Satra properties-Results from Capital Market

Satra Properties (India) net profit rises 59.29% in the March 2008 quarter
Sales rise 41.45% to Rs 47.50 crore


Net profit of Satra Properties (India) rose 59.29% to Rs 4.03 crore in the quarter ended March 2008 as against Rs 2.53 crore during the previous quarter ended March 2007. Sales rose 41.45% to Rs 47.50 crore in the quarter ended March 2008 as against Rs 33.58 crore during the previous quarter ended March 2007.
For the full year, net profit rose 511.74% to Rs 38.05 crore in the year ended March 2008 as against Rs 6.22 crore during the previous year ended March 2007. Sales rose 193.44% to Rs 194.23 crore in the year ended March 2008 as against Rs 66.19 crore during the previous year ended March 2007.

SATRA PROPERTIES -See superb results-CLICK TITLE TO SEE RESULTS FROM BSE SITE

satra properties bhopal

Satra Properties India Ltd has informed BSE that the Company has acquired property situated at Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, through its Special Purpose Company (SPC), in which Gammon (India) Ltd is having 51% Stake and Satra Property Developers Pvt Ltd [the Wholly Owned Subsidiary Company of Satra Properties (India) Ltd] is having 49% Stake. The Special Purpose Company (SPC) has made Development Agreement with the Government of Madhya Pradesh & Collector of Madhya Pradesh.

The proposed Project shall be one of the state of art project in Madhya Pradesh and the property is to be developed for providing Shopping Malls, Street Shops, Commercial Offices, Food Courts, Five Star Restaurants, Amusement parks, First Snow Parks in Madhya Pradesh with Modern and Hi end amenities. The property is approx. 15 acres of land situated at CBD Bhopal, Opp New Market and South T.T. Nagar, i.e. in the heart of the Bhopal city and it is the prime shopping destination of the Bhopal city. It is having Basic F.S.I. of approx 16,22,673 Sq. ft. and having saleable area of approx. 22,50,000 Sq. ft. The Land & Construction cost of the proposed project is estimated at Rs 800 Crores and has the capacity to generate the Total revenue of approx. Rs 1400 - 1500 Crores. The proposed Project is expected to be completed within 3 to 4 years.

Satra Properties JUHU

News Body:

Satra Properties India Ltd has informed BSE that the Company has acquired property situated at Juhu, Mumbai through its SPV, in which the Company holds 35% Equity stake. The said Property is to be developed for providing luxurious Residential apartments with Modern and Hi end amenities. It is having potential to generate area of 99,500 Sq Ft (Approx) with Revenue of about Rs 182 Crores. The Construction work for the proposed project shall commence within a period of 2 months and is expected to be completed by the end of March 2010.

