Ethan Hathaway

M&A M&A Deals Hit 10 Year Low Q1 of 2023 hasn’t been kind to M&A deal flow. Deals reached a 10 year low. BANKING Banking Bonuses Biggest Drop Since 2008 Wall Street bankers’ bonuses dropped 26% in 2022, the biggest drop since 2008. In unrelated news, coffee shops see drop in demand for lattes and […]

BANKING How to Manage Your Bank Risks As the dust settles after the failures of SVB and Signature First Bank, businesses are seriously looking at how avoid getting caught in a similar mess in the future. Here’s 5 ways to manage your bank risks. COMMODITIES Banking Failures Could Cause a Commodities Supercycle Goldman Sachs estimate

BANKING Credit Suisse Dodges Bullet Not to be outdone by all the attention on Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse avoided a similar fate from a lifeline offered by Swiss National Bank after Credit Suisse’s biggest shareholder turned their back on any support. Update: UBS has now agreed to acquire Credit Suisse. M&A Ryan Reynolds Is

BIG4 PwC Gets Fined Stop me if you’ve heard this before, Big4 audit firm gets fined…PwC has been fined £5.6m by UK’s audit branch due to “serious failure” in its audit of engineering-firm, Babcock. Including creating false records…in the words of George Takei, “Oh Myyyyyyyyy”. BANKING Credit Suisse Gets Green Light for China Embattled Swiss-bank

BANKING Financial Institutions Are Embracing AI While JP Morgan made the news by banning the use of ChatGPT, it doesn’t mean banks are ignoring AI. In fact, more and more financial institutions are looking at how they can integrate AI within their organization and products & services. MARKETS London Losing Listings? One of the biggest

IPO’S SPACs Want You to Return Their Money… The hunger for SPACs has waned lately, and for some SPACs that paid back their shareholders, it seem the SPACs paid back TOO MUCH money to shareholders and now, they want it back. ACCOUNTING Have an Accountant You Can Spare? The last few decades has seen a

MARKETS US Bank CEO’s Not So Pessimistic on Economy Wealthy bank CEO’s are starting to feel less pessimistic about the economy, so everyone can just chill out (right?). So, we can all go back to buying our avocado and toast because…reasons? MARKETS Brexit cost how much??? The Bank of England announced that Brexit has cost

MARKETS NASDAQ has best start since 1991 Recession? What recession? The NASDAQ is off to its best start since 1991. MARKETS FTSE 100 Hits All-Time High Not to be outdone by the NASDAQ (see above), the FTSE 100 also hit an all-time high. TECH Google Lose $100B Upon Microsoft’s Announcement Microsoft has always been the

MARKETS Rate Hikes for Everyone This past week, the U.S. Federal Reserve raised rates 25 basis points, along with the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, which both raised rates by 50 basis points. CRYPTOCURRENCIES Charlie Munger Doesn’t Endorse Crypto Charlie Munger, the other half of Warren Buffett’s brain trust, says the U.S.

BANKING Goldman Sachs Posts Worst EPS in a Decade As many major banks are going through large volumes of layoffs, last week, Goldman Sachs posted its worse EPS in a decade. With declines in asset management and investment banking revenue, losses from their consumer business and poor cost management, it has hit their earnings hard.

COMPLIANCE Financial Institutions Lose Over $500K Due to Fraud in 2022 Well, here’s a stat that’s nothing to be proud of: apparently seventy percent of financial institutions lost over $500K due to fraud in 2022. Time to tighten up those anti-fraud measures hmmm? ESG Should Executive Pay Be Linked to ESG Performance? As ESG has

PRIVATE EQUITY Microsoft Looking to Invest in OpenAI If you’re an AI geek, you probably already know about OpenAI and it’s ChatGPT product. (I’ve been playing with it for a couple of weeks now and it’s pretty jaw-dropping). Microsoft is looking to make a splash by investing approximately $10B in OpenAI, which would give Microsoft

ESG How Well Are Companies Doing Regarding ESG? Environmental, social and governance (ESG) compliance has been in the spotlight in recent years, but just how well are companies doing to meet performance measures relating to ESG? Turns out…not too well. TAXES Shell to Pay Taxes in UK… …a corporate entity to pay taxes? Why is

BANKING Wells Fargo Hit with Another Fine (Again) Stop me if you’ve seen this before: big bank gets fined. Wells Fargo has been hit with another fine, $1.7B + another $2B in customer settlements due to consumer abuses. The abuses stem from the bank misapplying home and auto loan payments, which in turn led to

BANKING UK Banking Rules Looking to Shake Things Up Post-Brexit era UK is looking to shake things up with a sweeping volume of banking rules reform. The planned reforms are called “The Edinburgh Reforms” and looks to be one of the biggest reform in thirty years. FINTECH FTX Isn’t the Only Disgrace in Finance… With

COMMODITIES Coffee Prices Surge You’ve probably noticed your grocery bill getting more expensive but having less to show for it. In addition to that, the most important food group (at least to us), coffee prices have been surging as well. (The horror!) As the input costs for producing the beloved bean drink have been surging