PrefBlog

The populist movement against Wall Street is having the desired effect:

Wall Street’s largest trade group has started a campaign to counter the “populist” backlash against bankers, enlisting two former aides to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to spearhead the effort.
…
Michele Davis, Paulson’s former spokeswoman, and Jim Wilkinson, his former chief of staff, are among those leading the effort. SIFMA is paying their firm, Brunswick Group LLC, a monthly retainer of $70,000, the documents show. Both Davis and Wilkinson declined to comment. Paulson left office in January.

Assisting them is a Democratic polling company, Brilliant Corners Research and Strategies, which is paid $5,000 a month. It is run by pollster Cornell Belcher, who worked on President Barack Obama’s campaign. BKSH & Associates Worldwide, a lobbying firm chaired by Republican strategist Charlie Black, signed on for $10,000.

I’ve been figuring that Dubai would be the logical refuge for hedge funds made unwelcome in the G-7. But who knows? Maybe it’s Singapore:

Assan Din, a former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. credit trader, is setting up a hedge fund to trade corporate bonds and derivatives in Asia.

SaKa Capital’s fund, which will have a capacity of more than $500 million, will start in September with $25 million to $50 million sourced mainly from founding members and friends, Din, 38, said. The Singapore-based firm will subsequently raise capital from institutional investors, including U.S. pension funds and endowments, once it builds a track record, he added.

A nice little bump in volume today, with a good solid up-day for preferreds. I suspect that some of the relatively short list of price movers were there because some players didn’t know (or didn’t care) that CM went ex-Dividend today.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 12:15 am and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.