Markets
U.S. open in 31 hrs, 49 mins
BUSINESS NEWS
- Market News
- Earnings
- Recalls
- Recession Watch
- Tech News
- Financial Crisis
- Madoff Scandal
- BloggingStocks
- Luxist
- Money Videos
INVESTING
- Stock Quotes
- Stock Charts
- Stock Ticker
- Currencies
- Portfolio
- Stock Screener
- Broker Center
- Mutual Fund Center
- ETF Center
- Money
- 24/7 Wall St.
- Financial Glossary
PERSONAL FINANCE AT WALLETPOP
- Bargains
- Banking
- Budget
- Calculators
- College Finance
- Community
- Credit
- Deals
- Debt
- Economizer
- Food
- Home
- Fraud
- Insurance
- Interest Rates
- Loans
- Mortgages
- Real Estate
- Recalls
- Recession
- Retirement
- Saving
- Simplification
- Specials
- Taxes
SMALL BUSINESS
Morgan Stanley posts first profit of year
By STEPHEN BERNARD
, AP
NEW YORK -Morgan Stanley returned to profitability for the first time in a year as income from its investment banking operations offset losses in commercial real estate.
Morgan Stanley said Wednesday that stock and debt underwriting from investment banking, and rising profits from its retail brokerage business, which includes the Morgan Stanley Smith Barney joint venture with Citigroup Inc., more than balanced out $400 million in real estate losses.
The New York-based bank earned $498 million in the July-September period, after losing $13.18 billion during the last three quarters combined.
Investors sent Morgan Stanley stock up sharply in afternoon trading, brushing off any concerns about the bank's commercial real estate exposure. Shares jumped $2.25, or 6.9 percent, to $34.77.
Still, the commercial real estate losses are a reminder that the broader economy continues to struggle even as financial companies profit from their investment banking and trading operations. Morgan Stanley has invested more heavily in commercial real estate than some competitors like Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The value of commercial real estate has tumbled in many parts of the country as many small companies shut down due to the recession, leaving a growing amount of office building and shopping center space empty. Moreover, commercial real estate rents are falling, cutting into the income landlords get from their properties.
Colm Kelleher, Morgan Stanley's chief financial officer, said the commercial real estate business will continue to be a drag on earnings into 2010, as the sector usually is one of the last to bounce back during an economic recovery.
Phillip Silitschanu, a senior analyst at research firm Aite Group, said all companies with exposure to the commercial real estate market are likely to face troubles for the next six months to a year.
Kelleher did note that because of aggressive write-downs and reduction in exposure to the market in past quarters, commercial real estate-related charges will continue to shrink in future quarters. Real estate charges totaled $700 million in the second quarter.
Like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley used a rebound on Wall Street to bolster its bottom line during the third quarter. Revenue from managing other companies' stock offerings more than doubled in the quarter to $457 million, while revenue from underwriting debt offers jumped 25 percent to $303 million.
Morgan Stanley is also reaping benefits from the expansion of its retail brokerage business. The bank acquired a majority stake in Smith Barney from Citigroup in May, and merged the operations with its own wealth management division. The combined operations helped Morgan nearly double its revenue to $3.03 billion in that division.
Kelleher said integration expenses and the merging of operations have kept the bank from tapping into the full earnings potential of the retail brokerage division. Morgan Stanley's profit margin could more than double to around 25 percent in 2010 at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, he said.
It is widely expected the bank will exercise its eventual option to purchase Citigroup's 49 percent stake in the venture.
Morgan Stanley had gains in both trading and investing in the third quarter as well. The bank was criticized for remaining too conservative during the second quarter as a market rebound started in March and helped competitor Goldman post a staggering profit. Morgan Stanley's cautiousness hindered its ability to offset real estate and other losses in the second quarter.
Revenue from third-quarter principal trading and investments accounted for 39 percent of Morgan Stanley's total revenue, up from 34 percent in the second quarter, as it began ramping up its trading business again. However, that was far behind Goldman, which generated more than 80 percent of its third-quarter revenue from principal trading and investments.
Morgan Stanley is further ramping up its trading desks as it looks to build that business, including hiring more traders, Kelleher said. He said it's one of the divisions that has the most room for growth.
The bank, however, won't expand at the expense of the stronger risk management in place since the credit crisis peaked last year.
"It's very important that we are not seen as irresponsible risk takers," Kelleher said during an interview with The Associated Press.
Within trading, Morgan Stanley focused on the debt market. Revenue from fixed income trading more than doubled from the previous quarter and was almost twice as large as revenue from equities trading.
Cubillas Ding, a senior analyst at financial consulting firm Celent, said Morgan Stanley has made a clear move to focus on specific businesses where it is the most competitive.
