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.