Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, fundada en 1850, fue una compañía global de servicios financieros de Estados Unidos. Destacaba en banca de inversión, gestión de activos financieros e inversiones en renta fija, banca comercial, gestión de inversiones y servicios bancarios en general.
Lehman Brothers sobrevivió a una guerra civil, a la crisis bancaria de 1907, similar a la originada en 2008, a la crisis económica mundial conocida como el crac de 1929, a escándalos en su papel de intermediador de bonos y a colapsos en hedge funds, pero no consiguió superar la crisis subprime de 2008 que constituye, con un pasivo de $613.000 millones, la mayor quiebra de la historia hasta el momento. El 15 de septiembre de 2008, Lehman Brothers anunció la presentación de su quiebra. Fuente: Wikipedia, 2016.
Documental.
Margin Call
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Margin Call
(El precio de la codicia)
Las personas clave de un banco de inversión, 24 horas antes de la crisis subprime, están tratando de deshacerse de los bonos hipotecarios malos presentándolos como una inversión segura y rentable a sus clientes.
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Inspirada en el colapso de Lehman Brothers y el escándalo de las hipotecas subprime que marcó el inicio de la crisis financiera global de 2008.
Investors considering stocks have a din of data to sift through today.
Unfortunately, quantity is no guarantee of quality: It has never been harder for small investors to assess which information they should rely upon to make decisions. As a result, some investors have depended too heavily on the one-word recommendations of just a few analysts—without understanding the particular context in which such recommendations often are generated, and the particular ways in which they often must be read.
Analysts play a useful role in our capital markets. For example, by doing in-depth research for their large institutional clients and employers, analysts can help substantial sums of capital be directed to more productive uses in our economy.
This article explains what analysts do and places it in perspective, so investors can learn what other information they need for managing their portfolios.
The two key takeaways are: 1) analysts’ ratings do not have clear, standardized meanings; and 2) analysts might have potential conflicts of interest that you, as an investor, should be aware of in assessing the usefulness to you of any particular analyst recommendation.
Same Word, Different Meanings
Analysts usually summarize their research reports with a brief recommendation. Every firm uses its own rating system. Here are examples from three firms:
Firm A
Firm B
Firm C
Buy
Strong Buy
Recommended List
Outperform
Buy
Trading Buy
Neutral
Hold
Market Outperformer
Underperform
Sell
Market Perform
Avoid
Market Underperformer
As you can see, comparing these ratings scales is not easy. The same term might mean one thing for one firm and something else for another firm:
For example, as you can see above, Firm A rates its most positive recommendations as «Buy,» but Firm B does not. When Firm B uses a «Buy,» it means that Firm B likes the stock, but not as much as the stocks that it rates «Strong Buy.»
Likewise, one firm’s «Underperform» might mean that it expects a stock to appreciate 10 percent slower than the overall market over an 18-month period. For another firm, the same term «Underperform» might mean that it expects the stock to drop 5 percent within a 12-month period.
Clear «Sell» ratings have grown rare. Some firms no longer even use «Sell» or any word obviously like it. Frequently, a «Hold» rating in effect means «Sell.»
Even providers of so-called «consensus» ratings, such as I/B/E/S and First Call, use their own rating scales. These organizations apply numerical formulas to map several analysts’ different ratings scales to their own rating conventions. They then average their standardized recommendations to create a «consensus» rating for a particular security.
For all these reasons, it can be potentially damaging to your portfolio to automatically accept an analyst recommendation. Before you act on a recommendation, keep the following in mind:
Is it right for YOU? A «Buy» rating does not mean that every investor should acquire the stock. Nor does a «Sell» rating mean that every investor should immediately sell it. Your own financial situation and investment needs are what matter. If you consider any individual rating, do not view it in absolute or abstract terms, but in the context of your own unique financial situation.
Never rely on a rating alone. Do your investment homework. When considering an analyst recommendation, look at the full research report, not just the one-word rating. The full report will often provide information that is essential to explain risk factors or to put the recommendation into its proper perspective.
Analysts differ in quality. As in any other field, not every analyst can be the best. To learn about different analysts’ track records, you can either follow their recommendations over time, or refer to rankings that are found in certain investor-oriented magazines, newsletters and Internet websites. Some websites provide consensus recommendations, essentially an average of a number of analysts’ recommendations.
Conflicts of Interest
Research analysts study companies and draw on a wealth of industry, economic, and business trend information to help their clients make better investment decisions. Retail investors may believe that most analysts’ primary obligation is to the investing public. In fact, the full story is much more complicated.
Some analysts are unaffiliated: they sell their independent research to financial or investing institutions, banks, insurance companies or private investors on a project or subscription basis. But a large number of analysts are employed by institutions whose financial stake in their recommendations may go well beyond their accuracy.