Auction-Rate Market Will `Cease to Exist,' Citi Says (Update2)
By Martin Z. Braun
April 15 (Bloomberg) -- The $330 billion auction-rate securities market will ``cease to exist'' after it collapsed in February when Wall Street firms stopped using their own capital to buy unwanted bonds, Citigroup Inc. said.
While the death of the market will only trim brokers' earnings by 1 to 2 percent, investor anger over their inability to liquidate their holdings may be significant if the frozen market doesn't thaw soon, Citigroup analyst Prashant Bhatia wrote in a report. New York-based Citigroup was the top underwriter of municipal auction-rate securities in 2006, managing $8.4 billion of sales, according to Thomson Financial.
``Basically, clients could stop using the services of their brokerage and/or asset management firms as a result of a loss of trust,'' Bhatia wrote.
Auction-rate bonds allowed issuers such as local governments, hospitals, and closed-end mutual funds to issue debt maturing in as long as 40 years at short-term rates that reset every 7, 28 or 35 days through bidding. Investors began abandoning the auction-rate market this year on concerns that companies insuring the bonds wouldn't meet their obligations in case of default.
Thousands of the auctions began failing when dealers, who had stepped in when there weren't enough bidders, pulled back as investment banks and securities firms worldwide took $245 billion in credit losses and writedowns. As a result, investors weren't able to turn the securities into cash, while some issuers were left paying penalty interest rates as high as 20 percent.
No Liquidity
As with structured investment vehicles, ``the liquidity providers were unwilling to provide liquidity,'' the Citigroup report said.
Brokerage clients that hold between $100 billion to $150 billion of auction-rate securities control more than $750 billion in assets, according to the report. Closed-end funds have issued about $40 billion of the securities.
Banks are letting customers borrow against their illiquid auction-rate bonds. UBS AG, which cut the value of the auction- rate securities in its account by about 5 percent, last week said it would allow customers to borrow the full value of their auction debt from the Zurich-based bank starting in May.
Shrinking Market
The auction-rate market has shrunk by at least 15 percent, or $51 billion, as U.S. municipal borrowers refinance to escape higher costs and closed-end funds begin to bail out investors, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While the average rate for municipal debt with interest set through weekly bidding fell to a nine-week low of 5.14 percent April 9, that's still above the average of 3.65 percent in all of 2007.
The New York Giants announced plans today to redeem $100 million of the $650 million in auction-rate bonds, with interest costs as high as 22 percent, sold to help finance a stadium for the football team under construction in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Nuveen Investments Inc. and seven other fund managers said they will redeem $7.8 billion in taxable preferred shares that have rates set through periodic dealer-run auctions. About 70 percent of closed-end funds borrow money in an effort to boost returns, most by selling preferred shares on the auction-rate- securities market.
The collapse of the auction-rate market will raise the cost of leverage for closed-end funds, Citigroup said. It will also benefit firms such as Federated Investors Inc.,BlackRock Inc., and Charles Schwab Corp. that have large money-market funds.
``Plain and simple, the money fund turned out to be a superior product and as the ARS crisis is resolved, we expect inflows into money funds,'' Citigroup said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Martin Z. Braun in New York at mbraun6@bloomberg.net;

Goldman Sachs Level 3 Assets Jump, Exceeding Rivals'

(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the most profitable securities firm, reported an increase in hard-to- value assets during the first quarter, exceeding those at Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Goldman's so-called Level 3 assets surged 39 percent to $96.4 billion at the end of February from $69.2 billion in November, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today. The ratio of Level 3 to total assets rose to 8.1 percent from 6.2 percent.

Investors are wary of banks and brokerages with difficult- to-sell securities on their books as $232 billion of writedowns and credit losses from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market have crippled earnings. More assets have become difficult to value in the last three months as investors shunned a wider array of credit, reducing trading.

``People are concerned about Level 3 because of possible writedowns, though it isn't necessarily all losing value,'' said Erin Archer, senior equity research analyst at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, which holds shares of the three firms in the $73 billion under management. ``We aren't out of the woods yet when it comes to writedowns and profitability of the brokers.''

Goldman fell $4.76, or 2.7 percent, to $174.14 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares had gained 8 percent this month through yesterday. Morgan Stanley declined $1.25 today, or 2.6 percent, to $46.10. Lehman dropped $3.13, or 7.2 percent, to $40.54.

Relative Risk

Goldman Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said last month the Level 3-to-assets ratio had risen to about 8 percent mostly because some assets classified as Level 2, including commercial real estate loans, dropped to Level 3. The biggest increase in the hard-to-value category was a 59 percent jump in derivative contracts, according to today's filing. Mortgage and other asset-backed loans and securities increased 56 percent in the quarter.

``Just because an asset is defined as Level 3 doesn't mean we're uncomfortable with the value of the asset,'' said Lucas van Praag, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs. ``It also doesn't provide any insight into the relative risk of the underlying asset.''

Under accounting rules, Level 1 assets are those for which market prices are readily available. Level 2 holdings are valued based on ``observable inputs,'' or prices of similar assets traded in the market. Assets are placed into the Level 3 category when there are hardly any observable inputs, and the firm has to rely on in-house models to calculate potential gains or losses.

FAS 157

The largest investment banks adopted a Financial Accounting Standards Board rule, known as FAS 157, a year earlier than mandated by the board, and have been publishing the breakdown of their asset valuations. The rule, which went into effect last November, requires all public companies to make similar disclosures this year, starting with their first-quarter reports.

The new standard doesn't change the way firms value their assets. It only creates clear-cut categories and is intended to increase transparency about valuations.

