Matt Levine, Columnist

Buyout Loans Have a Bad Week

Also roving Jamie Dimon, payment for order flow and analyst work hours vs. accuracy.

September 22, 2022 at 6:14 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

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Programming note: Money Stuff will be off for a few days tomorrow and early next week, back on Wednesday.

A good trade is, you go to a bank and ask to borrow a billion dollars, and the bank gives you the billion dollars, and then the bank comes to you and says “hey I just made this billion-dollar loan to you, do you want to buy it,” and you say “sure I’ll pay you $836 million for it,” and the bank says “ugh fine I guess.” And now you have borrowed $1 billion and paid back $836 million and made a $164 million profit all at once. Here you go: