apologized in court this week as she pleaded guilty to fraud and other offenses, telling a judge that she and others conspired to steal billions of dollars from customers of the doomed crypto exchange while misleading investors and lenders.
“I am truly sorry for what I did,” Ms. Ellison, the former chief executive of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s crypto-trading firm, Alameda Research, said in a New York federal court, according to a transcript of the hearing made available Friday. “I knew that it was wrong.”
Ms. Ellison, 28 years old, and former FTX chief technology officer
Gary Wang,
29, pleaded guilty Monday during separate hearings in sealed courtrooms. Both agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation in exchange for the prospect of lighter sentences.
Ms. Ellison, a former romantic partner of Mr. Bankman-Fried, pleaded guilty to seven criminal counts, including fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. During her hearing, she admitted to conspiring to use billions of dollars from FTX customer accounts to repay loans Alameda had taken out to make risky investments.
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FTX executives had enacted special settings that granted Alameda access to an unlimited line of credit without having to post collateral, pay interest on negative balances or be subject to margin calls, she said.
“I also understood that many FTX customers invested in crypto derivatives and that most FTX customers did not expect that FTX would lend out their digital asset holdings and fiat currency deposits to Alameda in this fashion,” she said.
Ms. Ellison also said she and Mr. Bankman-Fried worked with others to conceal the arrangement from lenders, including by hiding on quarterly balance sheets the extent of Alameda’s borrowing and the billions of dollars in loans that the firm had made to FTX executives and associates. Mr. Bankman-Fried was among the executives who received loans from Alameda, she said.
Under questioning from the judge, Ms. Ellison said she knew what she was doing was illegal.
She said that since FTX’s implosion, she has worked hard to assist in the recovery of customers’ assets and aid the government’s investigation.
At the hearing, U.S. District Judge
Ronnie Abrams
granted the request of federal prosecutors to temporarily seal all documents connected to Ms. Ellison’s plea agreement. At the time, Mr. Bankman-Fried was in a jail in the Bahamas after the Justice Department requested local police arrest him, and he had not yet formally consented to his transfer to U.S. custody.
“We’re still expecting extradition soon, but given that he has not yet entered his consent, we think it could potentially thwart our law enforcement objectives to extradite him if Ms. Ellison’s cooperation were disclosed at this time,” Assistant U.S. Attorney
Danielle Sassoon
told Judge Abrams.
A lawyer for Ms. Ellison declined to comment. Ms. Ellison was ordered released on $250,000 bond at her plea hearing. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.
John J. Ray III, the new chief executive of FTX, testified in front of a House committee Tuesday on the collapse of the crypto exchange. His testimony came less than a day after the company founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested in the Bahamas. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg News
Mr. Wang pleaded guilty in front of the same judge. He told Judge Abrams he knew what he was doing was illegal and wrong. “As part of my employment at FTX, I was directed to and agreed to make certain changes to the platform’s code,” he said, adding that he executed the changes knowing they would give Alameda Research special privileges on the FTX platform.
A lawyer for Mr. Wang declined to comment. He has previously said that Mr. Wang takes his responsibilities as a cooperating witness seriously.
The Justice Department charged Mr. Bankman-Fried earlier this month with eight counts of fraud and conspiracy connected to the implosion of his company. He was released from custody on a $250 million bond on Thursday after making his first court appearance in New York following his extradition from the Bahamas. A federal magistrate judge set strict restrictions on Mr. Bankman-Fried, including ordering him to stay in his parents’ Palo Alto, Calif., home and be under electronic monitoring.
Mr. Bankman-Fried has said he made mistakes that contributed to FTX’s demise, but he has denied engaging in fraud.
Write to Corinne Ramey at corinne.ramey@wsj.com and James Fanelli at james.fanelli@wsj.com
an outspoken and influential fund manager who was chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners, died Wednesday of a heart attack.
Mr. Minerd, 63 years old and a committed weightlifter known to bench press more than 400 pounds, died during his daily workout, the firm said.
Mr. Minerd joined Guggenheim shortly after the firm was founded in 1998.
Guggenheim Chief Executive
Mark Walter
credited him with designing the organization, systems and procedures that helped Guggenheim rise from a startup to a manager of more than $218 billion in total assets and 900 employees.
Mr. Minerd served as the public face of Guggenheim. In that role, he was among Wall Street’s more prominent personalities, making frequent appearances on television and maintaining an active presence on social media to discuss markets and investments, often in blunt terms.
“That sound you hear is the Fed breaking something,” he wrote in October in a message to clients, warning that the central bank’s campaign to raise interest rates was causing dislocations in fixed-income and foreign-exchange markets.
Mr. Minerd was a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Investor Advisory Committee on Financial Markets and an adviser to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Mr. Minerd is survived by his husband Eloy Mendez.
“As an asset manager, I’ve come to view conventional wisdom as the surest path to investment underperformance,” Mr. Minerd wrote in a biographical summary.
Mr. Minerd grew up in western Pennsylvania and studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He also took courses at the University of Chicago and described himself as a monetarist.
He worked as a dealer in currencies, bonds and structured securities at Merrill Lynch,
Morgan Stanley
and CS First Boston in the 1980s and 1990s.
At age 37, feeling burned out, he left Wall Street and moved to Los Angeles. “I walked away from extremely large offers on Wall Street,” he told Bloomberg in 2017. “I realized this wasn’t a dress rehearsal for life, this was it.” After joining what became Guggenheim Partners, he worked in a Santa Monica, Calif., office overlooking the ocean.
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Mr. Minerd was a conservative willing to embrace some ideas from the left and seek middle ground.
In a 2020 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he took aim at elite universities, including the University of Pennsylvania. “These schools have huge endowments, and why are they not focusing their endowment on advancing a cause of essentially free education or at least education that provides complete support for people below certain income levels?” he asked. Mr. Minerd said he wouldn’t make donations going to “bricks and mortar and making the place look better when people who would be qualified to come there can’t afford to do it. And, of course, if we had more equal access to education, it would help address some of the issues around race and poverty.”
Referring to his bulky bodybuilder’s physique, he once told a Wall Street Journal reporter that when people asked about “key man” risk at Guggenheim and wondered what would happen if Mr. Minerd was hit by a truck, his staff members would respond, “Do you mean what would happen to the truck?”
