No. 1 — Oh, No
Henry Meyer is No. 1 and Dowd Ritter No. 2 on a roster neither of them will be proud to make: Bloomberg Markets' annual list of least valuable leaders of financial services companies.
Meyer, the chairman and chief executive of KeyCorp, saw his compensation rise 21% last year, though KeyCorp had eight straight losing quarters.
The magazine's survey considers a company's stock price returns as well as the executive's compensation to determine the worst deals for shareholders.
Ritter retired in April as the chairman and CEO of Regions Financial Corp. His compensation rose 42% in 2009 despite a full-year loss of $1.26 billion. (Ritter also placed second a year earlier.)
Others who made the 2010 list, to be released next week, include State Street Corp.'s Ronald Logue and SunTrust Banks Inc.'s Jim Wells.
Five on the Isle
Banking analyst Mark Fitzgibbon at Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP recently took a few folks on a bus tour of Long Island, N.Y., where they visited five banks, searching for investment opportunities. The seeds of a zany but cerebral Steve Carell movie? Perhaps. An event that yielded some interesting findings and trends? Definitely.
Most of the banks told the group that the worst of their credit troubles were behind them; that real estate prices seemed to have bottomed; and that economic activity on Long Island was improving. Each of the five banks — Astoria Financial Corp., Dime Community Bancshares, Flushing Financial Corp., First Long Island Corp. and State Bancorp — talked about the success it has had in nabbing customers from big, money-center banks.
"It appears that the large banks are distracted, and since the big guys could become more aggressive at any point in time, all of the smaller banks were trying to quickly seize upon this opportunity," Fitzgibbon wrote in a research note about the tour. "Although all community banks tend to make these kinds of statements about their larger competitors, we sensed that this time it was for real."
Chase Will Buy That
It's taken five years, but Glenn Schorr has finally taken a shine to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The UBS analyst upgraded his rating on the New York banking company to "buy" from "neutral" on Wednesday, saying pressures on the stock market right now makes it an opportune time to "buy the quality names. … JPMorgan Chase is as good as it gets."
Schorr has had a neutral rating on JPMorgan Chase since 2005, and has tended to have a less bullish outlook than his peers. Anyone simply holding their JPMorgan Chase shares over that period would have been well-enough served — the stock stands 10% above its price at this point in 2005, precisely equal to inflation.
Analysts at Edward Jones, Collins Stewart and Buckingham Research Group also have buy ratings on the stock.
