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/ 11 September 2008
Lehman Brothers, desperate for capital and fighting for its survival, unveiled a plan to shed weak assets and sell a stake in its funds business.
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/ 10 September 2008
Ailing investment bank Lehman Brothers announced on Wednesday an estimated $3,9-billion loss in its fiscal third quarter.
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/ 10 September 2008
Lehman Brothers is set to announce its ”strategic initiatives” on Wednesday that could include plans to sell British real estate assets to BlackRock.
Share prices dropped sharply on the world’s financial markets early last week amid fears that the year-long credit crunch is entering a dangerous new
Global analysts Lehman Brothers said on Wednesday that they viewed central bank governor Tito Mboweni’s speech on Tuesday as "mildly hawkish".
With government workers asking for higher wage increases than the 10,5% announced on Wednesday, the spectre of strikes and second-round inflationary effects looms.
Increasing confidence that the worst of the credit crisis is over boosted world stocks on Monday while inflation concerns grew with oil prices heading towards a barrel. Investors have stopped taking it for granted the United States Federal Reserve will cut interest rates later in the week, although most still expect such a move.
One of the most decisive rates meetings yet of the South African Reserve Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) began on Wednesday morning with "no hitches", according to a bank spokesperson. The meeting will end after lunchtime on Thursday, with the final decision announced live to the public just after 3pm.
Gold, oil, diamonds, metals: commodities have been booming. But as prices hit record highs, is the bubble about to burst? Turmoil in financial markets has, some analysts say, pushed prices well above fair market value across energy, metals and agricultural goods as investors take flight to supposed ”safe plays”.
A senior bond-portfolio manager and an emerging-markets analyst from Lehman Brothers both uttered the same dreaded word soon after reading what Tito Mboweni had said in Parliament on Wednesday: hawkish. In fact, Lehman Brothers now predicts a 50-basis-point increase in the repo rate on April 10 to 11,5%.
More than 20 000 people are forecast to lose their jobs on Wall Street as the credit crunch bites into business at financial institutions over the next two years. New York’s Independent Budget Office, a non-partisan agency which scrutinises the city’s finances, estimates that profits on Wall Street fell by 80% during 2007 to ,2-billion — the lowest level since 1994.
Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic are in talks about the feasibility of mass purchases of mortgage-backed securities in a bid to solve the global credit crisis, the Financial Times said on Saturday. The newspaper, without citing sources, said the talks were at an early stage and part of a broader exchange on how to battle the turmoil in financial markets,
South Africa’s power situation has improved after a two-day crisis that threatened supplies to mines, state electricity firm Eskom said on Wednesday, but rolling cuts are set to continue. Eskom has been struggling to contain South Africa’s power crisis, the result of years of underspending on electricity generation capacity.
The Federal Reserve slashed United States interest rates by a hefty three-quarters of a percentage point on Tuesday, giving a lift to stock markets already jubilant over stronger-than-expected investment bank earnings. Trying to avert a deep recession and financial market meltdown, the central bank cut less than many traders had expected but left the door open to additional reductions.
JP Morgan Chase set a deal to buy stricken rival Bear Stearns for a rock-bottom price, while the United States Federal Reserve expanded lending to securities firms for the first time since the Great Depression to prop up the financial system. The shock news, the biggest sign yet of how devastating the credit crisis is for Wall Street, slammed the US dollar to a record low against the euro,
The global credit crunch claimed its biggest victim yet on Friday when the United States Federal Reserve orchestrated an emergency bail-out for Bear Stearns after a cash crisis prompted a run on the US’s fifth-biggest investment bank. President George Bush sought to calm fears of a deep recession in the world’s biggest economy.
An affiliate of United States-based buyout firm Carlyle Group has defaulted on about ,6-billion of debt and expects its lenders to seize remaining assets as the global credit crunch tightens around leveraged investors. A ”successful refinancing is not possible,” Carlyle Capital said.
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/ 15 January 2008
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=zuma_report"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/243078/zuma.jpg" align=left border=0></a>Global analysts Lehman Brothers said in a research note on Tuesday that African National Congress president Jacob Zuma’s high-growth policy plans sounded "rather expensive", with funding probably coming from the budget surplus.
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/ 21 November 2007
Oil soared to record highs on Wednesday, drawing within a hair’s breadth of the milestone as the United States dollar plumbed new lows and the onset of cold weather stirred anxiety over winter supplies. US light crude for January delivery surged to a record of ,29 a barrel early in the session, but pared those gains to stand 61 cents higher at ,64.
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/ 19 September 2007
The Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers has revealed that the global credit crunch knocked -million off its revenue over the summer as mortgage-backed securities plummeted in value. Lehman blamed an ”extremely difficult environment” in global financial markets for a 3% drop in its third-quarter profits to -billion.
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/ 10 September 2007
European stocks fell by midday on Monday in a choppy session as gains in commodity stocks were overshadowed by mounting concern that the United States economy could be headed for recession after Friday’s dismal jobs report. Oil and gas shares were the top performers on the broader European market in spite of a fall in crude oil futures.
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/ 3 September 2007
Given the outlook for continued strong investment over the next few years, it appears that South Africa’s trade balance is sustainable going forward at about current levels, said global analysts Lehman Brothers on Monday. However, they do expect the current high trade imports to affect the current-account deficit.