One of his favorite charities was Union Rescue Mission, which provides food, shelter, training and other services to homeless people in Los Angeles County.
Andy Bales,
chief executive of Union Rescue Mission, recalled meeting Mr. Minerd around 2008, when the mission was in poor financial shape and in danger of having to sell one of its sites. “He told me that God was tapping him on the shoulder, telling him to do more for others,” the Rev. Bales said. Mr. Minerd ended up donating more than $5 million to the mission to allow it to expand services.
Mr. Minerd was often seen with a rescue dog he called Grace, who accompanied him to the office and on trips.
His work schedule was punishing. “He was up early for East Coast customers and went late for his West Coast customers,” the Rev. Bales said.
Write to Charley Grant at charles.grant@wsj.com and James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com
U.S. stocks traded lower on Thursday, erasing most of their gains from their biggest rally in three weeks after a round of upbeat economic data and a warning from hedge-fund titan David Tepper that he was “leaning short” against both stocks and bonds on expectations the Federal Reserve and other central banks will continue tightening into 2023.
Positive economic news can be a negative for stocks by underlining expectations that monetary policy makers will remain aggressive in their efforts to quash inflation.
What’s happening
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-1.51%
fell 472 points, or 1.4%, to 32,903.
The S&P 500
SPX,
-1.99%
shed 71 points, or 1.8%, to 3,807.
The Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
-2.84%
fell 272 points, or 2.5%, to 10,437.
A day earlier, all three major indexes recorded their best gain in three weeks as the Dow advanced 526.74 points.
What’s driving markets
Investors saw another raft of strong economic data Thursday morning, including a revised reading on third-quarter gross domestic product which showed the U.S. economy expanded more quickly than previously believed. Growth was revised up to 3.2%, up from 2.9% from the previous revision released last month.
See: Economy grew at 3.2% rate in third quarter thanks to strong consumer spending
The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits in the week before Christmas rose slightly to 216,000, but new filings remained low and signaled the labor market is still quite strong. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast new claims would total 220,000 in the seven days ending Dec 17.
“Jobless claims ticking slightly up but coming in below expectations could be a sign that the Fed’s wish of a slowing labor market will have to wait until 2023. While weekly jobless claims aren’t the best indicator of the overall labor market, they have remained in a robust range these last two months suggesting the labor market remains strong and has withstood the Fed’s tightening, at least for the time being,” said Mike Loewengart, head of model portfolio construction at Morgan Stanley Global Investment Office, in emailed comments.
“While weekly jobless claims aren’t the best indicator of the overall labor market, they have remained in a robust range these last two months suggesting the labor market remains strong and has withstood the Fed’s tightening, at least for the time being,” he wrote. “It’s no surprise to see the market take a breather today after yesterday’s rally as investors parse through earnings data, and despite some beats this week, expectations that earnings will remain as resilient in 2023 may be overblown.”
Stocks were feeling pressure after Appaloosa Management’s Tepper shared a cautious outlook for markets based on the expectation that central bankers around the world will continue hiking interest rates.
“I would probably say I’m leaning short on the equity markets right now because the upside-downside doesn’t make sense to me when I have so many people, so many central banks, telling me what they are going to do, what they want to do, what they expect to do,” Tepper said in a CNBC interview.
Key Words: Billionaire investor David Tepper would ‘lean short’ on stock market because central banks are saying ‘what they’re going to do’
A day earlier, the Conference Board’s consumer confidence survey came in at an eight-month high, which helped stoke a rally in stocks initially spurred by strong earnings from Nike Inc. and FedEx Corp. released Tuesday evening. This optimistic outlook helped stocks clinch their best daily performance in three weeks.
Volumes are starting to dry up as the year winds down, making markets more susceptible to bigger moves. According to Dow Jones Market Data, Wednesday saw the least combined volume on major exchanges since Nov. 29.
Read: Is the stock market open on Monday after Christmas Day?
In other economic data news, the U.S. leading index fell a sharp 1% in November, suggesting that the U.S. economy is heading toward a downturn.
Many market strategists are positioned defensively as they expect stocks could tumble to fresh lows in the new year.
See: Wall Street’s stock-market forecasts for 2022 were off by the widest margin since 2008: Will next year be any different?
Katie Stockton, a technical strategist at Fairlead Strategies, warned clients in a Thursday note that they should brace for more downside ahead.
“We expect the major indices to remain firm next week, helped by oversold conditions, but would brace for more downside in January given the recent downturn,” Stockton said.
Others said the latest data and comments from Tepper have simply refocused investors on the fact that the Fed, European Central Bank and now the Bank of Japan are preparing to continue tightening monetary policy.
“Yesterday was the short covering rally, but the bottom line is the trend is still short and we’re still fighting the Fed,” said Eric Diton, president and managing director of the Wealth Alliance.
Single-stock movers
AMC Entertainment Holdings
AMC,
-14.91%
was down sharply after the movie theater operator announced a $110 million equity capital raise.
Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
-8.18%
shares continued to tumble as the company has been one of the worst performers on the S&P 500 this year.
Shares of Verizon Communications Inc.
VZ,
-0.53%
were down again on Thursday as the company heads for its worst year on record.
Shares of CarMax Inc.
KMX,
-6.60%
tumbled after the used vehicle seller reported fiscal third-quarter profit and sales that dropped well below expectations.
Chipmakers and suppliers of equipment and materials, including Nvidia Corp.
NVDA,
-8.60%, Advanced Micro Devices
AMD,
-7.17%
and Applied Materials Inc.
AMAT,
-8.54%,
were lower on Thursday.
& Co. reached a $3.7 billion deal with regulators to resolve allegations that it harmed more than 16 million people with deposit accounts, auto loans and mortgages.
The settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau includes a $1.7 billion penalty, the agency’s largest-ever fine, and more than $2 billion in consumer restitution, the regulatory agency said Tuesday.
The consumer watchdog agency said the bank illegally assessed fees and interest charges on loans for cars and homes. Some consumers had their vehicles illegally repossessed while others had overdraft fees unlawfully applied, the agency said.
