Monday, November 26, 2007

Chief Risk Officers Seeing Red (Shirts)

JPMorgan Appoints Barry Zubrow as Chief Risk Officer (Update3)
Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., the third- largest U.S. bank, named Barry Zubrow chief risk officer as the value of Wall Street firms' investments in subprime mortgages and related bonds tumbles amid credit-market turmoil.

Chief risk officer? Maybe I'm just not remembering Star Trek all that well.

Kirk was the captain.
Spock was the science officer.
McCoy was the chief medical officer.
Sulu was the helmsman.
Uhura was the communications officer.
Scotty was the chief engineer.
Chekov was the navigator.

Who am I forgetting?

``The chief risk officer function is a critical role for our company,'' Dimon said in the statement.

Oh, I know why I can't remember. The chief risk officer is actually a security officer! They are the ones who beam down to the planet wearing the red shirts. Right?

Citigroup, the largest U.S. bank, named Jorge Bermudez to replace David Bushnell as chief risk officer Nov. 16 after the company said as much as $11 billion in writedowns on mortgage- related investments may lead to the New York-based lender's first quarterly loss since at least 1998.

We seem to be losing a great number of red shirts these days. I wonder what happened to David Bushnell?

Citigroup Replaces Bushnell as Chief Risk Officer (Update1)
Bushnell is at least the fifth executive to be forced out or reassigned at Citigroup as this year's credit-market turmoil in the U.S. ravaged the bank's investments in subprime mortgages and related bonds. The company's board ousted Chief Executive Officer Charles Prince on Nov. 4, three weeks after Prince himself replaced three top trading executives.

People need to stop beaming down to the planet. It simply isn't safe to lower the shields when the subprime drive is off-line and the ship is experiencing turmoil.

JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup: To boldly go where no man has gone before!

2 comments:

  1. The Dow is up 215 points, Citi is healthy once more and Saudi Arabia is going to pump 'till the cows come home (or at least 'till oil is $15/barrel!!!). I don't know why they're bothering with this risk manager stuff. Everything is. . . just. . . fine. . .right?

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  2. Friday's stocks roared higher. My TIP fund felt little pain that day even as the stock market advanced (which surprised me).

    Monday's stocks roared lower. My TIP fund roared higher.

    Tuesday's stocks roared higher. My TIP fund roared lower.

    Things are at least making some sense again.

    Further, based solely on the magnitude of the recent volatility, the markets seem as stable as a game of Jenga on a card table missing one of its legs.

    Pull 'em!
    Stack 'em!
    Don't let 'em topple!

    http://www.hasbro.com/games/family-games/jenga/

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