Toomre Capital Markets LLC

Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") is an active consultancy in the areas of structured finance, risk management and financial engineering. As a result, we have many conversations with numerous people across the spectrum of clients, prospects, former associates and other industry contacts. In the past several months, many of these conversations have touched upon Lehman Brothers, especially given Lars Toomre's personal history of working there and back in the 1980's running that firm's very influential ABS and mortgage derivatives trading business(es).

Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") has been rather quiet in recent weeks about the investment banks and the on-going credit crunch started by sub-prime mortgages and the bursting of the real estate bubble. While some in the industry (like Dick Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, and John Mack, CEO of Morgan Stanley) have suggested that the credit crunch is closer to the end, Lars Toomre and Toomre Capital Markets LLC have subscribed to the view that the collapse of Bear Stearns was just the nasty end to front edge of a massive credit deleveraging hurricane.

In the time since the Federal Reserve helped to broker the sale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan (with some $29 billion dollars of potential assistance) on March 17th, the capital markets have stabilized. Credit default spreads have narrowed from extreme wide spreads. The equity markets rallied from the March lows. Also, in many fixed-income product sectors, spreads to risk-free securities have significantly narrowed from oversold conditions. In short, the massive oversold (or biased) positions in the Capital Markets have had time to return to more stable conditions.

Or at least that was the case until the last ten days or so when slowly conditions have started to deteriorate again. Are these deteriorating conditions indications of another wave of the credit hurricane about to hit the Capital Markets? Time will tell. TCM suspects that market participants are about to learn that various financial firms did not perform well during the second quarter and that there will be further asset write-downs in various portfolios where liquidity has been sharply curtailed due to the credit crunch. Such news will be no great surprise.

Amidst the turbulence of the various news reports about layoffs, resignations and common stock declines, TCM has begun to wonder just where is there value in the major investment banks [Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers] and their universal bank counterparts [Barclays, UBS, Deutsche Bank, and Credit Suisse]. What are these franchises really worth in a world of sharply reduced liquidity and where new regulations on risk and capital are likely to be imposed? Assuming that these institutions go back to the "old days" of client flow trading, aren't each of these franchises worth significantly less than their current market values? Reader comments and thoughts are welcome.

Toomre Capital Markets LLC("TCM") has previously written about Jeff Kronthal Returns to Merrill Lynch and the absolutely abysmal performance put in by former CEO Stan O'Neal in the TCM post Merrill Lynch's Stan O'Neal: Why Is He Even Still Employed? Ahead of Merrill Lynch's expected announcement of abysmal first quarter earnings, on Wednesday April 16^th 2008, The Wall Street Journal ran a front page story written by Susan Pullman (and others) entitled Merrill Upped Ante as Boom in Mortgage Bonds Fizzled. While the article sheds favorable light on Merrill Lynch's new CEO John Thain and (old TCM friend) Jeffrey Kronthal since their respective arrivals in December 2007, the article absolutely savages the former Merrill Lynch fixed-income and senior management. With the expected total write-downs now expected to approach $30 billion, it is very clear how absolutely out of control Merrill Lynch truly was since mid-2006 when Jeff Kronthal was famously relieved for not taking enough risk in the Collateralized Mortgage Obligation ("CDOs") business.

This article explains Merrill Lynch "revved up its production of complex debt securities -- despite a shortage of buyers for them -- in what turned out to be a misguided effort to limit its losses. Its torrid underwriting loaded Merrill with exposure to mortgage securities, whose top credit rating provided scant protection when investors fled. Then Merrill made another fateful move: trying to hedge some of its massive mortgage risk through bond insurers whose strength was questionable." Now among those that are keenly interested in learning what went wrong and when the Merrill Lynch managers knew the extent of their troubles is the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), which "is examining whether Merrill and other firms should have told investors sooner about the stumbling mortgage business last year."

From the article, in 2006 risk controls at Merrill Lynch were beginning to loosen. Apparently a senior risk manager, John Breit, then the head of market-risk management, was ignored when he objected to certain underwriting risks. It is suggested that as a result, senior Merrill Lynch management then demoted the head of market risk management position within the management hierarchy lead to Mr. Briet's resignation. The article continues,