Wells Fargo’s regulatory troubles continue to ripple through the bank more than six years after its fake account scandal burst into public view. Other problems later surfaced across the San Francisco-based bank, including in its lending and deposit-taking businesses.
The CFPB settlement resolves a major penalty hanging over Wells Fargo but leaves it handcuffed by other regulators. The Federal Reserve has had a cap on the bank’s asset growth in place for nearly five years. Politicians continue to target the bank, and investors have filed a series of class-action lawsuits.
“Wells Fargo is a corporate recidivist,” said CFPB Director
Rohit Chopra,
on a call with reporters Tuesday. He said the settlement “should not be read as a sign that Wells Fargo has moved past its longstanding problems.”
The bank had been negotiating with the CFPB for months in an effort to lump as many outstanding issues into the settlement as possible, according to people familiar with the matter.
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Much of the $2 billion remediation included in the settlement has already been doled out to customers. The bank, for example, has paid $1.3 billion to 11 million customers who had auto-loan servicing issues, the CFPB said.
Wells Fargo has been working for years to resolve a series of regulatory matters stemming from a fake-accounts scandal in 2016. Afterward, other problems surfaced across the bank, including in its mortgage and auto-lending businesses.
The CFPB said the bank’s actions span over a decade. Wells Fargo incorrectly applied auto-loan payments because of technology and compliance failures from 2011 through 2022, the agency said. Errors in its home loan modification process went on from 2011 to 2018, the agency said.
The bank sometimes charged overdraft fees even when a customer had enough funds available to make a debit-card transaction or ATM withdrawal, CFPB said. Wells Fargo is required to refund customers about $205 million in fees since the beginning of last year that weren’t yet reversed. CFPB will oversee that process.
Mr. Chopra, an appointee of President Biden, has said he plans to target repeat offenders. “Corporate recidivism has become normalized and calculated as the cost of doing business,” he said in a speech earlier this year. He has also sought to make his agency more adversarial toward financial firms.
The CFPB said Wells Fargo has accelerated efforts to clean up its act since 2020. Tied to the settlement, the agency will terminate one of the consent orders it had placed on the bank in 2016 and clarify that a 2018 consent order will terminate in no more than three years.
Wells Fargo, led by CEO Charlie Scharf, had signaled for months that it expected another large regulatory penalty.
Photo:
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
“This far-reaching agreement is an important milestone in our work to transform the operating practices at Wells Fargo and to put these issues behind us,” Chief Executive
Charlie Scharf
said in a statement.
Mr. Scharf was brought in to clean up the bank in 2019. He has overhauled the top executive ranks, cut its workforce and gave priority to remaking the bank’s back-end systems for managing internal controls and risk.
The bank had signaled for months that it expected another big regulatory penalty, and it took a $2 billion charge in the third quarter tied to resolving long-running legal and regulatory issues. The bank said Tuesday that it expects an operating losses expense of $3.5 billion in the current quarter.
TOKYO—The Bank of Japan made a surprise decision to let a benchmark interest rate rise to 0.5% from 0.25%, pushing the yen higher and ending a long period in which it was the only major central bank not to increase rates.
The
BOJ
said the yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond could rise as high as 0.5% from a previous cap of 0.25%. The central bank has set a target range around zero for the benchmark government bond yield since 2016 and used that as a tool to keep overall market interest rates low.
The 10-year yield, which had been stuck around 0.25% for months because of the central bank cap, quickly moved up to 0.46% in afternoon trading.
The yen rose in tandem. In Tuesday afternoon trading in Tokyo, one dollar bought between 133 and 134 yen, compared with more than 137 yen before the BOJ’s decision.
The Nikkei Stock Average, which had been slightly higher in the morning, was down more than 2% as investors digested the possibility that companies would have to pay higher interest on their debt. Also, the weak yen has pushed up profits for many exporters, so a stronger yen could be negative for stocks.
Gov.
Haruhiko Kuroda,
who is nearing the end of 10 years in office, is known for making moves that surprise the market, although he had made fewer of them in recent years.
Market players had anticipated that time might be running out on the Bank of Japan’s low-rate policy, but they generally didn’t expect Mr. Kuroda to move at the year’s final policy meeting.
The Bank of Japan’s statement on its decision Tuesday didn’t mention inflation as a reason to let the yield on government bonds rise as high as 0.5%. Instead, it cited the deteriorating functioning of the government bond market and discrepancies between the 10-year government bond yield and the yield on bonds with other maturities.
The bank said Tuesday’s move would “facilitate the transmission of monetary-easing effects,” suggesting it didn’t want the decision to be interpreted as monetary tightening.
The move is “a small step toward an exit” from monetary easing, said
Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities
strategist Naomi Muguruma.
Ms. Muguruma said the BOJ needed to narrow the gap between its cap on the 10-year yield and where the yield would stand if market forces were given full rein.
“Otherwise magma for higher yields could build up, causing the yield to rise sharply when the BOJ actually unwinds easing,” she said.
Japan’s interest rates are still low compared with the U.S. and Europe, largely because its inflation rate hasn’t risen as fast. The Federal Reserve last week raised its benchmark federal-funds rate to a range between 4.25% and 4.5%—a 15-year high—while the European Central Bank said it would raise its key rate to 2% from 1.5%.
In the U.S., inflation has started to slow down recently but is still running above 7%. In Japan, consumer prices in October were 3.7% higher than they were a year earlier.
Japan has seen prices rise like other countries, owing to the impact of the war in Ukraine as well as the yen’s weakness. However, the pace of inflation is milder in Japan, where consumers tend to be highly price sensitive.
Write to Megumi Fujikawa at megumi.fujikawa@wsj.com
oversaw one of the biggest financial frauds in American history, a top federal prosecutor said in charging that the former chief executive stole billions of dollars from the crypto exchange’s customers while misleading investors and lenders.
An indictment by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, unsealed Tuesday, charges Mr. Bankman-Fried with eight counts of fraud. Prosecutors allege that he took FTX.com customers’ money to pay the expenses and debts of Alameda Research, an affiliated trading firm. Mr. Bankman-Fried is charged as well with conspiring to defraud the U.S. and violate campaign-finance rules by making illegal political contributions.
