Aurelia Butler

Founded in 1988, Trimont, which primarily serves non-bank and alternative lenders, will manage combined $640 billion loans in the U.S. after deal is closed. The “strategically important transaction” will position Trimont to be a key partner to real estate capital providers, said Jim Dunbar, Chair of Trimont and Partner at Värde Partners.Wells Fargo, which has doubled down focus on its core businesses, was last trading down marginally. The stock is up around 15% so far this year.”This transaction is consistent with Wells Fargo’s strategy of focusing on businesses that are core to our consumer and corporate clients,” said Kara McShane, executive vice president and head of Wells Fargo Commercial Real Estate, in a statement. “We remain committed to our market-leading Commercial Real Estate business,” McShane added. Funding for the deal will be provided by Värde Partners, an alternative investment firm, which acquired and has owned Trimont through certain funds since 2015.The move comes at a time when the banking industry in the United States faces increasing pressure due to elevated interest rates and challenges in the CRE market. They have also suffered a sharp fall in valuations post-pandemic due to a jump in office vacancy rates.The deal, for which no value was disclosed, is expected to close in early 2025, pending certain conditions, and will result in Trimont managing over $715 billion in U.S. and international commercial real estate loans.Wells Fargo Securities served as the exclusive financial advisor to the bank. J.P. Morgan Securities served as a financial advisor with Goldman Sachs, providing additional advisory services to Trimont and Värde Partners. More

(Reuters) – The S&P 500 will trade near current record levels at year-end, according to a Reuters poll of market strategists that suggests the AI rally is losing steam as investors wait for a widely-expected U.S. central bank interest rate cut next month. The benchmark S&P 500 will end 2024 at 5,600 points, according to the median forecast of 41 equity strategists, analysts, brokers and portfolio managers collected Aug. 8-20. The index closed at 5,608 on Monday.In a May poll, market strategists expected the S&P 500 to trade nearly unchanged for the rest of the year but the index has climbed over 5% since then.Overall, the S&P 500 has surged around 17% so far in 2024, backed by sharp gains in Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and other Wall Street heavyweights as they race to dominate emerging AI technology.The U.S. stock market has turned volatile in recent weeks, partly on recession fears, but also related to the unwinding of large leveraged positions in markets as a result of a sudden, sharp rise in the Japanese yen, used as a funding currency.Fading recession concerns helped boost stocks last week, marking their biggest weekly gains since November.Investors have also become nervous about massive spending by Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Microsoft and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) to build their AI infrastructure. “The AI sugar high is fading and the market is coming to grips with a possible slowdown in GDP,” said Synovus (NYSE:SNV) Trust portfolio manager Daniel Morgan, warning as well of “little room for error” due to stretched valuations.The S&P 500 dipped 0.2% on Tuesday ahead of an annual central banking conference at Jackson Hole, Wyoming later this week that could offer clues about the trajectory of interest rate cuts. The index is down about 1% from its record high close on July 16.Nvidia’s stock has surged 158% in 2024, and analysts expect the chipmaker’s quarterly net income to more than double when it reports its results next week, according to LSEG.The S&P 500 will trade at 5,900 points by the end of next year, a 5.2% gain from Monday’s close, the survey showed.Stock strategists struggle to accurately predict the market, but their forecasts offer a glimpse of sentiment across Wall Street and Reuters poll medians often correctly predict the direction of trading.A neck-and-neck race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris means additional uncertainty for investors ahead of the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election.As well, turmoil in the Middle East and uncertainty over how many interest rate cuts the Fed will deliver make it particularly difficult right now to forecast the stock market, said Chase Investment Counsel President Peter Tuz. Money market traders mostly expect a 25 basis point rate cut at the Fed’s September policy meeting, with a total of at least 75 basis points in reductions by year end, according to CME Group’s (NASDAQ:CME) FedWatch.Asked by Reuters, over half of poll respondents said a stock market correction of at least 10% is likely by the end of September. More than half predicted corporate earnings would beat expectations through the end of 2024.While the AI rally has benefited the U.S. stock market’s most valuable companies, much of the market has lagged. The median S&P 500 stock has gained around 9% this year, while the S&P 500 consumer discretionary, real estate and materials sector indexes have languished with year-to-date gains of about 5% each.Following this year’s rally, the S&P 500 is trading at 21 times expected earnings, compared to a 10-year average of 18, according to LSEG.Goldman Sachs lowered the odds of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months to 20% from 25% following recent upbeat jobless claims and retail sales reports.(Other stories from the Reuters Q3 global stock markets poll package) More

Bowman’s prepared remarks to a gathering of bankers in Alaska reflect her continued stance as one of the Fed’s more hawkish policymakers. While she refrained for a second time from saying she stood ready, if necessary, to further lift rates, as has been her position previously, she offered little indication she is ready to endorse a rate cut at the Fed’s Sept. 17-18 meeting, as is now widely expected.Inflation should continue to fall under the current stance of policy, she said, and if inflation continues to fall sustainably toward the Fed’s 2% target, “it will become appropriate to gradually lower the federal funds rate to prevent monetary policy from becoming overly restrictive on economic activity and employment.” But Bowman said “we need to be patient and avoid undermining continued progress on lowering inflation by overreacting to any single data point” – an apparent reference to the change in focus among several Fed officials in the aftermath of a July employment report that showed slower hiring and a rise in the unemployment rate to 4.3% – a post-pandemic high.Inconsistencies in the latest employment report warrant caution, she said, noting that while the strength of hiring over the last year may have been overstated, it is also possible that the rise in the jobless rate may exaggerate the level of labor market cooling underway.”Increased measurement challenges and the frequency and extent of data revisions over the past few years make the task of assessing the current state of the economy and predicting how it will evolve even more challenging,” Bowman said. “I will remain cautious in my approach to considering adjustments to the current stance of policy.” Financial markets now fully expect the Fed to cut its benchmark interest rate next month from the current 5.25%-5.50% range where it has been since July 2023. The question is over what size that first cut will be, with current market odds favoring a quarter-percentage-point reduction over a half-percentage-point move. More

President Emmanuel Macron has yet to name a new government since a snap legislative election in early July produced a hung parliament, leaving the current government to draft a budget that will likely be modified – possibly deeply – by its successor. Outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal sent 2025 spending limits to each ministry on Tuesday, keeping overall state spending at 492 billion euros, unchanged from this year’s budget law, an official in Attal’s office told journalists.That implies budget tightening of about 10 billion euros because normally spending would be allowed to increase at least as much as inflation, the official said. Moreover about 20 billion euros in emergency spending cuts this year are also to be rolled over in 2025. “The prime minister is particularly mindful about restoring the public finances,” the official said, adding it was necessary if France is to stick to the outgoing government’s target of cutting the overall public sector budget deficit to less than 3% of output by 2027.As a first step, the current government had aimed to cut the budget deficit from an estimated 5.1% of gross domestic product this year to 4.1% in 2025, but the official said it was too early to say if that target would be retained as the social spending budget was still being prepared.Military spending would be one of the rare budgets to increase next year, while spending on employment support would be reduced as unemployment is relatively low, the official said.Macron is due to meet with party chiefs on Friday with a view to name a prime minister who will be tasked with forming a coalition government, whose first major challenge will be passing a budget before year-end in a deeply divided parliament.($1 = 0.9024 euros)($1 = 0.9022 euros) More

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