Monday Morning Pre-Market News (11/28/11)

Updated on

Every morning the Street of Walls team puts out an update on market levels, today’s top stories, and active M&A deals.

Today’s Top Stories:

  • Global Rally Today: Stocks surge around the world, spurred higher by a slew of weekend reports discussing how Eurozone officials are working on a slew of policy responses to the Eurozone debt crisis
  • Black Friday Update: ShopperTrak reported a 6.6% rise in Black Friday sales = the largest since 2007, and which represents $11.4B in slaes
  • New EU Plan: Eurozone countries plan on announcing an accelerated timeline for fiscal integration, bypassing the more cumbersome treaty changes that could take a while to implement and instead striking bilateral deals w/one another.  In theory, this means by early ’12 the EU will have more oversight on state fiscal matters and also would be granted new powers to intervene in those governments deemed exceptionally profligate
  • QE3 Could Be In The Works: bond dealers forecast another round of asset purchases from the Fed – a Bloomberg survey has round that 16 of the 21 primary dealers forecast more asset buys from Bernanke.  The Fed may buy about $545 billion in home-loan debt, based on the median of the 10 firms that provided estimates (BBG)
  • Defense Budge Cuts: Republicans are vowing to reconfigure the $1.2T worth of automatic spending cuts due to kick in starting 2013 to ensure the Pentagon isn’t hit too hard (Reuters)
  • Icahn Cuts VGR Stake: On November 23, Icahn sold common shares of Vector Group Ltd. (NYSE:VGR) and his stake has decreased to 4.99% of VGR http://bit.ly/vgJxek
  • NBA is Back: The NBA and its players reached an agreement early Saturday morning that paves the way for their 149-day labor dispute to end and a shortened 66-game season to begin Dec. 25, after nearly two months of missed games http://on.wsj.com/tD3Vwz
  • Wall Street Bonuses Plummeting: Employees at big Wall Street firms could see annual compensation sink 27% to 30% from a year earlier to the lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis, according to a closely watched compensation study due out Monday http://on.wsj.com/sKMkxz
  • BNP Private Equity Portfolio: is weighing a sale of its private equity portfolio (worth >$700M), the latest example of how Eurozone banks are shedding assets instead of raising fresh equity (FT)
  • RBS Wants to Sell Their IBD: RBS CEO Stephen Hester has stated for the first time that RBS could sell its investment banking divisionhttp://bit.ly/tucHD3
  • AT&T Deal: Bloomberg reports that T is preparing a bigger divesture (~40% of T-Mobile’s US assets) in order to save the T-Mobile deal overall
  • US Bank Downgrade: Morgan Stanley Bank Analyst downgrades US large-cap banks

Economic Calendar:

  • Monday: New Home Sales, Dallas Fed Survey
  • Tuesday: S&P/CS Home Price Index, Consumer Confidence, House Price Index
  • Wednesday: Fed’s Beige Book, ADP Employment, Nonfarm Productivity, Chicago Purchasing Manager, Pending Home Sales
  • Thursday: Initial Jobless Claims/Continuing Claims, Construction spending, ISM Manufacturing
  • Friday: Nonfarm Payrolls, Unemployment Rate

M&A Watch:

  • Globes reports that JNPR and T have joined the race against AKAM to acquire Cotendo = the website and mobile apps accelerator solutions developer. AKAM has been in advanced talks to acquire Cotendo for $300M-$500M

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