Damian Williams,
the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said he authorized the charges against Mr. Bankman-Fried last Wednesday and a grand jury voted on the indictment Friday.
“This investigation is very much ongoing, and it is moving very quickly,” Mr. Williams said at a press conference in Manhattan on Tuesday. “While this is our first public announcement, it will not be our last.”
John J. Ray III, the new chief executive of FTX, testified in front of a House committee Tuesday on the collapse of the crypto exchange. Photo: Nathan Howard/Getty Images
Separately, John J. Ray III, the new chief executive of FTX, said at a congressional hearing Tuesday that FTX incurred losses in excess of $7 billion. Mr. Ray, who oversaw the Enron Corp. bankruptcy early in the 2000s decade, said funds were taken from FTX and Alameda, an affiliated trading firm that incurred trading losses.
Mr. Ray described Enron as having been brought down by sophisticated people whose machinations aimed to keep transactions secret. FTX presents as “old-fashioned embezzlement,” Mr. Ray said. “It’s taking money from customers and using it for your own purpose.”
Also Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged in a civil lawsuit that Mr. Bankman-Fried diverted customer funds from the start of FTX to support Alameda and to make venture investments, real-estate purchases and political donations. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a lawsuit Tuesday linking his allegedly fraudulent conduct at Alameda and FTX to markets that the CFTC regulates.
“
Sam Bankman-Fried
built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto,” SEC Chair
Gary Gensler
said.
The charges are the latest twist in a saga that has rattled the world of cryptocurrencies, a largely unregulated market that boomed during the pandemic but has been hammered this year by rising interest rates and the failure of several significant industry players.
FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, filed for bankruptcy last month after the firm ran out of cash and a merger with rival Binance collapsed. The firm’s failure marked a sudden fall from grace for Mr. Bankman-Fried, who portrayed FTX as a safer crypto exchange to use and cast himself as an ally of regulation.
In interviews since the filing, Mr. Bankman-Fried said he bore responsibility for FTX’s collapse but denied he committed any fraud.
Mark Cohen,
a lawyer for Mr. Bankman-Fried, said Tuesday that his client “is reviewing the charges with his legal team and considering all of his legal options.”
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Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30 years old, was arrested Monday in the Bahamas. He appeared in court Tuesday in Nassau. He was denied bail and has been remanded to jail until Feb. 8, according to a person familiar with the matter.
A U.S. court official said that while the case had been assigned to a federal judge in Manhattan, there was no timing yet for Mr. Bankman-Fried’s extradition.
The tales of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s alleged misdeeds resonated with crypto customers around the world, even those who haven’t suffered significant losses as various firms by turns suspended withdrawals and collapsed.
Vasco Tagachi, a 42-year-old Portuguese-Sri Lankan trader based in China, said he felt a sigh of relief after learning of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s arrest. He said he had $57,423 in an FTX account this fall but was able to withdraw almost all of it just before the firm stopped honoring withdrawal requests.
“I had a little bit of tears in my eyes hearing that,” he said.
Prosecutors allege that from 2019 through November 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried conspired with unnamed individuals to defraud customers and lenders. He provided false and misleading information to lenders on the financial condition of Alameda, according to the indictment.
Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday, a day before he was expected to testify on the sudden collapse of FTX before the House Committee on Financial Services. Illustration: Jacob Reynolds
While the 14-page indictment was light on detailed allegations, it says that on Sept. 18, 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried caused an email to be sent to an FTX investor in New York that contained false information about FTX’s financial condition. In June 2022, the indictment says, Mr. Bankman-Fried and others misappropriated FTX.com customer deposits to satisfy the loan obligations of Alameda.
Mr. Bankman-Fried is also accused of defrauding the Federal Election Commission starting in 2020 by conspiring with others to make illegal contributions to candidates and political committees in the names of other people.
He and his associates contributed more than $70 million to election campaigns in recent years, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. He personally made $40 million in donations ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, most of which went to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups.
Mr. Ray, the FTX CEO, said FTX is investigating whether any loans taken by FTX executives were improperly used for campaign contributions.
Mr. Ray added that tracing fund flows from FTX to executives and third parties was difficult because of the lack of a paper trail for many corporate transactions at FTX.
“We’re dealing with a paperless bankruptcy,” he said. “It makes it very difficult to trace and track assets.”
The CFTC’s complaint contains a detailed discussion of events at Alameda and FTX and argues that the agency, generally less visible to the public than the SEC, also has jurisdiction over the case. While the CFTC regulates U.S. derivatives markets, it can go after fraud that affects some commodity markets.
Besides giving Alameda access to its customer deposits, FTX granted the crypto hedge fund controlled by Mr. Bankman-Fried a series of trading-execution privileges that provided it an edge against other traders on the platform, the CFTC lawsuit alleges.
The CFTC said that while institutional customers had their orders routed through the FTX system, Alameda was able “to bypass certain portions of the system and gain faster access.” It resulted in Alameda’s orders being received by FTX several milliseconds faster than those of other institutional clients.
The lawsuit also alleges that Alameda wasn’t subject to certain automated verification processes, including on whether it had available funds before executing a transaction, giving it further advantage on the speed of its trades.
The edge wasn’t enough to keep Mr. Bankman-Fried from thinking about shutting down Alameda in September, according to the CFTC complaint.
In a document titled “We came, we saw, we researched,” Mr. Bankman-Fried laid out reasons for shutting down Alameda, according to the CFTC lawsuit. Chief among them: Alameda wasn’t making enough money to justify its existence, he wrote.
The CFTC said the statements contradicted what Mr. Bankman-Fried and Alameda were saying publicly at the time.
Tuesday’s congressional hearing was the first public appearance for Mr. Ray on FTX’s bankruptcy. Mr. Bankman-Fried had been scheduled to appear virtually at the same hearing, before he was arrested in the Bahamas at the request of the U.S. government. Bahamian police have said that they would keep him in custody and that they are awaiting an extradition order from U.S. authorities.
“The operation of Alameda really depended, based on the way it was operated, on the use of customer funds,” Mr. Ray said, responding to questions from members of Congress at the hearing. “There were virtually no internal controls…whatsoever.”
He described numerous loans totaling billions of dollars taken out by Mr. Bankman-Fried from Alameda.
