UBS banks on Annie Leibovitz
UBS, a controversial bank, has hired Annie Leibovitz, a sometimes controversial celebrity photographer.
|||London - It's delicious. UBS, a controversial bank that has had a great deal of trouble with managing its money, has hired Annie Leibovitz, a sometimes controversial celebrity photographer who… well you can guess the next bit.
UBS's rap sheet includes racking up the biggest annual loss in Swiss corporate history in 2008, having written down close to $50 billion (£33bn) due to its disastrous dalliance with US sub-prime loans.
Since then, it has been slashing and burning in an attempt to steady the ship and to find the money to pay a succession of huge fines levied by regulators for its involvement in the fixing of foreign exchange and Libor interest rates.
Leibovitz's travails might appear pale by comparison, but they're still colourful. There have been loans arranged at eye- popping interest rates from organisations such as “Art Capital” and “Colony Capital”. Not to mention the fees charged by the middlemen who set up the deals, and then sued with a view to getting paid.
With a record like that, you might think UBS would run a mile. It positively screams “sub-prime”, sorry, “high-risk”.
But you might also wonder at Leibovitz's motivation. After all, her portfolio includes the Queen, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the Rolling Stones and, erm, Miley Cyrus. Her picture of the latter at 15, wrapped in a bed sheet and apparently topless, at one point looked like it might create a financial disaster for Disney by torpedoing the hugely profitable Hannah Montana franchise then fronted by the starlet.
It is highly unlikely that the fruit of Leibovitz's union with UBS - a series of photos of previously unknown entrepreneurs alongside such questions as “Am I really making a difference?” - will stand alongside that lot either in terms of controversy or cultural relevance.
But Leibovitz presumably needs the money. And UBS badly needs help with its image. These birds of a feather might be in a marriage of convenience but they do rather need each other.
Home loan rates good, housing shortages bad
Finally some good news for Generation Rent, at least those parts of it able to scrape together the cash for a deposit to buy a home.
Those who can raise up to 10 per cent of its value will find that the mortgages on offer are increasingly competitive, by contrast with other parts of the market where prices have risen in anticipation of the Bank of England hiking base rates (although recent events might delay that).
The data provider Moneyfacts has highlighted HSBC's launch of a five-year fixed-rate deal at 3.49 per cent. The average for 90 per cent loans is a bit more - 3.97 per cent - but that's still a full percentage point lower than where it was a year ago. Shorter- term fixes are similarly competitive.
The Government's Help to Buy scheme - aimed at reviving the 95 per cent mortgage - seems to have had the effect of loosening things up further down the risk curve.
All to the good, one might think; the housing market needs first-time buyers to function effectively. The Bank of England's figures, showing mortgage approvals rising to their highest level since February 2014 in July, suggests that it is starting to happen.
But there is, of course, a fly in the ointment - which is that demand for property is still outstripping its supply. We all know what happens in that situation.
The declining cost of loans aimed at first-time buyers is good news. Moneyfacts kindly gave me the numbers for a £200 000 loan over 25 years for me: at 3.97 per cent, a borrower would repay £12 628.32 annually - compared with £14 002 at the 4.98 per cent common a year ago.
Unfortunately, that saving will be more than offset by the rising cost of buying a home in the first place. If HSBC's shiny new product is a victory for Generation Rent, it is a pyrrhic one.
Market storm-buster that can whip up a hurricane
It's a function of the perversity of the current system of market capitalism that measures designed to calm periodic storms can often help to whip them up.
Take the New York Stock Exchange's “Rule 48”. It's an arcane, and rather technical, measure that is imposed at the opening of the market with the aim of keeping a lid on turbulence.
The problem is that its very imposition can exacerbate the very panics it is supposed to nip in the bud. A case in point was yesterday's opening, during which traders took fright at the latest economic data from, you've guessed it, China. The Dow Jones and the S&P 500 plunged into the red but, as has become par for the course during the current interesting times, it wasn't long before they started to recover some of their lost ground.
Perhaps people heeded the words of David Kelly, chief global strategist at JP Morgan Funds, who pointed out that while China has issues, it isn't a particularly big driver for the US or for the earnings of US corporations.
Or perhaps the computer algorithms that run the show adjusted themselves. Or were adjusted. A tech guy might even have spilt some coffee on a computer, calling a halt to the sell-off. Stranger things have actually happened.
This is not the first the time Rule 48 has been invoked in the midst of the current crisis and, given the way things are going, we're probably going to hear a lot more about it before the year is out.
THE INDEPENDENT