5 dumbest things on Wall Street
Apple delays the LTE 4G iPhone until 2012. Banks use tax dollars to finance a luxury hotel. Sears finally hires a CEO -- with no retail experience.
By TheStreet Staff, TheStreet
Here is this week's roundup of Wall Street business blunders.
5. Verizon's bad apple
There's no phone as cool as the next big phone. Just ask anyone who's been holding out for the 4G Verizon (VZ) iPhone. But don't ask this week, after Apple (AAPL) delayed the LTE 4G iPhone until 2012.
Apple's iPhone 5, due out this summer, will not be an LTE 4G iPhone, Telecom Pragmatics analyst Sam Greenholtz told TheStreet Thursday.
4. Banks aid poor communities, one luxury hotel at a time
Sometimes you have to admire the banking industry's ability to turn lemons into lemonade. Or if it's the case of the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, the ability of banks to turn billions of taxpayer dollars into luxury accommodations financed with millions in fees.
The Blackstone is a downtown Chicago landmark that fell into disrepair over the years and was in need of a badly overdue face-lift for its "beaux arts" decor and "marble staircases," according to an article in Bloomberg Markets.
Luckily, there just happened to be a few billion lying around as part of the New Markets Tax Credits, a program set up by the Clinton administration to spur development and create jobs in communities with high unemployment and neighborhoods in need of "business growth," the Bloomberg article says.
So with a little bit of Wall Street know-how, companies like Prudential Financial (PRU) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) got together to give a hand up to Blackstone guests who typically shell out $699 a night for a room.
3. Team Carmelo, 1; Knicks/Nets, 0
Exactly one member of the New York metro area's NBA family benefited from the Denver Nuggets' trading Carmelo Anthony to the Knicks earlier this week, and the Madison Square Garden (MSG) faithful were chanting his name throughout warm-ups on Wednesday night.
When fans post comments on sports websites referring to MSG as an enterprise and talking about Anthony's "ROI," that's a good sign this was a lousy sports deal.
2. The Swiss bank swindle -- redux
Credit Suisse (CS) appears to have missed the memo about the U.S. government becoming particularly interested in tracking down tax evaders who take advantage of the fine services of Swiss banks.
According to an indictment filed this week, four bankers allegedly working for Credit Suisse helped hide "thousands" of accounts that had $3 billion in assets that, oops, didn't get reported to the IRS.
1. Sears CEO: Relevant experience optional
After three years of searching for a successor, Sears (SHLD) finally hired a new CEO -- a former tech executive with no retail experience.
To say that Lou D'Ambrosio, previously head of the telecommunications company Avaya and a 16-year veteran of IBM (IBM), isn't exactly what most investors and analysts felt Sears was in need of is an understatement.
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