“We have no information at this time as to what purpose or use of those funds were,” Mr. Ray added. He said Mr. Bankman-Fried had signed as the issuer and recipient for some of the loans.
Mr. Ray pushed back against recent statements made by Mr. Bankman-Fried that he had little to no involvement in the management of Alameda after passing control of the company to
Caroline Ellison
and
Sam Trabucco,
as well as Mr. Bankman-Fried’s statements that customer funds were passed to Alameda because of an accounting error.
“I don’t find those statements to be credible,” Mr. Ray said.
The Justice Department’s indictment of Mr. Bankman-Fried includes an array of charges with few supporting details, a tactic that could give federal prosecutors flexibility in navigating the rules involving extradition.
The charges against Mr. Bankman-Fried run the gamut from wire fraud to securities fraud conspiracy to conspiring to launder money and conspiring to break campaign-finance laws.
The statutes charged, with the exception of the campaign-finance offense, are enormously broad, said Rebecca Mermelstein, a former federal prosecutor who is now at O’Melveny & Myers LLP.
“By not being superspecific, you protect yourself later against an argument that charges relating to different criminal conduct are being added,” she said.
The arrest of Mr. Bankman-Fried is the latest case to highlight prosecutors’ push to bring white-collar cases to justice faster.
Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a September speech that making prosecutors and companies feel that they were “on the clock” in these cases was a key priority for the department.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried sat down with The Wall Street Journal to discuss what happened to the billions of dollars deposited by the exchange’s customers. Photo: Kenny Wassus/The Wall Street Journal
“We need to do more and move faster,” she said. “In individual prosecutions, speed is of the essence.”
Former federal prosecutors say that high-profile financial cases with lots of victims can increase the pressure on authorities to bring cases more quickly.
“Appearances matter when it comes to criminal justice,” said Mark Chutkow, a former federal prosecutor who is currently head of government investigations and corporate compliance at Dykema Gossett PLLC.
If Mr. Bankman-Fried remains in the Bahamas while the details of his potential extradition to the U.S. are worked out, there is only one prison there: the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services, commonly known as Fox Hill Prison.
Prison inmates reported removing human waste by buckets and developing bed sores from lying on the bare ground, according to a 2021 human-rights report on the Bahamas by the U.S. State Department. Cells were infested with rats, maggots and insects, the report said.
Inmates are supposed to get an hour every day outside for exercise. Because of staff shortages and overcrowding, there are times when inmates will only get 30 minutes a week, said Romona Farquharson, an attorney in the Bahamas.
The prison has different sections that separate those serving terms for violent crimes, for instance, from those who aren’t. Because of overcrowding, there have been instances in which inmates awaiting trial for minor crimes have been sent to the maximum-security facility, said Ms. Farquharson.
“I think they’ve got to be careful not to have him in really rough areas in the prison,” she said.
—Angel Au-Yeung, Ben Foldy and Hannah Miaocontributed to this article.
Write to Corinne Ramey at corinne.ramey@wsj.com, James Fanelli at james.fanelli@wsj.com, Dave Michaels at dave.michaels@wsj.com, Alexander Saeedy at alexander.saeedy@wsj.com and Vicky Ge Huang at vicky.huang@wsj.com
Income-seeking investors are looking at an opportunity to scoop up shares of real estate investment trusts. Stocks in that asset class have become more attractive as prices have fallen and cash flow is improving.
Below is a broad screen of REITs that have high dividend yields and are also expected to generate enough excess cash in 2023 to enable increases in dividend payouts.
REIT prices may turn a corner in 2023
REITs distribute most of their income to shareholders to maintain their tax-advantaged status. But the group is cyclical, with pressure on share prices when interest rates rise, as they have this year at an unprecedented scale. A slowing growth rate for the group may have also placed a drag on the stocks.
And now, with talk that the Federal Reserve may begin to temper its cycle of interest-rate increases, we may be nearing the time when REIT prices rise in anticipation of an eventual decline in interest rates. The market always looks ahead, which means long-term investors who have been waiting on the sidelines to buy higher-yielding income-oriented investments may have to make a move soon.
During an interview on Nov 28, James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and a member of the Federal Open Market Committee, discussed the central bank’s cycle of interest-rate increases meant to reduce inflation.
When asked about the potential timing of the Fed’s “terminal rate” (the peak federal funds rate for this cycle), Bullard said: “Generally speaking, I have advocated that sooner is better, that you do want to get to the right level of the policy rate for the current data and the current situation.”
Fed’s Bullard says in MarketWatch interview that markets are underpricing the chance of still-higher rates
In August we published this guide to investing in REITs for income. Since the data for that article was pulled on Aug. 24, the S&P 500
SPX,
-0.50%
has declined 4% (despite a 10% rally from its 2022 closing low on Oct. 12), but the benchmark index’s real estate sector has declined 13%.
REITs can be placed broadly into two categories. Mortgage REITs lend money to commercial or residential borrowers and/or invest in mortgage-backed securities, while equity REITs own property and lease it out.
The pressure on share prices can be greater for mortgage REITs, because the mortgage-lending business slows as interest rates rise. In this article we are focusing on equity REITs.
Industry numbers
The National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (Nareit) reported that third-quarter funds from operations (FFO) for U.S.-listed equity REITs were up 14% from a year earlier. To put that number in context, the year-over-year growth rate of quarterly FFO has been slowing — it was 35% a year ago. And the third-quarter FFO increase compares to a 23% increase in earnings per share for the S&P 500 from a year earlier, according to FactSet.
The NAREIT report breaks out numbers for 12 categories of equity REITs, and there is great variance in the growth numbers, as you can see here.
FFO is a non-GAAP measure that is commonly used to gauge REITs’ capacity for paying dividends. It adds amortization and depreciation (noncash items) back to earnings, while excluding gains on the sale of property. Adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) goes further, netting out expected capital expenditures to maintain the quality of property investments.
The slowing FFO growth numbers point to the importance of looking at REITs individually, to see if expected cash flow is sufficient to cover dividend payments.
Screen of high-yielding equity REITs
For 2022 through Nov. 28, the S&P 500 has declined 17%, while the real estate sector has fallen 27%, excluding dividends.
