JPMorgan Chase & Company (JPM) is in discussions to take full control of its U.K. joint-venture partner, Cazenove Group, for about £1 billion ($1.7 billion).   JPMorgan entered into a partnership with Cazenove five years ago. At that time, JPMorgan paid about £100 million for a 50% ownership in Cazenove.   Now, JPMorgan intends to buy the remaining 50% of the investment-banking partnership for 500−525 pence per share.   Chief Executive Naguib Kheraj, the former finance chief of Barclays PLC (BCS) is running JPMorgan Cazenove since last year. Cazenove first became one of London's leading stockbrokers in the mid-1930s.   Deciding on the full acquisition of Cazenove has been crucial for Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan. Dimon organized a similar purchase of the bank’s remaining stake in Highbridge Capital Management this year.   In the last few years, JPMorgan has been able to maintain its top ...

Barclays Plc (BCS) is contemplating to spin off a £4 billion portfolio of complex credit assets as part of the initiative to clean up its balance sheet and alleviate shareholder concerns over its risky investments.  The move is similar to the transaction it undertook last month with a £12.3 billion portfolio. The portfolio is made up of collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). CLOs are instruments that repackage portfolios of loans into tranches of different risks and returns.  Barclays could choose between two options for the sale of £4 billion of its toxic assets. It could either make a deal similar to the Protium deal which means that Barclays traders would leave the portfolio, or it could divest the whole to a third-party buyer.  Barclays seems more interested in a third-party transaction as CLO valuations have leapfrogged in recent months. A number of other banks worldwide − ...

GIC held over 9 pct of Citigroup prior to stake sale * Now has below 5 pct; will stay on as “portfolio investor” * GIC says realised $1.6 bln profit from sale * Citigroup shares up in premarket trade By Kevin Lim and Saeed Azhar SINGAPORE, Sept 22 - Singapore wealth fund GIC has halved its stake in Citigroup <C.N>, cashing in on a market rally for a profit of $1.6 billion, but signalling investor concerns over the outlook for global banks. The sale follows other divestments by sovereign funds from Western banks they helped rescue at the start of the financial crisis to use the money closer to home in emerging markets and in other growth sectors such as resources. In June, Abu Dhabi exited Barclays Plc <BARC.L> with a gain of about 1.5 billion pounds , though Temasek [TEM.UL], another Singapore wealth fund, lost an estimated $4 billion from an early exit from Bank of ...

U.S. stocks headed for a higher open on Monday as solid results from major European banks and expectations of a sales rebound for Ford Motor Co reinforced hopes that the recession is moderating.

Shares of Ford were up 7 percent at $8.58 before the bell after senior company executives said the automaker was on track to post its first monthly sales increase in two years.

In banking news, Barclays PLC reported an 8 percent rise in half-year profit, while HSBC Holdings PLC said its first-half profit halved from a year ago, but the results were better than the analyst consensus forecast.

“The greatest difficulty has been in financials, so the gains in HSBC and Barclays (are) adding to optimism and (suggest) that the worst may be over,” said Andre Bakhos, president of Princeton Financial Group, in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

“It’s comforting to see that we are in a global rebound in earnings.”

The Select Sector SPDR Financial

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Our issue is how to reconcile the opposite views of experts in the bond world versus experts in the stock world.  The market is always full of opposing views.  One stock guy predicts UP and the other predicts DOWN.  However, when the bond guys and the stock guys disagree, that is a more fundamental problem for us.

We have a tendency to think of bond guys as more detailed and more fundamental in their thinking and process than stock guys, so maybe a bit more right.  That could be entirely wrong and unfair, but one thing is sure — they can’t both be right if they predict opposite outcomes, unless the are predicting based on different time frames — then they can both be right.

Anyway, this is the kind of headlines day that makes us want to toss our hands in the air and go fishing.

First you see this:

July 13 (Bloomberg)

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The markets were down for most of the day, until a late rally sent two of the three major indexes positive, all except the NASDAQ which was down 0.19%.  The Dow Jones and S&P 500 were up 0.32% and 0.14% respectively, closing at 8799.26 and 946.21.  The 10-year saw prices climb once again, as the yield ended at 3.792%.  Oil was down today settling at $72.04, while gold also had an off day settling at $940.70.

Late Thursday night, Blackrock [BLK: 176.56, -6.04 (-3.31%)] agreed to buy Barclays Global Investors from Barclays Plc [BCS: 19.27, -0.63 (-3.17%)] for 37.8 million shares of common stock and equivalents and $6.6 billion in cash.  The deal was worth a total of $13.5B.  This deal will make Blackrock and BGI the world’s biggest fund manager, managing over $2.7 trillion in assets.  The buzz about a potential buy of BGI by

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BlackRock Inc., the bond boutique co- founded in a one-room office by Laurence Fink in 1988, is a step closer to becoming the world’s biggest money manager after emerging as the leading bidder for Barclays Plc’s fund unit.
Fink has moved ahead of contenders for Barclays Global Investors including Bank of New York Mellon Corp., three [...]

June 3 (Bloomberg) — Peru’s first Exchange Traded Fund will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange by the “middle of June,” said the chief executive officer of Global X Management Company LLC, a New York-based asset manager.

“The stock market has risen a lot, investors are bullish, and that’s helping us,” Bruno del Ama, the New York-based CEO of Global X, said in a phone interview. “We’re giving access to the Peruvian market and in the future people can go short in Peru, which is an option that doesn’t exist today.”

Global X and Barclays Plc have been competing to introduce the first Peruvian ETF, aiming to lure global investors to the world’s best performing stock market this year. The funds issue a number of shares and trade throughout the day like stocks. Most are designed to passively

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Reports surfaced Sunday in London that the biggest U.S.-based index mutual fund company is tossing its hat into the ring to purchase the leading sponsor of exchange-traded funds.

The Sunday Telegraph is reporting that the Vanguard Group, which virtually created the modern indexing marketplace for individual investors, has made a bid in the neighborhood of $5 billion to buy Barclays Global Investors’ iShares business.

The combination would create an ETF industry juggernaut with some $311.9 billion in total assets. Such a figure is based on estimated ETF asset levels for both Vanguard and BGI’s iShares lineup at the end of April. It would easily bolt Vanguard, now No. 3, past current No. 2 State Street Global Advisors.

Perhaps more importantly, such a huge combined war chest would represent more than half of the U.S. ETF market’s total asset level of $535.3 billion, according

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In a move that could shake up the clubby business of exchange-traded funds, bond giant Pacific Investment Management Co. is poised to launch its first ETF early this week.

The move by Pimco, a unit of Allianz SE co-founded by bond guru Bill Gross, marks the first time in years such a high-profile mutual-fund company has tried to muscle its way into the ETF business, long dominated by a handful of large-but-lesser-known asset managers that specialize in indexing, such as Barclays PLC and State Street Corp.

ETFs, baskets of stocks or bonds that trade on an exchange, have been rapidly gaining popularity with investors, and took in tens of billions of dollars in 2008. But many big-name mutual-fund companies have shrugged off ETFs because these offerings were traditionally just index funds with low management fees, which ensured that profit margins were measly.

Pimco’s

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