For example, many analysts work for large financial firms that underwrite securities. An underwriter acts as an intermediary between the company publicly offering securities and investors buying the new stock. Even after the initial public offering, or IPO, it may have an ongoing relationship with the company or own a significant amount of the company’s stock. And it will often stand to benefit from analyst recommendations that would tend to support the price of, or encourage trading in, that security.
Other analysts work for institutional money managers, such as mutual funds, hedge funds or investment advisers. They may provide research and advice for institutional clients whose investment decisions can differ significantly from those faced by ordinary investors. A mutual fund that relied on its analyst’s earlier positive recommendation in acquiring the stock of a company might be harmed by any revised recommendation that would tend to lower the market value of the security.
Just by thinking about these kinds of employment arrangements, you can begin to imagine the kinds of conflicts that analysts may face as they develop and offer their opinions in research reports. For example:
Investment Banking Relationships. Providing investment banking services, such as underwriting an IPO or advising on a merger or acquisition, can be a lucrative source of revenue for an analyst’s firm. Thus, the analyst may feel an incentive not to say or write things that could jeopardize existing or potential client relationships for their investment banking colleagues. On the other hand, the analyst may also be more knowledgeable or diligent in his research because his firm did the underwriting.
Analyst Compensation.Brokerage firms’ compensation arrangements can put pressure on analysts to issue positive research reports and recommendations. For example, many analysts are paid at least partly and indirectly on the basis of their firms’ underwriting profits. So they may be reluctant to make recommendations that could reduce such profits, and hence their own compensation.
Brokerage Commissions. An analyst’s report can help firms make money indirectly by generating more buying and selling of covered securities—which, in turn, result in additional commissions for the firm.
Buy-Side Pressures.A mutual fund with large holdings in a stock has little desire to see an analyst put out a «Sell» recommendation on that security and possibly contribute to a sharp decline in its price. Hence the proliferation of euphemistic ratings—such as «Hold,» «Retain,» and «Market Perform»—which small investors may take at face value, but which professional and institutional investors know are often tantamount to «Sell.» As a result, ratings inflation became as widespread and unhealthy in our markets as grade inflation in our schools.
Ownership Interests in the Company. An analyst, other employees, and the firm itself may own significant positions in the companies or market sectors on which the analyst conducts research and makes recommendations. The analyst may own such shares directly, or through employee stock-purchase pools.
These economic realities certainly do not mean that analysts are corrupt or even biased. But because analysts are called upon to make so many judgments that are not black and white, any of the above factors can put pressure on their objectivity—no matter how honest or competent they may be. So you should bear these realities in mind before making an investment decision.
Making Your Investment Decision
The fact that analysts or their firms may have conflicts of interest does not mean that their recommendations are without value. Often research reports will contain quantifiable measures—such as earnings predictions or comparisons to other companies in an industry sector—that you may decide provide useful insight even if you do not take the analyst’s rating at face value. In any case, you should take all potential conflicts into consideration in assessing how much weight you should give the recommendation.
The important thing to remember is that you should never rely solely on an analyst recommendation when making an investment decision. There are many other important sources of information and factors you may wish to consider. For example:
Research the company’s reports yourself, using the SEC’s EDGAR database. If you do not have access to the Internet, call the company for copies. If you can’t analyze them on your own, ask your broker or another trusted financial professional for help.
Speak with your broker or financial adviser and ask questions about the company and its prospects. When doing so, ask your broker about the relationship of his own firm, if any, to the company whose stock you are considering.
Learn about the company by consulting independent news reports, commercial databases, and other references.
Find out whether the analyst’s firm underwrote one of the company’s recent stock offerings—especially its initial public offering (IPO).
Find out more about analyst recommendations by consulting your broker or some of the other sources discussed in this Guide.
In short, whatever a given analyst recommendation may say, always consider whether a particular investment is right for you in light of your own financial circumstances. Remember, you are the boss, it’s your money, and your situation and goals that matter.
NBER Working Paper No. 11728 Issued in November 2005 NBER Program(s): CFIFM
Developments in the financial sector have led to an expansion in its ability to spread risks. The increase in the risk bearing capacity of economies, as well as in actual risk taking, has led to a range of financial transactions that hitherto were not possible, and has created much greater access to finance for firms and households. On net, this has made the world much better off. Concurrently, however, we have also seen the emergence of a whole range of intermediaries, whose size and appetite for risk may expand over the cycle. Not only can these intermediaries accentuate real fluctuations, they can also leave themselves exposed to certain small probability risks that their own collective behavior makes more likely. As a result, under some conditions, economies may be more exposed to financial-sector-induced turmoil than in the past. The paper discusses the implications for monetary policy and prudential supervision. In particular, it suggests market-friendly policies that would reduce the incentive of intermediary managers to take excessive risk.
S&P acuerda pagar una multa de US$1.500 millones para resolver un litigio en EE.UU.
Por Timothy W. Martin.
