Sunday, April 27, 2014

Monday April 28 Housing and Economic stories


Fund Manager Allegedly Killed Bank CEO In Firm's Parking Garage - (www.businessinsider.com) On Monday morning a Liechtenstein-based bank CEO was shot dead as he was heading into the office, according to statements from the firm and police via Bloomberg News. Jürgen Frick, the CEO of Bank Frick & Co., was allegedly shot dead in the firm's underground parking garage in the village of Balzers by former fund manager Jürgen Hermann, the statements said. Frick was 48. "The employees of the bank are stunned by the senseless act," COO Edi Wögerer said in a statement. "Words cannot express our grief at the loss of Jürgen Frick. We extend the mourning family Frick our sincere condolences."  The incident happened at about 7 a.m. Hermann fled the scene, authorities said. His car was later discovered in the nearby town of Ruggell along the Rhine River.  Police believe Hermann has committed suicide. They said in a statement they found Hermann's passport, driver's license, and handwritten notes with a confession and parting words. A body has not yet been found, though. Police said they're using helicopters, thermal imaging cameras, and dogs to search the area. 
According to the bank, Hermann had tried unsuccessfully for many years to blackmail the firm. The bank said that Hermann claimed it was responsible for the collapse of his fund Hermann Finance in 2005.

Here's what really fueled the Obamacare surge - (www.cnbc.com) And many of those people qualified for government subsidies to help them offset the cost of the insurance plans. Those subsidies are available to people who earn less than 400 percent of the federal poverty limit—about $46,000 for a single person and about $94,000 for a family of four. "Those subsidies just changed the game," LaMontagne said, crediting them with being a significant motivating factor for enrollees. About 80 percent of enrollees on the exchanges qualified for the subsidies. Another skeptic of the power of the mandate, Bankrate.com analyst Doug Whiteman, who noted that his company's surveys of the uninsured "found a very surprising lack of knowledge" about the ACA "just a couple of weeks" before the sign-up deadline. Only 48 percent, for example, could correctly identify the deadline, Whiteman said.

Rotation cost this fund 17% of assets...in one day - (www.cnbc.com) The First Trust Large Cap Value Opportunities Alpha fund lost 17.4 percent of its $940.3 million in assets for the day. The firm's Large Cap Core Alpha surrendered 15 percent, the Small Cap Core Alpha dropped nearly 13 percent and the Mid Cap Core Alpha lost about 15 percent of assets, according to data from ETF.com. While only time will tell whether the selloff is short or long term, the recent moves certainly have caught the eye of market pros. "Everyone's getting rid of the momentum companies. They're nervous (over whether this is) a bubble gain," said Nadav Baum, executive vice president at BPU Investment Management in Pittsburgh. "The reality is there are some great growth companies that are down, that have better rates of return. Those are good for the long-term investors once prices start to drop the way they have."  The one-day drop for the First Trust funds is remarkable in that the funds have been popular for most of the past year and have performed well. The Large Cap Alpha is up 23.5 percent over the past 12 months, outdistancing the nearly 19 percent return from the S&P 500. For the year, the fund has net inflows of $20.5 million.

Lifetime SEC Lawyer Totally Shreds The Agency On His Way Out - (www.businessinsider.com) The SEC has become “an agency that polices the broken windows on the street level and rarely goes to the penthouse floors...On the rare occasions when enforcement does go to the penthouse, good manners are paramount. Tough enforcement, risky enforcement, is subject to extensive negotiation and weakening.” “I have had bosses, and bosses of my bosses, whose names we all know, who made little secret that they were here to punch their ticket,” Kidney said. “They mouthed serious regard for the mission of the commission, but their actions were tentative and fearful in many instances.” Kidney was working on the SEC's case against Goldman Sachs after the mortgage crisis, and pushed for charges against Goldman Sachs execs. That only got him demoted on the case.

Wall St. peddles whopping 16 IPOs this week. Are you buying? - (www.usatoday.com) Aiming to get IPOs done while the window for deals is open, Wall Street hopes to sell a whopping 16 initial public offerings this week. If all 16 deals go off, which would be a feat in itself, it would be the busiest week in quite some time, even rivaling the 20 and 17 IPOs that were sold in all of February and January, respectively, says Renaissance Capital. Investors would have to go back to the week of Nov. 12, 2007 to remember a week with more IPOs, 21, says IPOScoop.com. There are some big deals among the bumper crop of IPOs. Ally Financial, the former financing arm of General Motors, is expected to raise $2.5 billion by selling 95 million shares between $25 to $28 a share. This deal will be a good test of investors’ appetite for deals, since the company has been trying since 2011 to sell shares to the public.





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