Thursday, January 17, 2013

Futures Down Slightly; Transocean Rising

Associated PressCould have done more?

Futures for the leading stock indexes were down a slight fraction ahead of Monday’s bell.

Shares of Transocean (RIG) are up about 3% following news that activist investor Carl Icahn has bought into the company and plans on growing his stake.

United Parcel Service (UPS) shares are fairly steady, down just over 0.6%, despite the company calling off its proposed $7 billion takeover of TNT Express due to obstacles raised by the European Commission.

In other corporate news, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which reports earnings on Wednesday, is said to be considering the release a report that voices criticisms of CEO Jamie Dimon for running the bank’s operations in a way that led to its $6 billion London whale losses:

The final report, which builds on a preliminary analysis released in July, is critical of senior managers including Dimon, 56, former Chief Financial Officer Doug Braunstein, 51, and ex-Chief Investment Officer Ina Drew, 56, for inadequately supervising traders in a U.K. unit that amassed an illiquid position in credit derivatives last year, the people said.

In a fairly quiet morning, shares of Sprint (S) are down about 2%, with Dow Jones Newswires reporting the company was downgraded to Neutral by analysts at UBS.

Bloomberg has a good story this morning about one of the effects of lower stock trading volume — the fact that the brunt of layoffs at Wall Street banks are coming from equity units:

Employees on stocks desks fell by 8.5 percent globally in the first nine months of last year, according to a survey by Coalition Ltd., an industry analytics firm. That compares with a 6.6 percent drop in fixed-income workers and a 5.8 percent decrease for origination and advisory functions, the data show.

Banks fired workers in equities after declining trading volume reduced revenue at the same time as the growth of automated stock and options transactions squeezed margins.

 

 

 

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