NUEVA YORK (EFE Dow Jones) — Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services acordó el martes pagar una multa de US$1.500 millones para resolver un litigio por supuestamente otorgar calificaciones elevadas a activos hipotecarios antes de la crisis financiera 2008.
La agencia calificadora pagará US$687,5 millones al Departamento de Justicia estadounidense, y otro importe similar a 19 estados y al Distrito de Columbia. La agencia alcanzó un acuerdo separado por el que pagará US$125 millones al Fondo de Pensiones de los Funcionarios de California.
El gobierno acusó a S&P de deliberadamente engañar a los inversionistas al otorgar calificaciones triple A a activos hipotecarios. Estas valoraciones resultaron ser incorrectas con el desplome del mercado inmobiliario, y provocaron rebajas generalizadas de calificaciones y contribuyeron a provocar la crisis financiera.
S&P no ha reconocido que llevara a cabo malas prácticas como parte del acuerdo, y afirma que no hay pruebas de que violara ninguna ley.
Este acuerdo resuelve una demanda interpuesta por el Departamento de Justicia estadounidense y algunos estados en 2013, y supone la multa más alta jamás pagada por una agencia de ratings para resolver un caso de uso de calificaciones elevadas antes de la crisis.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is examining how major investment banks and brokerage firms define and manage conflicts of interest between themselves and their clients. Will the first systematic look at conflicts on Wall Street in years make a difference for investors?
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In the next few weeks, according to Susan Axelrod, an executive vice president at Finra, its regulators will start to examine 14 big firms, which she declined to name.
Finra—a self-regulatory organization funded by the securities industry—telegraphed its intentions in May, when its chief executive, Richard Ketchum, said in a speech that «we will look to have a focused conversation with you about the conflicts you have identified and the steps you have taken to eliminate, mitigate or disclose each of them.»
Mr. Ketchum added that he would like detailed reviews of conflicts of interest to «become a standard part of operating procedure» on Wall Street.
Finra’s call appears to be the first time in nearly a decade that regulators have explicitly targeted the question of how Wall Street handles conflicts of interest. In a speech in 2003, Stephen Cutler, then director of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission (and now general counsel of J.P. Morgan Chase JPM +0.56% ), urged every financial firm to run a «top-to-bottom review» that would seek to correct «conflicts of interest of every kind.» He added, «No one is in a better position than you to identify» such conflicts.
Mr. Cutler’s speech, say other regulators, led to an outpouring of submissions to the SEC in which firms laid out the conflicts they had identified and the safeguards they had put in place to control them.
Investors should bear two things in mind in light of Finra’s examinations.
First, conflicts of interest aren’t a part of how Wall Street does business; conflicts are its stock-in-trade. Even as they were professing their purity to the SEC in response to Mr. Cutler’s call, many firms turned out to be enticing ignorant borrowers into taking out mortgages they couldn’t afford, unloading portfolios of toxic debt on unsuspecting clients and manipulating one of the world’s most widely used interest rates for their own benefit.
«We understand that conflicts exist,» says Ms. Axelrod of Finra. «What defines firms and their culture is how they deal with those conflicts.»
Even so, it might be too much to expect Wall Streeters to identify their own conflicts.
In a recently published study, researchers led by behavioral economist George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University asked hundreds of physicians and financial planners to evaluate conflict-of-interest policies. Half of each group read a set of proposed rules to minimize conflicts for doctors; the other half saw almost-identically worded rules to reduce conflicts for financial planners.
The doctors were outraged that financial advisers might accept pens, coffee mugs, free meals or educational junkets from investment companies. Yet the physicians rejected the idea that accepting pens, coffee mugs, free meals or educational junkets from drug companies could ever compromise the integrity of doctors.
The financial planners wanted doctors to be barred from accepting gifts from pharmaceutical companies, lest their objectivity be compromised—but thought the same restrictions in their own profession would be unnecessary and onerous.
In short, our eagle eye for spotting other people’s biases is blind as a bat’s to our own.
«Each of us tends to think that we are much more fair and more impartial than other people are,» says Prof. Loewenstein. «So we believe there’s no need for us to worry that we might be influenced by conflicts of interest, even as we think everyone else is.»
«There’s plenty of people who sell bad stuff knowingly,» says Robert Seawright, chief investment officer at Madison Avenue Securities, a financial-advisory firm in San Diego, «but I think the far bigger problem is inappropriate sales that are well-intended. I’ve seen people who sell bad stuff to their moms, because they thought it was the right thing.»
Remember now, as always, that the individual investor is at the bottom of Wall Street’s food chain—a speck of plankton adrift in a sea of predators.
The challenge is to defend yourself without being offensive. Never forget to ask your financial adviser: What benefit is there for you in selling this investment to me? And with a kind voice and a smile, ask for the answer in writing.
Fuente: The Wall Street Journal, 2012.