03.22.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:05 am by optionplayer
Slaughter and May earns £9.4m on Northern RockMichael Herman
Slaughter and May, the City law firm, earned £9.4 million as chief legal adviser to HM Treasury on the nationalisation of Northern Rock, dwarfing the amounts billed by other advisers.
The law firm took the lion’s share of the total £26.8 million in professional advisory fees paid by HM Treasury, billing almost double the £4.8 million paid to Goldman Sachs, the chief investment banking adviser.
Ernst & Young earned £4.4 million; BDO Stoy Hayward £4.5 million and Clifford Chance £2.4 million, according to HM Treasury figures published in the National Audit Office’s (NAO) report on Northern Rock.
Slaughter and May, which played a pivotal role in the Northern Rock rescue, earned its fees for “commercial legal advice and drafting of legal agreements”, the NAO report said.
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The firm’s overall take from the wider banking crisis is likely to be much higher: it has also advised HM Treasury on the recapitalisations of RBS, Lloyds TSB and HBOS, the collapse of the Icelandic banks, the establishment of the Bank of England’s special liquidity scheme and parts of what became the Banking Act 2009.
Charles Randell, a senior Slaughter and May partner, has been the lead adviser to HM Treasury working alongside others including Nilufer von Bismarck, a corporate partner, Matthew Tobin, a financing partner and financial regulation partner Ben Kingsley.
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03.19.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:21 pm by optionplayer
There is a write-up by Elliot Spitzer in Slate on what he thinks is the real scandal around the bailout monies distributed to AIG etc.
“…Post-Lehman’s collapse, they feared a systemic failure could be triggered by AIG’s inability to pay the counterparties to all the sophisticated instruments AIG had sold. And who were AIG’s trading partners? No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes. So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already…”
“…Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didn’t we already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and aren’t they sitting on more than $100 billion in cash? Haven’t we been told recently that they are beginning to come back to fiscal stability? If that is so, couldn’t they have accepted a discount, and couldn’t they have agreed to certain conditions before the AIG dollars—that is, our dollars—flowed?
The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation.
So here are several questions that should be answered, in public, under oath, to clear the air:
What was the precise conversation among Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, and Blankfein that preceded the initial $80 billion grant?
Was it already known who the counterparties were and what the exposure was for each of the counterparties?
What did Goldman, and all the other counterparties, know about AIG’s financial condition at the time they executed the swaps or other contracts? Had they done adequate due diligence to see whether they were buying real protection? And why shouldn’t they bear a percentage of the risk of failure of their own counterparty?
What is the deeper relationship between Goldman and AIG? Didn’t they almost merge a few years ago but did not because Goldman couldn’t get its arms around the black box that is AIG? If that is true, why should Goldman get bailed out? After all, they should have known as well as anybody that a big part of AIG’s business model was not to pay on insurance it had issued.
Why weren’t the counterparties immediately and fully disclosed?….”
Note: Let’s remember who Spitzer is. He was pushed out of office as the Governor of N.Y. and (previous) chief prosecutor of Wall Street last year with the “help” of a republican “rat fucker*” and the head of a prostitution ring (with an U.S. and two Israeli passports) seemingly because “he was making too much trouble” and because he actually wanted to investigate these scams.
* ratfucker: semi-official terminus technicus for a person specialized in plotical sabotage, smear campaigns and dirty tricks
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03.18.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:55 pm by optionplayer
Who should vote for what ?
As Europe is more concern with farmers than pensioners , what about something different 1 When Uk Government more concerned with bankers and their stability with taxpayers funds , what is really going on ?
Why should students pay for education then to be in serious debt 25,000.BP plus before they start to earn ?
Why in Europe it is FREE
Why should conservatives and others get away in Europe fiddling their expenses when they already are well looked after , not like here for the pensioners and those unemployed !!
Who is going to control, and attempt to STOP the waste ! and share some of these funds fairly?? !!
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03.12.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:19 pm by optionplayer
A Farce ! and will we ever know where the 50 Billion USD has gone !
why in today’s Herald tribune there is suggestions of Russian criminal involvement and maybe even Mossad – check out breakingnews.com
but who cares for the truth! when so many professional groups have failed the public and so doing failed wishful charities !
Evil Evil EVIL and this is not about one man !!! no way can do !! we maybe stupid but not that foolish and stupid !
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03.06.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:37 pm by optionplayer
Who is trying to fool who ? The other year we have Blair in America praising the US and how wonderful America has been , even though they commenced a horrendous War in the Middle East to satisfy Oil Greed and much evil! Now Brown praises the stimilus measure , which is globally about, saving banks with taxpayers money- and letting members of the banking Clan walk away the many many millions , in various individual cases many hundreds of millions like Stan O Neil ,the present CEO of Citi ! etc etc etc
Brown talks about recovery ? but for who ? and who has truly paid fir these packadges ? taxpayers money has not been respected ! so to let off many property speculators and dubious business schemes!!
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