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:
- Money Markets: the SEC over the next few weeks will unveil a proposal aimed at shoring up the money market fund industry
- Lazard IB Results: Total revenues missed by $0.05 driven by weakness in investment banking M&A activity and Asset Management http://bit.ly/Ae6PLs
- White House Budget: Obama will release his F13 budget next week, calling for ~$3T in deficit reductions over 10 years
- Spanish M&A: the country’s investment banking sector could see a fresh wave of M&A activity as some of the smaller/mid-sized institutions rush to comply w/the government’s new capital rules (FT)
- Citi Returning Capital: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of Citigroup’s largest shareholders, says in a CNBC interview that he expects the bank to return capital to shareholders soon (DJ)
- Macquarie Issues Warning: the Company said its full year profit would fall 25%, double analyst expectations (Reuters)
- Icahn Decreases MMI Stake: As of activity on Jan. 30th through Feb. 3rd, billionaire investor Carl Icahn decreased its stake in the total outstanding common shares of Motorola Mobility to 8.68%http://bit.ly/wSEOOk
- Mid Cap Banks: “Sector stands to benefit from distressed foreign banks deleveraging, which means reducing exposures in US, primarily through lower C&I loan volumes. Market opportunity for sector is significant and the primary beneficiaries are CMA, CYN, FITB and Key Call KEY” (UBS)
- Healthcare REITs: “we are beginning a rotation back to large capitalization names by upgrading HCP (HCP – $41.74) to Buy as the small cap value gap has narrowed considerably in 2012. We would have been inclined to consider upgrades of other large cap names, Ventas (VTR – $58.55 – Hold) or Health Care REIT (HCN – $56.89 – Hold) in the rotation off smaller cap names if those shares had not run up in January, as we see all three large cap HCREITs (Big 3) well-positioned to further consolidate healthcare real estate” (Stifel)
- US Labor Force: “The January employment report revealed that demographic changes had pushed down the labor force participation rate–the share of the working-age population working or looking for work–even more than previously reported, hitting the lowest point since 1983 at 63.7%” (GS)
Economic Calendar:
- NA
M&A Watch:
- Weekly M&A Trends: This is a hot week for IPOs, 7 are expected to price in the U.S. and 11 globally. Announced M&A keeping showing negative headlines, declining 16% in the week to $25.8bnhttp://bit.ly/yyTz0i
- NY Post says MHS-ESRX deal is more likely to be approved than rejected by the FTC