"There has been a narrowing of what businesses they choose to play in, but they have strategically chosen to focus on activities they have an advantage in, and to sidestep businesses that are subscale in nature," Ding said.
Morgan Stanley's third-quarter profit applicable to common shareholders totaled $498 million, or 38 cents per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, on average, were expecting earnings of 27 cents per share.
Morgan Stanley's quarterly results were hurt for a third straight quarter by an accounting charge related to the rising value of its own debt. The bank took a $900 million charge to reflect the greater cost it would incur to repurchase its outstanding debt, which is worth more now because of the bank's improving financial condition.
That same accounting rule allowed Morgan Stanley to book a $9.7 billion gain during the third quarter last year as its debt plummeted in value amid fears it might collapse, as its competitor Lehman Brothers did.
Revenue totaled $8.68 billion in the third quarter, easily topping analysts' forecast for $7 billion. Morgan Stanley generated $18.01 billion in revenue during the same period last year, which was skewed by the $9.7 billion accounting adjustment.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
2009-10-21 13:13:16
COMMENTS ( 6 )
Latest Money News
CNNMoney
- Talk about a low interest rate: U.S. Treasury borrows $44 billion for less than 1%
- Google set to map the world - and push out GPS makers as a result?
- Washington Mutual gave a mortgage to O.J. Simpson
- Closing Bell: Economic Catapult for Thanksgiving & Black Friday (WMT, TGT, GRMN, GOOG, MSFT)
- Deere up on Q4 earnings performance
BACKGROUND
Mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) are simply shares of a home loan sold to investors. They work like this: A bank lends a borrower the money to buy a house and collects monthly payments on the loan. This loan and a number of others -- perhaps hundreds -- are sold to a larger bank that packages the loans together into a mortgage-backed security. The larger bank then issues shares of this security, called tranches (French for "slices"), to investors who buy them and ultimately collect the dividends in the form of the monthly mortgage payments. These tranches can be further repackaged and sold again as other securities, called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Home loans in 2008 were so divided and spread across the financial spectrum, it was entirely possible a given homeowner could unwittingly own shares in his or her own mortgage.
Eventually, the most desirable, qualified customers dried up; they all had homes. So banks turned to customers they'd traditionally shunned -- subprime borrowers. These are borrowers with low credit ratings who pose a high risk of defaulting on their loan. But lenders of all stripes bent over backwards in the early 2000s to get this type of borrower into homes. The no-document loan was created, a type of loan for which the lender didn't ask for any information and the borrower didn't offer it. People who may have been unemployed as far as the lender knew received loans for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why?
One answer is that, with the introduction of MBSs, lenders no longer assumed the risk of a loan default. They simply issued the loan and promptly sold it to others who ultimately took the risk if payments stopped. And since MBSs created early on were based on mortgages granted to the more dependable prime borrowers, the securities performed well. They performed so well that investors clamored for more. In response, lenders loosened their restrictions for mortgage applicants and borrowed heavily to create cash flow for loans in order to create more mortgages. Without mortgages, after all, there are no mortgage-backed securities.
MERS FORECLOSURES http://www.mersinc.org/Foreclosures/index.aspx
Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (“MERS”) is a proper party that can lawfully foreclose as the mortgagee and note-holder of a mortgage loan. MERS Membership Rule 8 provides required guidelines that must be followed when MERS is the foreclosing entity. Please click here to access the Rules of Membership, and reference the Rule 8 requirements.
In mortgage foreclosure cases, the plaintiff has standing as the holder of the note and the mortgage. When MERS forecloses, MERS is the mortgagee and it is the holder of the note because a MERS officer will be in possession of the original note endorsed in blank, which makes MERS a holder of the bearer paper. MERS will not foreclose unless the note is endorsed in blank and held by MERS.
The MERS Legal Primer provides a sampling of cases that address the standing of MERS to foreclose its mortgages. These cases are not meant to be an exhaustive list involving MERS but are merely to serve as a primer for the legal arguments.
THE QUESTION
As mortgages were packaged/bundled into mortgage back securities (MBS) and sold to investors and since these MBSs were bought by investors, with some mortgages being split and owned by several institutions or people (tranches), how can the homeowner/borrower know who actually owns their mortgage? If the homeowner /borrower does not know who actually owns their mortgage, then how does the foreclosure court know who actually owns the mortgage and CAN actually proceed with the foreclosure?
The real estate attorneys representing these possible foreclosed homeowners should request that the foreclosing institution show that they ACTUALLY own the mortgage and can bring foreclosure action to court and are not just the mortgage servicer.