal investigation by the French authorities on Wednesday and ordered to post bail of more than $1 billion in the kind of tax-evasion case that ensnared it in the United States several years ago.

The bank, based in Zurich, faces charges of money laundering and tax fraud for helping French clients hide funds from the national tax administration from 2004 to 2012, an official in the Paris prosecutor’s office said. The official cannot be identified, in keeping with the rules of the office.

UBS has also been ordered to post bail of 1.1 billion euros (about $1.5 billion), the official said. The bank did not respond to requests for comment.

The news, first reported Wednesday by Agence France-Presse, was not entirely unexpected. A whistle-blower’s tip had led the authorities to the Swiss bank, and UBS was last year placed under formal investigation on suspicion that it illegally sold banking services to French citizens to enable them to move money offshore. It was ordered to pay a 10 million euro fine in that case over lax internal controls.

UBS has been entangled in tax cases with major governments for several years. Most notably, in 2009 it reached an agreement with the United States Justice Department to disclose client names and pay $780 million to avoid criminal prosecution. The bank acknowledged having defrauded the Internal Revenue Service by helping wealthy Americans evade taxes.

Credit Suisse, UBS’s cross-town rival, announced on Wednesday a second-quarter loss of $779 million after agreeing in May to plead guilty to conspiring to help Americans evade taxes and paying $2.6 billion in penalties.

UBS bankers in France used the same approach to tap wealthy investors that they used in the United States, according to French news reports, attending prestigious cultural and sporting events and seeking to mingle with high net-worth individuals through their social networks.

Bahrain Stock Exchange Embraces NASDAQ Trading Engine

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Brokerdealer.com blog update courtesy of extract from Traders Magazine 07.23 story by John D’Antona

tradersmagazine

A Middle East stock exchange is tapping the knowledge of one of the Northeast’s bourses.

The Bahrain Bourse and NASDAQ OMX have joined forces with the former activating its newest trading engine, which is powered by NASDAQ OMX’s X-stream trading platform. The project went live on Monday, July 14, providing Bahrain Bourse with a multi-asset trading platform.

“Replacing our trading platform is a milestone in the history of the Kingdom of Bahrain’s capital market, and is one of the key projects of the Bourse’s strategy that was adopted in 2011 to develop all work aspects at Bahrain Bourse,” said The Shaikh Khalifa bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa, chief executive at the Bahrain Bourse.

Bahrain’s new platform will enable it to provide more and advanced trading options for brokerdealers and investors and a variety of market participants, as well as create innovative products and services to match international demand. In addition to the new X-stream technology, the Middle East exchange will also continue to leverage the existing CSD technologies that have been provided and supported by NASDAQ OMX since 2000.

NASDAQ OMX’s exchange technology, including trading, clearing, CSD and market surveillance systems, is in operation in over 100 marketplaces across USA, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and Middle East.

The Bahrain Bourse was established as a shareholding company in 2010 to replace the Bahrain Stock Exchange that was established in 1987. There are 50 companies listed on the exchange, two mutual funds, and nine bonds/Islamic Sukuk. The three indices tracking the market’s performance are the Bahrain All Share Index, the Esterad Index (which consists of a basket of selected local-publicly listed companies), and the Dow Jones Bahrain Index.

Since its establishment, BHB has joined several regional and international organizations such as World Federation of Exchanges, Arab Federation of Exchanges, Federation of Euro-Asian Stock Exchanges and the Africa & Middle East Depositories Association.