Morgan Stanley's Level 3 assets rose 6.1 percent to $78.2 billion last quarter, the firm said today in an SEC filing. Lehman, which also filed a report with the agency today, said its Level 3 holdings rose 1.3 percent to $42.5 billion. All three firms are based in New York.

Lehman's Ratio

The harder-to-value securities made up 7.2 percent of Morgan Stanley's total assets at the end of February, up from 7 percent three months earlier. Lehman's ratio declined to 5.4 percent from 6.1 percent as total assets grew faster. Lehman CFO Erin Callan said last month the ratio would be around 5 percent.

``The uncertainty of Level 3 asset valuation is already priced in the stocks of brokerage firms,'' said Steve Roukis, managing director at Matrix Asset Advisors Inc. which oversees $1.8 billion of assets in New York. ``We expect more writedowns in coming quarters, but they're not going to be huge numbers like the past quarters.''

Goldman faces a maximum potential loss of $22.4 billion from assets held off the firm's balance sheet in so-called variable interest entities, down from $25.9 billion in the previous quarter, according to today's filing. The holdings aren't included among assets classified as Level 1-Level 3. Morgan Stanley said its maximum potential loss from VIEs fell to $11.6 billion from $16 billion. Lehman's dropped to $8 billion from $9.1 billion.

Bear Stearns

Almost one third of the assets held by Goldman's off- balance-sheet entities were mortgage-linked collateralized debt obligations. The market for those instruments has frozen since July.

In the fourth quarter of last year, Bear Stearns Cos. had 7.1 percent of its assets classified as Level 3, the most among the four firms. Bear Stearns didn't publish first-quarter results this year after agreeing to be sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co. last month, following a bank run on the securities firm that depleted its cash reserves.

Stripping out stakes owned by others, Goldman's ``exposure'' to Level 3 assets was $82.3 billion, or 6.9 percent of the firm's total assets. That amounts to a 50 percent increase from the previous quarter. Goldman is the only one of the three banks that reports such an adjusted Level 3 figure.

The following table compares the Level 3 assets on the balance sheets of the three U.S. securities firms that filed their quarterly reports with the regulators today.

Firm           Level 3        Level 3 Assets as   Change in
Value
              Assets         a Percentage of     From Previous
              (in billions)  Total Assets        Quarter

Goldman
Sachs          $96.39         8.1%                 39%
 excluding
 some assets  $82.32         6.9%                 50%

