There’s no smoking gun, but staff turnover may have played a role in the JPMorgan data breach:
As hackers pierced JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s (JPM) defenses in June, the bank’s cybersecurity chief was just getting acquainted with his employer and its sprawling technology infrastructure.
Greg Rattray, a former U.S. Air Force commander for information warfare, became JPMorgan’s head of information security that month after upheaval at the highest levels of the bank’s tech division. His predecessor, Anthony Belfiore, had resigned early this year to join at least five JPMorgan leaders at First Data Corp. In between, Anish Bhimani was acting security officer while holding at least one other tech role.
…
JPMorgan’s technology leaders began leaving after April 2013, when the bank’s co-chief operating officer, Frank Bisignano, 55, departed to become CEO of First Data, the Atlanta-based payment processor. He has known Dimon since the 1980s, serving as his longtime deputy. Bisignano’s last job at JPMorgan included a focus on technology and security.He was joined a few months later by Guy Chiarello, JPMorgan’s chief information officer since 2007, who became First Data’s president. Chiarello is an industry veteran who was previously CIO at Morgan Stanley, where he spent more than two decades.
Tom Higgins, JPMorgan’s head of operational control in charge of physical and technology security, also joined First Data. So did Cindy Armine, JPMorgan’s compliance chief, and Christine Larsen, a JPMorgan executive vice president in charge of process improvement and enterprise-program management.
This is a guy I like:
[Founder of ThinkTank Learning Steven] Ma, a former hedge fund analyst, makes bets on student admissions the way a trader plays the commodities markets. Using 12 variables from a student’s profile—from grades and test scores to extracurricular activities and immigration status—Ma’s software crunches the odds of admission to a range of top-shelf colleges. His proprietary algorithm assigns varying weights to different parameters, derived from his analysis of the successes and failures of thousands of students he’s coached over the years. Ma’s algorithm, for example, predicts that a U.S.-born high school senior with a 3.8 GPA, an SAT score of 2,000 (out of 2,400), moderate leadership credentials, and 800 hours of extracurricular activities, has a 20.4 percent chance of admission to New York University and a 28.1 percent shot at the University of Southern California. Those odds determine the fee ThinkTank charges that student for its guaranteed consulting package: $25,931 to apply to NYU and $18,826 for USC.
…
College admissions officers and other educators scoff at Ma’s guarantees; they say no one can predict acceptances to elite colleges because grades and scores are only one part of the highly subjective process. Ma counters that anything can be quantified. His algorithm runs so-called inference calculations using the profile data from thousands of ThinkTank students who’ve already racked up acceptances and rejections from top schools. “With enough data,” he says, “nothing is subjective.”
It’s an interesting article; I find the current emphasis on extracurricular activities to be very strange. Who cares? Is there any reason to believe that they make you a better person, even supposing that being a good person should have any influence on university acceptance?
It is my belief that whatever might have been the case when precious little extracurricular activities were less pervasive, they now measure little more than willingness to jump through arbitrary hoops – and in many cases, “willingness” is a secondary matter, given that you need forty ‘community hours’ to graduate from high school. I think the emphasis on these things does more to breed hypocrisy and robotic obedience than good citizenship – and Mr. Ma’s systematic gaming of the system is a good illustration!
More regulations imply more games. Some consider this news:
Banks in the European Union that attempt to evade new bonus rules face a “coordinated policy response” from the bloc’s regulators.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s financial-services chief, called for action on the “politically very important matter” of lenders that have turned to so-called allowances to get around an EU ban on bonuses worth more than twice fixed pay.
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Barclays Plc (BARC), HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc are among banks that have introduced allowances in response to the bonus limit. Lenders have warned that the cap will harm their competitiveness and force them to increase fixed pay.Allowances, also known as role-based pay, are a regularly adjustable part of employees’ pay packets. They are considered by the banks to be part of salary unaffected by the bonus cap.
Some consider enormous housing-related consumer debt to be a problem. Some don’t.:
Sweden’s Social Democrats are heading for a national election victory backed by housing plans that could dig the country deeper into debt.
Magdalena Andersson, the party’s economic spokeswoman and the likely finance minister if the Social Democrat-led opposition prevails in this month’s election, has proposed using state-owned bank SBAB to bring down mortgage rates, already at four-year lows, to make housing more affordable. Andersson, whose party would boost spending on healthcare and education as well as housing, also suggested relaxing some rules designed to stem the growth in household debt, which is at an all-time high.