Over the very long term, through interest-rate cycles and the liquidity-driven bull market that ended this year, equity REITs have fared well, with an average annual return of 9.3% for 20 years, compared to an average return of 9.6% for the S&P 500, both with dividends reinvested, according to FactSet.
This performance might surprise some investors, when considering the REITs’ income focus and the S&P 500’s heavy weighting for rapidly growing technology companies.
For a broad screen of equity REITs, we began with the Russell 3000 Index
RUA,
-0.18%,
which represents 98% of U.S. companies by market capitalization.
We then narrowed the list to 119 equity REITs that are followed by at least five analysts covered by FactSet for which AFFO estimates are available.
If we divide the expected 2023 AFFO by the current share price, we have an estimated AFFO yield, which can be compared with the current dividend yield to see if there is expected “headroom” for dividend increases.
For example, if we look at Vornado Realty Trust
VNO,
+1.01%,
the current dividend yield is 8.56%. Based on the consensus 2023 AFFO estimate among analysts polled by FactSet, the expected AFFO yield is only 7.25%. This doesn’t mean that Vornado will cut its dividend and it doesn’t even mean the company won’t raise its payout next year. But it might make it less likely to do so.
Among the 119 equity REITs, 104 have expected 2023 AFFO headroom of at least 1.00%.
Here are the 20 equity REITs from our screen with the highest current dividend yields that have at least 1% expected AFFO headroom:
Company
Ticker
Dividend yield
Estimated 2023 AFFO yield
Estimated “headroom”
Market cap. ($mil)
Main concentration
Brandywine Realty Trust
BDN,
+1.82%
11.52%
12.82%
1.30%
$1,132
Offices
Sabra Health Care REIT Inc.
SBRA,
+2.02%
9.70%
12.04%
2.34%
$2,857
Health care
Medical Properties Trust Inc.
MPW,
+1.90%
9.18%
11.46%
2.29%
$7,559
Health care
SL Green Realty Corp.
SLG,
+2.18%
9.16%
10.43%
1.28%
$2,619
Offices
Hudson Pacific Properties Inc.
HPP,
+1.55%
9.12%
12.69%
3.57%
$1,546
Offices
Omega Healthcare Investors Inc.
OHI,
+1.30%
9.05%
10.13%
1.08%
$6,936
Health care
Global Medical REIT Inc.
GMRE,
+2.03%
8.75%
10.59%
1.84%
$629
Health care
Uniti Group Inc.
UNIT,
+0.28%
8.30%
25.00%
16.70%
$1,715
Communications infrastructure
EPR Properties
EPR,
+0.62%
8.19%
12.24%
4.05%
$3,023
Leisure properties
CTO Realty Growth Inc.
CTO,
+1.58%
7.51%
9.34%
1.83%
$381
Retail
Highwoods Properties Inc.
HIW,
+0.76%
6.95%
8.82%
1.86%
$3,025
Offices
National Health Investors Inc.
NHI,
+1.90%
6.75%
8.32%
1.57%
$2,313
Senior housing
Douglas Emmett Inc.
DEI,
+0.33%
6.74%
10.30%
3.55%
$2,920
Offices
Outfront Media Inc.
OUT,
+0.70%
6.68%
11.74%
5.06%
$2,950
Billboards
Spirit Realty Capital Inc.
SRC,
+0.72%
6.62%
9.07%
2.45%
$5,595
Retail
Broadstone Net Lease Inc.
BNL,
-0.93%
6.61%
8.70%
2.08%
$2,879
Industial
Armada Hoffler Properties Inc.
AHH,
-0.08%
6.38%
7.78%
1.41%
$807
Offices
Innovative Industrial Properties Inc.
IIPR,
+1.09%
6.24%
7.53%
1.29%
$3,226
Health care
Simon Property Group Inc.
SPG,
+0.95%
6.22%
9.55%
3.33%
$37,847
Retail
LTC Properties Inc.
LTC,
+1.09%
5.99%
7.60%
1.60%
$1,541
Senior housing
Source: FactSet
Click on the tickers for more about each company. You should read Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information for free on the MarketWatch quote page.
The list includes each REIT’s main property investment type. However, many REITs are highly diversified. The simplified categories on the table may not cover all of their investment properties.
Knowing what a REIT invests in is part of the research you should do on your own before buying any individual stock. For arbitrary examples, some investors may wish to steer clear of exposure to certain areas of retail or hotels, or they may favor health-care properties.
Largest REITs
Several of the REITs that passed the screen have relatively small market capitalizations. You might be curious to see how the most widely held REITs fared in the screen. So here’s another list of the 20 largest U.S. REITs among the 119 that passed the first cut, sorted by market cap as of Nov. 28:
Company
Ticker
Dividend yield
Estimated 2023 AFFO yield
Estimated “headroom”
Market cap. ($mil)
Main concentration
Prologis Inc.
PLD,
+1.29%
2.84%
4.36%
1.52%
$102,886
Warehouses and logistics
American Tower Corp.
AMT,
+0.68%
2.66%
4.82%
2.16%
$99,593
Communications infrastructure
Equinix Inc.
EQIX,
+0.62%
1.87%
4.79%
2.91%
$61,317
Data centers
Crown Castle Inc.
CCI,
+1.03%
4.55%
5.42%
0.86%
$59,553
Wireless Infrastructure
Public Storage
PSA,
+0.11%
2.77%
5.35%
2.57%
$50,680
Self-storage
Realty Income Corp.
O,
+0.26%
4.82%
6.46%
1.64%
$38,720
Retail
Simon Property Group Inc.
SPG,
+0.95%
6.22%
9.55%
3.33%
$37,847
Retail
VICI Properties Inc.
VICI,
+0.41%
4.69%
6.21%
1.52%
$32,013
Leisure properties
SBA Communications Corp. Class A
SBAC,
+0.59%
0.97%
4.33%
3.36%
$31,662
Communications infrastructure
Welltower Inc.
WELL,
+2.37%
3.66%
4.76%
1.10%
$31,489
Health care
Digital Realty Trust Inc.
DLR,
+0.69%
4.54%
6.18%
1.64%
$30,903
Data centers
Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc.
ARE,
+1.38%
3.17%
4.87%
1.70%
$24,451
Offices
AvalonBay Communities Inc.
