The EA Sports LBO: Why it feels familiar, yet totally different.
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Kristen here, I walked onto the Morgan Stanley trading floor in 2007, the year KKR, TPG, and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners led what was then the largest leveraged buyout in history: TXU, the Texas utility later renamed Energy Future Holdings. The deal had […]
H-1B Visa Reform: 2009 All Over Again?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Kristen here. When I joined Morgan Stanley in 2007, at the height of the then-credit boom, getting an H-1B visa was no small feat. What is an H1-B visa? The H-1B visa program allows foreign workers who are highly skilled in areas like […]
Trump Wants to Kill Quarterly Earnings: Good Idea or Just a Distraction?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny President Trump recently floated the idea that (subject to SEC approval) public companies should no longer be required to report earnings four times a year. His proposal? Only twice a year. Many of you asked for our take. So, is this a smart […]
Sports Investing Deep Dive
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny The Business of Sports: Three Leagues, Three Models With the NFL season kicking off last week, and in honor of two recent episodes (our interview with A-Rod and our Moneyball analysis), this seemed to be a great week to finally cover Sports Teams […]
Taylor Swift and Investing Collide
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Is Taylor Swift’s purchase of her original masters an emotional move? Or a brilliant investment? Last week Taylor Swift announced to the world that she had finally repurchased her masters for a reported $360 million, according to Billboard. We don’t have many details. Billboard said she paid […]
Jerome Powell Surprised Us at Jackson Hole
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Going into Jackson Hole, it felt like the market was primed for disappointment. But Powell delivered. What happened? We started the day with an exuberant market priced to perfection. Expectations that the Fed will cut interest rates at their September meeting seem fully […]
SPACs Are Back…But Should They Be?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, aka SPACs, are making a comeback. After the mania of 2020–2021 fizzled out, we assumed the product had been consigned to the dustpile of Wall Street history. But Chamath Palihapitiya, once hailed as the “SPAC King,” has filed for […]
Hot Take on the Bond Market: IT’S A TRAP!
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Is the real risk in U.S. Treasuries…T Bills??? The financial press has been sounding the alarm for weeks. From Bloomberg to CNBC, heavyweights like Jamie Dimon and other trusted voices have been pointing to long-dated U.S. Treasuries as a risky investment. Why? Lack of fiscal discipline, inflation […]
Trade Court Blocks Trump’s Tariffs: Market Reaction and Lingering Questions
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Yesterday, the U.S. Court of International Trade shocked the markets by attempting to curtail some of the more extreme aspects of President Trump’s tariff plan. The court ruled that the reciprocal tariffs announced on “Liberation Day”, which were imposed under a previously little-known 1977 U.S. […]
Bad Press = Bad Bonuses?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny A member of our social media community recently asked us about banks that have had some seriously bad headlines. “Do these impact the firm’s deal flow? And, if so, how badly?” Some have speculated that negative press will spark cries of outrage, scare […]