Morgan
Stanley        $78.16         7.2%                 6.1%

Lehman
Brothers       $42.51         5.4%                 1.3%

Mizuho's $4bn sub-prime hit Asia's biggest

Mizuho's $4bn sub-prime hit Asia's biggest LOSS
Print Page: Print
Peter Alford, Tokyo April 12, 2008
MIZUHO Financial Group has taken the biggest sub-prime hit yet of any Asian financier, with losses of Y420 billion ($4.4 billion) at its wholesale brokerage unit.
Problems elsewhere in the group would increase the total US housing-related losses and write-downs for the year to March 31 to Y565 billion, a Mizuho spokeswoman confirmed yesterday.
For the first time a Japanese financial house has confirmed sub-prime damage on a scale approaching that incurred by US and European investment banks.
The critical difference is that the group remains profitable overall.
MFG announced yesterday that huge losses at Mizuho Securities Co had caused a further Y170 billion reduction in the group's consolidated net profit forecast to Y310 billion -- a 59 per cent reduction from originally forecast Y750 billion.
Investors, however, seemed to assume that Japan's second-biggest banking group had cleared the debris from its decks.
MFG shares jumped almost 6 per cent yesterday to Y405,000, outstripping the Tokyo market's 2.9 per cent rise. However, the stock remains 55 per cent down from its 12-month peak of Y899,000 in June.
And given the severe recent deterioration in Mizuho Securities' condition -- its losses blew out by Y220 in the March quarter, against a Y50 billion deterioration forecast in January -- the market and possibly Financial Services Agency regulators will direct searching attention to the other banks with large known sub-prime exposures.
Those include Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (which declared sub-prime-related losses of Y99 billion in the nine months to December 31), Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (Y55 billion for the nine months) and Aozora Bank (Y36.5 billion).
The FSA estimated that at the close of 2007 Japanese banks had incurred about Y600 billion of losses on a total Y1.5 trillion investment in asset backed securities, collateralised debt obligations and other US housing-related instruments.
As the banks recalculate their positions after the March 31 financial year, total losses on those positions are likely to rise towards Y900 billion.
However the FSA remains confident the Japanese banking system, with a capital base of more than Y49 trillion remains insulated from a Wall Street-type emergency or the problems now disrupting Western European financial markets.
"Japan's sub-prime exposure is still relatively small. You can't compare this to the likes of UBS," Polestar Investment Management's Shigemi Nonaka said yesterday.
"Investors have been expecting further sub-prime-related losses, so this doesn't come as much of a surprise."
As with the other large Japanese exposures to the US housing mess, most of Mizuho's problems erupted in its brokerage firm, although the group's main investment bank, Mizuho Corporate, looks to have sustained about Y120 billion losses from CDOs and mortgage-backed securities.
Analysts say MFG had expanded its offshore financial centre activities more aggressively than the other big Japanese banks and that Mizuho Securities was heavily involved in structured finance products.
The severity of the problems began emerging last September as MFG was finalising plans to merge Mizuho Securities with the group's retail brokerage, Shinko Securities. The merger was initially postponed to this May but three weeks ago was put off to "the earliest possible date in 2009".
The effect of global financial dislocation and market volatility, particularly on Mizuho Securities portfolio has made it impossible for the companies to agree on merger ratios.
In a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday MFG said Mizuho Securities' exposure to "foreign currency denominated securitisation products" had been reduced in the past three months from Y470 billion to about Y100 billion, though it did not say how much was achieved by sales and how much by write-offs.
Mizuho was formed in 2000 by the merger of Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank, Fuji Bank and Industrial Bank of Japan, during the long-running Japanese banking system crisis that followed the early 1990s Bubble collapse.
Recapitalised by almost Y2.95 trillion of public funds, Mizuho repaid the last of its bail-out funding in early 2006.
The recent proximity and severity of the Japan's crisis appears to have saved the banks from disastrous exposures to the US housing shambles but the losses now mounting are much larger than expected even three months ago.
Another cause of concern for regulators is the emergence of sub-prime problems in other parts of the financial sector, particularly insurance companies and consumer credit operations.

Who said a Municipality cannot go broke? Who guaranteed this debt?

Largest U.S. Municipal Bankruptcy Looms in Alabama: Joe MysakCommentary by Joe Mysak
April 11 (Bloomberg) -- They're talking more about Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy in Jefferson County, Alabama, the home of the largest city in the state, Birmingham.
Who can blame them?
The county is now being whipsawed by an ill-thought-out debt policy and the collapse of the bond insurers. Credit-rating downgrades all around have triggered a series of events that are no longer in the county's control, leaving it at the mercy of securities firms that have little room for maneuver themselves.
This has produced a steady series of stories in my new favorite newspaper, the Birmingham News, all about how the county is preparing to declare bankruptcy any day.
Perhaps the best article ran on Sunday, April 6. It began: ``Jefferson County officials have laid the groundwork for the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation's history while publicly saying they have no imminent plans for a filing.''

Lehman Makes Move to Turn Unsold Debt to Cash MOST IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT Leading to COLLAPSE!!!

Lehman Brothers Holdings, looking to raise cash, packaged $2.8 billion of unsold loans into bonds, then used some of the securities as collateral to borrow from the Federal Reserve, people familiar with the deal said Friday.
Lehman transferred loans that included some risky leveraged buyout debt into a new investment entity called Freedom, which then issued securities, about $2.26 billion of which were rated investment-grade, they said.
The bank used a relatively small amount of those securities as collateral for a low-interest, short-term cash loan from the Federal Reserve.
The move should give Lehman more money to finance its activities but also raises questions about the quality of the collateral the Federal Reserve is receiving from dealers to which it lends money.
"There's a significant hazard to the Federal Reserve taking poor assets onto its balance sheet," said James Ellman, president of hedge fund Seacliff Capital in San Francisco.