AVB,
+0.89%
3.78%
5.69%
1.90%
$23,513
Multifamily residential
Equity Residential
EQR,
+1.10%
4.02%
5.36%
1.34%
$23,503
Multifamily residential
Extra Space Storage Inc.
EXR,
+0.29%
3.93%
5.83%
1.90%
$20,430
Self-storage
Invitation Homes Inc.
INVH,
+1.58%
2.84%
5.12%
2.28%
$18,948
Single-family residental
Mid-America Apartment Communities Inc.
MAA,
+1.46%
3.16%
5.18%
2.02%
$18,260
Multifamily residential
Ventas Inc.
VTR,
+1.63%
4.07%
5.95%
1.88%
$17,660
Senior housing
Sun Communities Inc.
SUI,
+2.09%
2.51%
4.81%
2.30%
$17,346
Multifamily residential
Source: FactSet
Simon Property Group Inc.
SPG,
+0.95%
is the only REIT to make both lists.
AUSTIN, Texas—Even as a cold night started to settle outside
Tesla
‘s headquarters here on Saturday, a group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs had no plans to leave until
Elon Musk,
the man they named their currency after, accepted a 12,000-pound sculpture of a Mr. Musk-headed goat riding a rocket.
It is the latest stunt in the cryptocurrency space, where jokes and memes about digital currencies regularly flood social media. But a 6-ton sculpture as a marketing gimmick isn’t so common.
The creators of Elon GOAT say the name of their cryptocurrency was inspired by their respect for Mr. Musk. They and his other fans think he is the “greatest of all time,” or a “GOAT.” They took the admiration literally, spending $600,000 to create a sculpture of Mr. Musk’s head, wearing a gold-plated dogecoin necklace on a goat’s body. The rocket can move, pointing to the sky as if it is taking off. Gas lines run through it so that flames can shoot out of the back.
They trucked it to
Tesla Inc.’s
headquarters, in hopes Mr. Musk would accept the gift. The creators are calling called the event “GOATSgiving.”
Elon Musk has warned of dire financial challenges facing Twitter, the social-media company he took over for $44 billion in October. WSJ’s Mark Maurer explains how the company is trying to fix its finances and avoid a potential bankruptcy. Photo Illustration: Laura Kammermann
But about two hours after the co-founders of Elon GOAT parked the sculpture right outside the Tesla building, there was no sign of Mr. Musk.
Dustin Dailey, a security officer at Tesla, walked over to a group of about 15 people and said they couldn’t accept the sculpture on Mr. Musk’s behalf, but would find a spot for it on their property if Mr. Musk gave the thumbs-up.
But so far Mr. Musk hasn’t given any indication he would accept it or whether he knew the sculpture was there. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment
“I am fairly certain he does know about it,” said Mr. Dailey of the sculpture. “It’s all over Twitter.”
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of the Elon Musk goat sculpture? Join the conversation below.
Alec Wolvert, an Elon GOAT co-founder and chief marketing officer, said they were planning on camping out on a piece of public land off a toll road that overlooks the headquarters until Mr. Musk accepted the sculpture.
“We’re gonna stay here as long as possible,” Mr. Wolvert said. “I even heard some people say they were going to strap themselves to it.”
The idea of the sculpture came together last year. “It was an evening joke that kind of just came to fruition,” said
Ashley Sansalone,
an Elon GOAT co-founder.
Metal sculptor Kevin Stone spent nearly six months working on the sculpture of Elon Musk.
Photo:
Kevin Stone
The cryptocurrency entrepreneurs asked Kevin Stone, a metal sculptor in British Columbia, Canada, to make the giant sculpture with Mr. Musk’s head. The goal: to get Mr. Musk to tweet about the sculpture to his more than 118 million followers and draw attention to their cryptocurrency, the Elon GOAT.
“Elon tweeting us would legitimize the token,” said Mr. Sansalone, 40 years old.
Mr. Sansalone said he works on the token full time and previously ran a construction company and traded energy. Unlike bitcoin, ether or dogecoin, the Elon GOAT token is far from a household cryptocurrency name. It is ranked well outside the largest cryptocurrencies by market value, according to CoinMarketCap.
Mr. Musk’s head, which took nearly six months to complete was made by Mr. Stone. The goat body and rocket were made by others in Phoenix to speed up the project, Mr. Sansalone said. Then all the pieces were put together and attached to the back of a 70-foot long semi-truck trailer.
“When I first saw the statue my jaw dropped,” said DeMarco Hill, 51, who spotted it in September in Goodyear, Ariz., where he lives. He grabbed his 12-year-old son and they followed it. “It was something you’ve never seen before in your life.”
Mr. Hill, a trucker who owns his own company, Stay Ready Trucking, thought the stunt was so entertaining that he found Mr. Sansalone and asked if he could participate. Mr. Sansalone said Mr. Hill was needed because only someone with a special license could drive around the heaping pile of metal.
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He has since driven the sculpture through California, Arizona and Washington, before bringing it to Texas. People who drive by honk their horns or give a thumbs-up, Mr. Hill said.
“If I pull up to the side of the road it’s like people crowding around,” he said. “It gets crazy.”
Mr. Sansalone said the sculpture has mostly gotten a positive response. He hasn’t heard anyone mistaken Mr. Musk’s face for someone else. “I would say he is probably the most relevant person on the planet right now,” Mr. Sansalone said about Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person who recently bought Twitter Inc. for $44 billion.
In September, the sculpture sat in front of Tesla’s office in Palo Alto, Calif., during the company’s artificial-intelligence conference. Tesla employees crossed the street to take pictures with the sculpture, Mr. Sansalone said. Mr. Musk was at the conference, according to Twitter posts he made, and Mr. Sansalone assumes the billionaire saw the sculpture.
“All there was to look at was a lit-up rocket erected in the middle of the street,” he said.
On Saturday night, the group remained hopeful.
At one point in the evening, a group of about 20 people who were waiting outside started to chant “Elon claim your goat” in the hopes that the god of crypto, as one co-founder put it, would hear them.
“I’m a huge fan of Elon and I want to give this man his flowers while he’s alive,” said Aamir Manzoor, a 36-year-old from Toronto who is a holder of Elon GOAT. “He’s done a lot for the world.”
