J.P.Morgan Chase on the top of heap in its industrial sector/subsector

NYC-based MarketWatch financial editor Greg Morcroft in a recent article regarding J.P. Morgan Case commercial bank (which also features a "retail unit") supplies a topnotch analysis of the company, also supplying references to competitors in the bank subsector of the financial sector of the American economy.

Financial Stocks
J.P. Morgan at 6-year high, leading sector gainers

New York (MarketWatch) -- Shares of J.P. Morgan Chase on Wednesday hit their highest level in six years after the bank said a strong showing at its investment bank offset a sluggish retail business to boost first-quarter results more than 50% from a year earlier.

"The firm's strong results include some benefit from the generally favorable credit environment, which we do not expect to continue indefinitely," Chairman and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said in a news release.

Investors looked past that cautious tone though and the shares, which are a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, hit their highest intraday level since February 2001, rising more than 4% to $52.91.

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I've excised a whole bunch of technical stock-market infobits embedded in the article, to make reading easier for those who have no expertise in that area of business discourse, and because including the live-links would exhaust available time. Sorry!
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Sandler O'Neill analyst Richard Repetto on Wednesday said TD Ameritrade's weaker-than-expected results boost the case for a merger with rival E-Trade. The two are fighting over customer assets verses Schwab, which has been winning the battle among the trio.

Both Ameritrade and E-Trade have moved toward asset/deposit-driven strategies with investments in sales people, registered independent advisers, call centers and relationship managers.

"While these endeavors are key to successfully achieving a more efficient/higher margin model than Schwab and full-service brokers, the redundancy of the e-brokers' efforts to effectively 'touch' their clients is clearly obvious," Repetto said in a note to clients. End of Story

By studying Mr Morcroft's article, the reader can perhaps grasp better the discussion of "sectors" and the problems of classifications of companies in the financial sector and its subsectors, with specific companies assigned mostly to one or another (sometimes more than one sector/subsector) as in the parallel blog-entry posted to BizMixture for USE.

Will giant UK private bank Barclays swallow-merge giant Dutch private bank ABN Amro?

A report by Peter Thal Larsen and Ian Bickerton appears today in MSNBC online: "ABN close to €70bn bid from Barclays" (Apr22,2k7). ABN Amro NV is a huge Dutch company, a holding company, a private bank and source of private equity. Barclays PLC is a similar British corporation. They are keys to market capitalization thru-out the world.

ABN Amro was on Sunday night close to agreeing a takeover bid from Barclays, the British bank, which values the Dutch lender at almost €70bn (£48bn). ...

A deal would mark the culmination of more than a month of talks between Barclays and ABN Amro. Their merger would create one of the world's largest banks by market capitalisation. ...

[ABN's CEO has been] the main target of a campaign by activist investors impatient with the bank's performance....

Meanwhile, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander (Spain) and Fortis (Belgo-Dutch) are also eyeing ABN.

ABN Amro's supervisory board, which has been threatened with legal action by Children's Investment Fund, the activist hedge fund, has taken extra care in recent days to make sure it is following the correct procedures.
Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.

The story relates a huge corporate tale of merger and acquistion. It also has an important sidebar about shareholder activism, which pertains to the normative concept of corporate governance (I don't think Prof Bainbridge would be very happy about developments in this respect). Coupled with that is the important notion of a hedge fund.

More info:

Barclays could make formal bid for ABN tomorrow or Tuesday - sources (Forbes)

Will giant UK private bank Barclays swallow-merge giant Dutch private bank ABN Amro?

A report by Peter Thal Larsen and Ian Bickerton appears today in MSNBC online: "ABN close to €70bn bid from Barclays" (Apr22,2k7). ABN Amro NV is a huge Dutch company, a holding company, a private bank and source of private equity. Barclays PLC is a similar British corporation. They are keys to market capitalization thru-out the world.

ABN Amro was on Sunday night close to agreeing a takeover bid from Barclays, the British bank, which values the Dutch lender at almost €70bn (£48bn). ...

A deal would mark the culmination of more than a month of talks between Barclays and ABN Amro. Their merger would create one of the world's largest banks by market capitalisation. ...

[ABN's CEO has been] the main target of a campaign by activist investors impatient with the bank's performance....

Meanwhile, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander (Spain) and Fortis (Belgo-Dutch) are also eyeing ABN.

ABN Amro's supervisory board, which has been threatened with legal action by Children's Investment Fund, the activist hedge fund, has taken extra care in recent days to make sure it is following the correct procedures.
Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.

The story relates a huge corporate tale of merger and acquistion. It also has an important sidebar about shareholder activism, which pertains to the normative concept of corporate governance (I don't think Prof Bainbridge would be very happy about developments in this respect). Coupled with that is the important notion of a hedge fund.