Equity Carve-outs Popular in 2009 sparking copycat action in 2010!

Equity carve-outs (aka partial spinoffs) where a parent company sells off a minority stake in a subsidiary for an IPO or rights offering. JPM collected $2.2 bn in fees from underwriting in 2009. Reuters reports.

Economists Arbitrarily Warn Pound May Fall Below Parity with Euro, Deflation in Japan may lead to Monetary Easing

This has been sparked by what the Times calls "unconvincing plans" to deal with the government's £178m budget deficit. The pound is trading at 1.10 versus the euro. The closest it got to parity was 1.02 one year back. Expectation of a Tory election win and consequent tougher action to tackle the currency slide is preventing the pound falling further, some observers say. Douglas McWilliams, Chief Exec of CEBR, is betting on parity being broken. A heightened risk of a downgrade to Britain's sovereign debt rating has been mentioned too. More technical currency stories can be read about here.

Japan had 9 months of deflation in November, with weak demand hitting prices. This is putting pressure on BoJ for monetary easing. Japan's public debt is currently around 200% of GDP. Japan's GDP per capita has been decreasing since the bubble burst in 1990. Japan's IIP at year end 2008 was 225 trillion yen, a 9.9% decrease from the previous year, the first decrease in 3 years, mainly due to appreciation of the yen (and resultant decrease in value of foreign-currency denominated assets). Assets included derivative products (mainly currency options held by banks).

Banking on America: Brian Moynihan is Crowned the New Ken Lewis

Senior exec Brian M. has now been appointed BoA CEO having successfully dislodged John Thain. He originally came from FleetBoston which was acquired by BoA in 2004. He worked for FleetBoston for 11 years. Scrutiny over the ML deal proved too much for Ken Lewis who will retire on Dec 31.

Nobel Laureate Warns of US Contraction in 2nd half of 2010

Joseph Stiglitz from Gary, Indiana, is a Nobel-prize winning economist. He was an active member of the debate team at Amherst College (where the endowment per student is around $740,000), about 2 hours from downtown Boston. He won the Nobel Prize for his work on screening, where one agent attempts to rectify an information asymmetry. Stiglitz has also written about information economics.

Private Equity Attacks Invesment Banking: Citi Assailed by Guy Hands' "Solid Earth"

Terra Firma (Latin for "solid earth"), the PE group of Guy Hands which he spun out of Nomura International, is suing Citigroup over the EMI deal in 2007 in which it paid £2.5bn (which they referred to as a "fraudulently inflated price", or was it £4bn?) at the height of the buyout boom. Citi acted as adviser to EMI. Guy is a graduate in PPE from Mansfield College, Oxford (founded on the principle that "dissenters" had the right to study at Oxford).

Edinburgh More Wealthy Than Imperial, but University of Denver Beats them All

Endowment, transfer of money (from donations) to an institution usually stipulating principal must remain intact for a stipulated time period, to allow the donation to have more impact than if it were spent all at once. The only UK universities with significant endowments relative to the US are Oxford and Cambridge (£2bn), which would put them in about 15th place when ranked against US universities. Harvard has an endowment of $18bn, Yale $11bn, Princeton $8bn. Imperial College is not even in top 10 in UK. 3rd place (below Oxbridge) is Edinburgh with £160m.

1000=10, North Korea's Aggressive Redenomination strikes at Inflation

N Korea is redenominating won currency according to NY times. Two zeroes are being removed from the nominal value of bills to fight inflation; 1,000 won notes are being exchanged for 10-won notes.

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