Press

“This is a market signal [from Sewing] that, “I understand that Sewing is doing this to send a signal about his commitment to the bank and the restructuring, but I think a lot of things here are out of his control,” says Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal at capital markets consultancy MRV Associates.  ‘Yes, I believe in this, and I’m going to turn this ship around’—but it’s the market that long ago stopped believing, and there are a lot of unknowns yet to come,” Valladares says. “To me, this looks like a desperate measure.”

“Prepare to present document showing what your business is,” Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal with MRV Associates, suggests. “Have financial statements ready, especially ones that show revenues and expenses. Having a cash flow statement with sources and uses of funds for the business is also useful.”

“Another interest rate cut in the US, coupled with very low and in some cases negative rates in Europe will adversely impact US banks,” said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares at MRV Associates. “They will soon face a wave of mortgage borrowers who will want to refinance to lower-rate mortgages,” she added. “Also, any new mortgages and other types of loans will be at lower rates, compressing banks’ net interest margins.”

“Most banks are absolute horror shows when it comes to having systems that are outdated, and even people who are still working with spreadsheets,” according to Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal at capital markets consultancy MRV Associates. “But when you ask them where they want to be, everyone says Goldman. They are the premier institution when you think of good [technological] systems; they were willing to plow tons of money into building their systems in-house, and not outsourcing as much.

“I read somewhere that two-thirds of the people working on Wall Street are under 40,” she said. “It’s not that they forgot the financial crisis of 2008. They never experienced it in the first place.”

“For investors who are very conservative, Treasurys or AAA government bonds and investment-grade municipal bonds are preferred,” says Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal at MRV Associates and a bank regulatory and capital markets consultant based in New York City. “Yet I think any investor should have a diversity of assets including corporate bonds, securitizations and equities.”