Monday 5 October 2009

CIT and Goldman Sachs

Missmc is still on the Halloween theme. The deadline for the CIT debt exchange is October 29th. If it fails, bankruptcy would be filed in the days following. How fitting. The FT is also obsessing over the CIT thing and two articles appeared over the weekend which discuss the relationship Goldman Sachs has with all this. No doubt, the Goldman conspiracy theorists are chattering again. The FT held back, but, did slide in the adjective "perverse"...in a really polite way.

These articles are apt to cause confusion as there are two issues and two FT articles. Firstly, as stated here, Goldman provided rescue financing last summer with an agreement that they would be paid 1billion if the company goes bankrupt or defaults. The second FT article concerns itself with a second source of profit for Goldman should CIT file bankruptcy. They are indeed a large holder of credit default swaps on CIT. The amount, and who is standing on the other side of these holdings is unspecified. You may read about it on the FT website here.

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