Led by Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, the New York- based lender took in $1.26 billion in advisory fees in the first nine months of the year, topping Goldman Sachs for the first time since 2000, when Chase Manhattan Corp. bought J.P. Morgan & Co., data compiled by Bloomberg show. The bank also extended its lead in underwriting equity and debt offerings, earning $4 billion in the same period, twice as much as Goldman Sachs.
JPMorgan, which posted net income of $8.45 billion for the nine months, - - - - >

Executives including Ian Lowitt, Paolo Tonucci and Bart McDade knew that Barclays was getting securities valued at about $50 billion for $45 billion in cash, according to a September motion unsealed Oct. 15 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York in which Lehman asked for the return of some assets.
Some executives negotiating the deal knew they would receive offers to work at Barclays after the sale, Lehman said, citing e-mails and deposition testimony. The salaries offered were blacked out.
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The investor group also includes TPG Capital, Perry Capital and WLR LeFrak. The FDIC initially will hold a 60 percent stake in the portfolio valued at $831.6 million.
The FDIC said on its Web site late Tuesday it received eight bids for a stake in the portfolio, which includes construction loans and real estate-owned assets with an unpaid principal balance of about $4.5 billion. It determined that the consortiums bid - which values the assets at $2.72 billion or 60 cents on the dollar - would result in the greatest return for the agency.
Federal regulators in September - - - - >

The winning consortium, which also includes Perry Capital and WLR Lefrak, paid 60 cents on the dollar, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said yesterday. The group will spend $554.4 million for a 40 percent managing stake in a company set up by the FDIC to hold $4.5 billion in mostly condominium loans, while regulator will keep a 60 percent holding.
The Starwood group offered a fifth more for the assets than the nearest competitor, said people familiar with the matter. Corus last month became the 90th bank - - - - >

Temasek will target financial institutions that benefit from economic growth or mergers and acquisitions, Ho Ching, chief executive officer of the $122 billion company, said yesterday. The worst of the global meltdown has passed, she said.
“We look at some of these financial institutions as proxies for the economy as a whole,” Ho said. Temasek will also look at companies “where they may be doing a transformational deal, or where they themselves might be in transformation or at an inflexion point.”
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Lehman made its claim in a court filing Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of its chaotic bankruptcy filing. The court approved the sale of its U.S. banking business to Barclays less than a week after it filed.
Now Lehman wants a judge to force Barclays to give back some of the money it took as part of the deal, including $5 billion it said was given as extra collateral. Lehman said the extra value was not disclosed to the court.
“Because of these undisclosed and unauthorized features of the deal, Barclays received billions more than the value it paid,” Lehman lawyers wrote in - - - - >

“Material components of the transaction were not disclosed to the court before and at the sale hearing,” lawyers for Lehman said in a filing yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. “The fact is that the deal was actually structured to give Barclays an immediate and enormous windfall profit. Certain Lehman executives agreed to give Barclays an undisclosed $5 billion discount off the book value of securities.”
Lehman said Barclays windfall may have been more than $8.2 billion when margin deposits and liabilities Barclays assumed are taken - - - - >

Property values have fallen 35 percent since October 2007, according to Moodys Investors Service. Thats making it tough for owners to refinance almost $165 billion of mortgages for skyscrapers, shopping malls and hotels this year, pressuring companies such as Maguire Properties Inc., the largest office landlord in downtown Los Angeles, to put buildings up for sale.
The industry is likely to be high on the agenda when Bernanke and his colleagues sit down in Washington tomorrow for the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on monetary policy. Lawmakers - - - - >

Housing starts fell 0.4 percent to an annual rate of 530,000 after jumping 17 percent in May, according to the median forecast of 73 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Building permits probably increased to a 524,000 annual rate.
Lower borrowing costs and plunging prices are making houses more affordable, helping to stem the decline in sales and alleviating the worst housing slowdown since the Great Depression. Stabilization would rid the economy of the drag from declines in residential construction that have shaved almost a percentage point - - - - >

Analysts said the deal announced Thursday was a necessity for Barclays, but the market still seemed worried about the banks long-term prospects.
“We regard the BGI disposal as a long-signaled necessity, in order to boost Barclays core tier 1 ratios to within spitting distance of its peers,” said Sandy Chen, banking analyst at Panmure Gordon & Co.
“But our longer-term concerns about earnings sustainability and balance sheet risks remain.”
Barclays shares were down 1.8 percent at 299 pence on the London Stock Exchange.
Barclays Global Investors is the worlds largest asset manager with more than 3,000 institutional clients and approximately $1.5 trillion of assets - - - - >