Write to Joseph Pisani at joseph.pisani@wsj.com, Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com and Adolfo Flores at adolfo.flores@wsj.com
A research paper published at Harvard University is advocating that central banks should buy bitcoin
BTCUSD,
+2.41%
as a hedge against sanctions by other countries.
The paper, titled “Hedging Sanctions Risk: Cryptocurrency in Central Bank Reserves,” was authored by Ph.D. candidate Matthew Ferranti from Harvard’s economics department, and likens central banks’ gold reserves to potential bitcoin holdings.
Ferranti points out that central banks in countries across the globe should look into holding bitcoin as a hedge against possible financial sanctions. He gives the example of the unprecedented financial sanctions levied against Russia by the U.S. and many western nations following its invasion of Ukraine — billions in Russian assets were frozen after the Ukraine war began.
“Sanctions risk may diminish the appeal of U.S. Treasuries, propel broader diversification in central bank reserves, and bolster the long-run fundamental value of both cryptocurrency and gold,” Ferranti writes.
In the paper, Ferranti says El Salvador is a model for central banks owning bitcoin. The country, headed by bitcoin bull Nayib Bukele, has purchased millions of dollars worth of the crypto and has even made bitcoin an official national currency.
See also: ‘We just bought the dip’: El Salvador expands bitcoin holdings
Since the inception of popular cryptos like bitcoin and ether
ETHUSD,
+3.74%,
part of its appeal has been the lack of involvement from central banks, in favor of the decentralized nature of the digital asset.
In the wake of the recent crypto winter and collapse of popular crypto exchange FTX, as well as financial issues for crypto companies Voyager and Celsius, some crypto bulls have called for increased regulation and transparency for the industry.
The paper comes after FTX struggled with liquidity issues in November, eventually leading to a bankruptcy filing. Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO and later apologized for the collapse of his former company.
See: Why do people invest in crypto? ‘It’s partly fraud and partly delusion,’ says Charlie Munger.
Also see: Tom Brady, Steph Curry and Kevin O’Leary set to lose big from FTX bankruptcy filing
Bitcoin’s price is down over 70% over the past year, and the price for ether is also down over 70% over the same period. The total market cap for all crypto nearly hit $3 trillion during parts of 2021, but is now around $800 billion.
Group AG warned it would lose around $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter after customers pulled their investments and deposits over concerns about the bank’s financial health.
The warning of a big pretax loss pushed Credit Suisse’s shares to a new closing low, below a previous nadir hit in late September as concerns swirled about the bank’s financial health.
Switzerland’s No. 2 bank by assets said outflows were around 6% of its total $1.47 trillion assets, or around $88.3 billion, between Sept. 30 and Nov. 11. Customers in its wealth-management arm—its main business serving the world’s rich—removed $66.7 billion from the bank. Credit Suisse in late October said that a social-media frenzy around its finances was causing large outflows. The bank typically attracts at least $30 billion in net new assets in a year and hasn’t posted an annual net outflow since 2008, according to its filings.
Analysts at JPMorgan said the outflows and the anticipated loss were much worse than they expected. The bank “is not out of the woods yet in terms of stabilizing the franchise,” they said.
The fast pace of withdrawals meant the bank’s liquidity fell below some local-level requirements, the bank said. It said it maintained its required group-level liquidity and funding ratios at all times. Banks must keep enough liquid assets on hand to meet expected cash outflows in a 30-day period, under post-financial-crisis-era rules.
Credit Suisse’s stock fell 6.1% Wednesday to end at 3.62 Swiss francs, a record closing low. The shares are down 59% this year, according to FactSet.
The cost to insure the bank’s debt against default rose Wednesday.
The warning comes at a precarious time for the bank, which weeks ago launched a sweeping overhaul of its operations. Credit Suisse received shareholder approval Wednesday on a plan to raise more than $4 billion in new stock. It is in the process of selling a large group within its investment bank to free up capital, as part of its recovery effort.
The new stock is being sold to new and existing investors, with terms due to be finalized Thursday. Saudi National Bank said it would take a stake of up to 9.9% as a new shareholder. Some analysts are concerned the new capital raising may not be enough if Credit Suisse’s revamp doesn’t go to plan. The bank’s capital needs depend on selling and exiting some businesses, and on how its continuing businesses perform.
Chairman
Axel Lehmann
said shareholders showed their confidence in the bank by approving the stock increase.
The reduction of customer assets means Credit Suisse has less money to manage and earns less in fees. A broader slowdown in activity in its wealth-management division and investment bank contributed to the warning of a pretax loss of around $1.6 billion for the quarter, it said.
In all, more than $100 billion has left the bank since June, according to Credit Suisse’s filings. It said client balances have stabilized in its Swiss bank and that the outflows have slowed in wealth management, but haven’t reversed.
Wealth management, the business of managing rich people’s money, is Credit Suisse’s largest and most important business. The bank’s overhaul is meant to reduce its reliance on risky Wall Street trades and double down on the steady fee-collecting business of working with the world’s ultra wealthy.
Large outflows indicate that some of those well-heeled clients have grown wary of Credit Suisse’s troubles despite its more than 160-year history. The bank was hit hard when a client, family office Archegos Capital Management, defaulted in March 2021, triggering a loss of more than $5 billion.
Uncertain markets have meant clients aren’t transacting as much across wealth managers. However, crosstown rival UBS Group AG reported around $35 billion in net new fee generating assets from wealth- and asset-management clients in the third quarter.
Concerns about the bank reached a fever pitch in October when commentators on social-media platforms Twitter and Reddit called into question the bank’s health.
Credit Suisse warned last month it would make a net loss in the fourth quarter, in part because of costs from the overhaul. It posted consecutive quarterly losses this year after starting to restructure its operations late last year. In last year’s fourth quarter, it lost around $2.2 billion.
The bank said it is still targeting a capital ratio of at least 13% between 2023 and 2025 as it restructures.
Write to Margot Patrick at margot.patrick@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications Credit Suisse reported about a $2.2 billion net loss in the fourth quarter of 2021. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it lost around $1.7 billion in the quarter. (Corrected on Nov. 23)