Many of the world’s biggest investors are increasingly turning to bespoke arrangements that cater to their likes and dislikes to grab a bigger slice of the $1.7 trillion private credit market.
Lenders are finding new ways to court sovereign wealth funds and other big investors through “fund-of-one” positions known as single-managed accounts. The arrangements often offer reduced fees, let investors cherry pick among their favorite regions and industries, dictate leverage or even decide how long they want to be locked in for.
Yesterday it was NYCB that grabbed the headlines and spoiled Powell's day.
As we detailed here (and here), the banking crisis never went away and it now appears the rest of the market realizes that too as Regional Bank shares are extending their losses significantly today...
This morning saw the US CRE crisis go global as Aozora Bank faced the music on its balance sheet folly.
NYCB is extending losses (well below SVB lows)...
Western Alliance Bancorp is getting clubbed like a baby seal today...
Shares of Zions Bancorp, Comerica and Webster Financial are also tumbling along with Citizens Financial, Regions Financial, SouthState, Prosperity Bancshares, Schwab, PacWest, and Huntington Bancshares...
The market appears to be finally pricing in the end of the BTFP, and all the chaos that will ensue from that, as the risk perception has spread to the whole sector. Regional bank shares are puking hard today...
But, but, but, it was all looking so good, right? Regional bank shares had risen excitedly as talking heads reassured them that the 'mini-banking-crisis' was extinguished magnificently by The Fed...
All of which leaves us wondering... is the market starting a bank-run to call Powell's bluff?
We're also seeing a safe-haven, flight-to-quality bid for bonds and bullion
As a reminder, billionaire Barry Sternlicht warned yesterday that he sees more than $1 trillion of losses for office real estate, calling the properties “one asset class that never recovered” from the pandemic.
“The office market has an existential crisis right now,” which is largely a US phenomenon because workers haven’t gone back to their desks, Sternlicht said Tuesday at the iConnections Global Alts conference in Miami Beach.
Once a $3 trillion asset class, offices now are “probably worth $1.8 trillion,” said Sternlicht, chief executive officer of Starwood Capital Group.
“There’s $1.2 trillion of losses spread somewhere, and nobody knows exactly where it all is.”
Which acronym will replace BTFP and how many trillions will it inject?
the Fed removed the following sentence from the FOMC statement: "The US banking system is sound and resilient." Cynics asked why the Fed no longer sees "the US banking system is sound and resilient" - is it a signal of rumblings in the economy near-term, or was it just a lie before, and now that bank dominoes are again falling, will Powell be forced to trot it back out?
Saudi Arabia significantly increased oil exports from its Muajjiz terminal last month, allowing them to avoid areas in the southern Red Sea that have been attacked by Yemeni Houthi militants.
The kingdom’s western terminal near Yanbu shipped 18 million barrels in January, or 580,000 barrels a day, according to ship tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with 8 million barrels or 258,000 barrels per day a month earlier.
Scott Bessent, a former Soros Fund Management investing chief, said he’s betting on a “Trump Rally” as long as investors believe the ex-president can win the general election.
The S&P 500 hit an all-time high last month, a rally that Bessent attributed to Donald Trump’s commanding lead over President Joe Biden in a number of national polls at the time. Some polls closer to the end of January show the two candidates neck-and-neck in a general election.
by Paul D. Thacker via The Disinformation Chronicle,
While America has chosen to ignore most COVID policy failures, unless they can be used to score partisan political points, the British government has been running a COVID Inquiry, examining mistakes the government made to better prepare for the next pandemic. The proceedings took an interesting turn in recent days, when top government advisor Mark Woolhouse at the University of Edinburgh lambasted the BBC for misrepresenting COVID risks to promote harmful lockdowns, while senior government advisor Devi Sridhar, also at the University of Edinburgh, kind of admitted that she maybe, perhaps gave poor advice—alerting several reporters who began calling her out on social media and documenting her blatant lies.
The statements by both academics underscore that lockdowns failed as a pandemic policy but were enforced with the help of media who, instead of challenging government policies, began promoting them.
“I find it extraordinary that no formal assessment of the expected impact of lockdown was implemented,” testified Woolhouse, who studies infectious disease epidemiology, and advises the Scottish government on pandemics. “This despite it being obvious that lockdown was likely to cause severe harms to the economy, education, mental health, health care access and societal well-being … exacerbating inequalities.”
Government advice on pandemics did not “consider the wider harms caused by the response to the pandemic” such as government policies that led to school closures and the banning of outdoor activities, even though the virus did not transmit well outdoors, Woolhouse said. He added that the risk of a child dying from COVID was “about the same as the risk of that child being struck by lightning in the playground” causing the government to ignore that the virus was “ten thousand times” more deadly to the elderly.
“In the media, the BBC television news repeatedly reported rare deaths or illnesses among healthy adults as if they were the norm, again creating a misleading impression of who was at greater or lesser risk,” Woolhouse testified. “I suspect this misinformation was allowed to stand throughout 2020 because it provided a justification for locking down the entire population.”
In fact, the BBC ran a fact check in early 2021 that promoted lockdowns, and the BBC’s much derided “disinformation reporter” Marianna Spring wrote an article months later that compared lockdown critics to climate denialists:
Anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine Telegram groups, which once focused exclusively on the pandemic, are now injecting the climate change debate with the same conspiratorial narratives they use to explain the pandemic.
The posts go far beyond political criticism and debate - they're full of incorrect information, fake stories and pseudoscience.
Ignoring their complicity in promoting government mistakes, the BBC focused coverage on Woolhouse’s criticism of harmful policies such as school closures and lockdowns, while other outlets, such as The Telegraph, headlined barbs Woolhouse shot at the BBC.
Another high point of the government’s COVID inquiry involved Devi Sridhar, a professor of global health who closely advised Scotland’s leader during the pandemic. Sridhar now claims that she didn’t advise the government on “Zero COVID” policies to eliminate the virus—policies that all experts now agree were harmful.
In a rambling explanation that stretches on for several pages of transcript, Sridhar testified that she was for Zero COVID, but not really, but “yes” she was—confusing the inquiry counsel, who was forced to ask additional questions to get Sridhar to clarify her position. Several times.
“So your position—thank you for that,” said the inquiry counsel at one point. “Could I make another—repeat my plea on behalf of the stenographer?”
- On track for PDUFA target action date of May 25, 2024 -
Abeona Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: ABEO) today announced, as part of the review process by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the Biologics License Application (BLA) for pz-cel (prademagene zamikeracel) for recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB), completion by the FDA of both a Bioresearch Monitoring (BIMO) inspection of Abeona and the BLA mid-cycle review meeting.
The BIMO inspection was conducted from January 22, 2024 through January 24, 2024 at Abeona’s headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio, and reviewed the conduct and practices that pertain to the clinical studies of pz-cel. The FDA inspector did not issue any observations or FDA Form 483s during the inspection. The formal report from the FDA regarding the BIMO inspection will be received at a later date. FDA's BIMO program is a comprehensive program of on-site inspections, data audits, and remote regulatory assessments designed to monitor all aspects of the conduct and reporting of FDA regulated research. The BIMO program was established to assure the quality and integrity of data submitted to the agency in support of new product approvals and marketing applications.
Following the BIMO inspection, the BLA mid-cycle review meeting took place on January 25, 2024. The FDA reaffirmed its earlier indication that it does not currently plan to convene an Advisory Committee for pz-cel. In addition, the FDA advised that Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) are not anticipated for the pz-cel application at this time, though application review is ongoing, and reconfirmed the PDUFA target action date of May 25, 2024, on which an approval decision on the pz-cel BLA is expected.
