Word: salomon
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When billionaire financier Warren Buffett announced he was assuming the chairmanship of Salomon Brothers on an interim basis last week, he stepped into a morass that threatened to grow worse for the 81-year-old Wall Street firm before it got better. In fact, Buffett's salvage job began even before he was able to warm his new seat. The Treasury Department, in an attempt to restore confidence in the market, barred Salomon from bidding at further auctions. In a series of telephone calls with vacationing Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, Buffett successfully lobbied for leniency. Salomon was permitted to trade...
Buffett, who owns 16% of Salomon's preferred stock and a legendary reputation for his investing, if not his investment-banking, savvy, assumed Solly's chairmanship after the board forced chairman John Gutfreund and two other top executives to step down. Buffett immediately brought in Deryck C. Maughan, 43, who until recently ran Salomon's Asian operations from Tokyo, and jettisoned two bond traders. Executives admitted that the firm had violated the rules that prohibit any one bidder from buying more than 35% of a single issue at a Treasury auction, and that they had skirted regulations barring a firm...
...government securities market has been considered the world's safest haven for investors. Unlike stocks and bonds, both of which were plagued by a series of insider-trading cases during the 1980s, the $2.2 trillion market for Treasury instruments was thought to be too big to rig. The Salomon scandal shook that conventional wisdom and aroused suspicion that other firms might be playing similar games. Consequently, an intimidating array of investigations by the Federal Reserve Bank, the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission -- where enforcement director William McLucas is personally heading the inquiry -- and the New York Stock Exchange...
...Salomon's more urgent problem is customer defections, which threaten the firm's liquidity. The World Bank and at least two state treasuries and four state pension funds said they would all stop buying Treasury bonds through Salomon until questions about auction violations are resolved. The British Treasury is also considering sanctions against the investment house. More desertions are expected...
...Salomon already faces about a dozen lawsuits filed by investors who charge they either overpaid for securities because of artificially inflated prices or were paid less interest income because of deflated yields. In anticipation of financial damages arising out of litigation, the firm is setting aside reserves that almost certainly will exceed its profits, which have totaled $451 million so far this year. To head off a liquidity crisis, the investment house triggered its emergency financing plan, which calls for a shift from short-term IOU's to secured loans that pay higher rates...