In economics and finance, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more markets – striking a combination of matching deals to capitalise on the difference, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit after transaction costs. For example, an arbitrage opportunity is present when there is the possibility to instantaneously buy something for a low price and sell it for a higher price.
Long-Term Capital Management L.P. (LTCM) was a highly leveraged hedge fund. In 1998, it received a $3.6 billion bailout from a group of 14 banks, in a deal brokered and put together by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) was a Swiss investment bank and financial services company located in Switzerland. The bank, which at the time was the second largest bank in Switzerland, merged with Swiss Bank Corporation in 1998 to become UBS. This merger formed what was then the largest bank in Europe and the second largest bank in the world.
John William Meriwether is an American hedge fund executive.
The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was an American investment bank, securities trading, and brokerage firm that failed in 2008 as part of the global financial crisis and recession. After its closure it was subsequently sold to JPMorgan Chase. The company's main business areas before its failure were capital markets, investment banking, wealth management, and global clearing services, and it was heavily involved in the subprime mortgage crisis.
Salomon Brothers, Inc., was an American multinational bulge bracket investment bank headquartered in New York City. It was one of the five largest investment banking enterprises in the United States and a very profitable firm on Wall Street during the 1980s and 1990s. Its CEO and chairman at that time, John Gutfreund, was nicknamed "the King of Wall Street".
Large and complex financial institutions (LCFI) are systemically important financial institutions, also referred to colloquially as bulge bracket banks, that if they failed would cause a Systemic banking crisis. The term is used in the context of systemic risk which concerns central banks, financial regulators and the Bank for International Settlements and has led to the term too big to fail.
Roger Lowenstein is an American financial journalist and writer. He graduated from Cornell University and reported for The Wall Street Journal for more than a decade, including two years writing its Heard on the Street column, 1989 to 1991. Born in 1954, he is the son of Helen and Louis Lowenstein of Larchmont, New York. Lowenstein is married to Judith Slovin.
A bailout is the provision of financial help to a corporation or country which otherwise would be on the brink of bankruptcy. A bailout differs from the term bail-in under which the bondholders or depositors of global systemically important financial institutions (G-SIFIs) are forced to participate in the recapitalization process but taxpayers are not. Some governments also have the power to participate in the insolvency process; for instance, the U.S. government intervened in the General Motors bailout of 2009–2013. A bailout can, but does not necessarily, avoid an insolvency process. The term bailout is maritime in origin and describes the act of removing water from a sinking vessel using a bucket.
A dual-listed company or DLC is a corporate structure in which two corporations function as a single operating business through a legal equalization agreement, but retain separate legal identities and stock exchange listings. Virtually all DLCs are cross-border, and have tax and other advantages for the corporations and their stockholders.
"Too big to fail" (TBTF) is a theory in banking and finance that asserts that certain corporations, particularly financial institutions, are so large and so interconnected that their failure would be disastrous to the greater economic system, and therefore should be supported by government when they face potential failure. The colloquial term "too big to fail" was popularized by U.S. Congressman Stewart McKinney in a 1984 Congressional hearing, discussing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's intervention with Continental Illinois. The term had previously been used occasionally in the press, and similar thinking had motivated earlier bank bailouts.
Gregory Dale Hawkins was a trader and principal in the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management that after four spectacularly successful years lost most of its clients' money in 1998 when the Russian government defaulted on its debt payments on August 17, 1998, triggering a devaluation of the Russian ruble. Long-Term Capital had $4.6 billion in portfolio losses in a few months and only avoided outright bankruptcy because the U.S. central bank prompted a consortium of large global investment banks and counter-parties of LTCM to provide an equity bailout. LTCM shutdown in early 2000.
JWM Partners LLC was a hedge fund started by John Meriwether after the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) in 1998. LTCM was one of the most spectacular failures of Wall Street, leading to a bailout of around $4 billion that was provided by a consortium of Wall Street banks. Meriwether started the company with initial capital of $250 million with loyal quants and traders like Victor Haghani, Larry Hilibrand, Dick Leahy, Arjun Krishnamachar and Eric Rosenfeld. As of April 2008, the company had around $1.6 billion in management. Eric Rosenfeld left to start his own fund.
Victor Haghani is an Iranian-American founder of Elm Wealth, a research-driven wealth advisor and manager.
Chi-fu Huang is a private investor, retired hedge fund manager, and former finance academic. During his career, Huang has contributed to the theory of financial economics, written on dynamic general equilibrium theory, intertemporal utility theory, and the theory of individual consumption and portfolio decisions.
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the "bank bailout of 2008" or the "Wall Street bailout", was a United States federal law enacted during the Great Recession, which created federal programs to "bail out" failing financial institutions and banks. The bill was proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, passed by the 110th United States Congress, and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. It became law as part of Public Law 110-343 on October 3, 2008. It created the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which utilized congressionally appropriated taxpayer funds to purchase toxic assets from failing banks. The funds were mostly redirected to inject capital into banks and other financial institutions while the Treasury continued to examine the usefulness of targeted asset purchases.
David Wiley Mullins Jr. was an American economist who served as the 14th vice chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1991 to 1994. Prior to his term as vice chairman, Mullins served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, taking office in 1990. Before his appointment to the Federal Reserve, he served as the under secretary of the treasury for domestic finance under President George H. W. Bush. Mullins left the government service to join the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management and remained in private finance following its collapse in 1998.
Peter R. Fisher is a senior lecturer at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, and a senior fellow at the Tuck Center for Global Business and Government. He is also a former executive at BlackRock and a former senior official at the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
The Baupost Group is a hedge fund founded in 1982 by William Poorvu and partners Howard Stevenson, Jordan Baruch and Isaac Auerbach. Seth Klarman, who was asked by Poorvu to help run the fund, remains at its head today. Baupost Group's investment philosophy emphasizes risk management and is long-only. The firm, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, is a value investing manager. According to Bloomberg L.P., Baupost is ranked 4th in net gains since inception.
A financial network is a concept describing any collection of financial entities and the links between them, ideally through direct transactions or the ability to mediate a transaction. A common example of a financial network link is security holdings, where a firm's ownership of stock would represent a link between the stock and the firm. In network science terms, financial networks are composed of financial nodes, where nodes represent financial institutions or participants, and of edges, where edges represent formal or informal relationships between nodes.