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The country’s housing shortage, a consequence of a growing population and strict regulations that stymie new construction, has caused prices to more than double since 2000. As home values have jumped, so has household borrowing. It increased 5.5 percent in July — the most in 34 months — driven by a 5.8 percent increase in mortgage borrowing, Statistics Sweden said Aug. 27. Swedish households with mortgages owe their creditors an average of almost four times their disposable income while the overall average debt load of Swedes is about 175 percent.
It was a mixed day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts gaining 4bp, FixedResets down 8bp and DeemedRetractibles off 3bp. Volatility was below average. Volume was extremely low.
| HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices Values are provisional and are finalized monthly |
|||||||
| Index | Mean Current Yield (at bid) |
Median YTW |
Median Average Trading Value |
Median Mod Dur (YTW) |
Issues | Day’s Perf. | Index Value |
| Ratchet | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | -0.0967 % | 2,642.2 |
| FixedFloater | 4.14 % | 3.39 % | 25,268 | 18.58 | 1 | 0.2622 % | 4,189.4 |
| Floater | 2.90 % | 3.07 % | 47,642 | 19.47 | 4 | -0.0967 % | 2,732.2 |
| OpRet | 4.05 % | -0.32 % | 97,880 | 0.08 | 1 | 0.0000 % | 2,727.1 |
| SplitShare | 4.29 % | 3.85 % | 116,203 | 3.94 | 5 | -0.0238 % | 3,152.2 |
| Interest-Bearing | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.0000 % | 2,493.7 |
| Perpetual-Premium | 5.47 % | 0.40 % | 86,904 | 0.09 | 20 | -0.0805 % | 2,435.2 |
| Perpetual-Discount | 5.21 % | 5.13 % | 106,777 | 15.21 | 16 | 0.0401 % | 2,609.2 |
| FixedReset | 4.24 % | 3.71 % | 181,956 | 6.62 | 74 | -0.0780 % | 2,567.1 |
| Deemed-Retractible | 5.00 % | 1.30 % | 103,410 | 0.14 | 42 | -0.0323 % | 2,566.3 |
| FloatingReset | 2.62 % | 0.00 % | 74,717 | 0.08 | 6 | 0.0719 % | 2,534.7 |
| Performance Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Change | Notes |
| IGM.PR.B | Perpetual-Premium | -1.91 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2018-12-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.67 Bid-YTW : 5.39 % |
| MFC.PR.F | FixedReset | -1.83 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 22.52 Bid-YTW : 4.44 % |
| Volume Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Shares Traded |
Notes |
| MFC.PR.E | FixedReset | 241,461 | Called for redemption September 19. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.98 Bid-YTW : 4.86 % |
| BAM.PR.P | FixedReset | 191,225 | Called for redemption September 30. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-10-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.41 Bid-YTW : 3.13 % |
| MFC.PR.M | FixedReset | 47,476 | Recent new issue. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2019-12-19 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.03 Bid-YTW : 3.95 % |
| SLF.PR.H | FixedReset | 33,580 | RBC crossed 19,100 at 25.35. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2016-09-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.31 Bid-YTW : 3.17 % |
| BMO.PR.T | FixedReset | 20,940 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-09-08 Maturity Price : 23.25 Evaluated at bid price : 25.27 Bid-YTW : 3.74 % |
| BAM.PR.M | Perpetual-Discount | 19,284 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-09-08 Maturity Price : 21.65 Evaluated at bid price : 21.65 Bid-YTW : 5.60 % |
| There were 12 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares. | |||
| Wide Spread Highlights | ||
| Issue | Index | Quote Data and Yield Notes |
| IGM.PR.B | Perpetual-Premium | Quote: 25.67 – 26.50 Spot Rate : 0.8300 Average : 0.5810 YTW SCENARIO |
| PVS.PR.C | SplitShare | Quote: 25.78 – 26.90 Spot Rate : 1.1200 Average : 0.9214 YTW SCENARIO |
| RY.PR.C | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 25.62 – 25.99 Spot Rate : 0.3700 Average : 0.2353 YTW SCENARIO |
| MFC.PR.F | FixedReset | Quote: 22.52 – 22.80 Spot Rate : 0.2800 Average : 0.1761 YTW SCENARIO |
| PWF.PR.A | Floater | Quote: 20.75 – 21.28 Spot Rate : 0.5300 Average : 0.4381 YTW SCENARIO |
| GWO.PR.L | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 25.70 – 25.95 Spot Rate : 0.2500 Average : 0.1803 YTW SCENARIO |