Reverse spin / The week in Review

Financial companies’ bottom lines showed fourth-quarter profits as bright as the winter sun over Steamboat Springs, Colo.

Paine Webber Group Inc. posted a 66% leap, Charles Schwab Corp. a 60% jump, Chase Manhattan Corp. a 50% vault, Bank of America Corp. a 32% hike, FleetBoston Financial Corp. a 17% hop and even New Jersey’s Summit Bancorp a 9% tippytoe.

The Michael Jordans and Dr. Js (depending on your age and location) were Citigroup, up 287%, and J.P. Morgan & Co., which also almost tripled.

Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette’s profit went up more than 2? times and Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. more than doubled. E*Trade Group Inc. cut its loss from a nickel a share to 2 cents and Knight/Trimark more than tripled its bottom line.

Ameritrade Holding Corp., reported a $21.7 million loss as against a $3.7 million profit last year, but co-CEO Joe Ricketts said with ah, bright wings, next year he expects more than $1 billion on the top line and as much as $400 million on the bottom.

Electronic news

The Chicago Board of Trade is ready to split itself along electronic (eBOT) vs. trading pit (CBOT) lines and to take both parts public…The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s biggest public pension fund, gave high-tech investment bank Thomas Weisel Partners a nice first birthday present, announcing that it would buy 10% of it and commit a billion bucks to mutual funds it runs.

Dot’s all

The last major independent merchant bank in London fell before the might and money of Citigroup. Schroders PLC and its largest single stockholder, recalcitrant Bruno Schroder, finally gave in, selling the investment banking division for $2.21 billion, which they said they’d use to bolster the asset-management side of the house. Citi is creating something called Schroders Salomon Smith Barney in Europe. It’s been all downhill for Schröders since they lost their umlaut in 1957.

Wildcats in NYC

Ninety reporters and editors at Reuters newsroom in New York called in sick Tuesday as flu swept the city and contract negotiations with the mainly financial news service, which commenced in 1997, appeared to be in a coma. Talks resumed the next day, however. At issue is what management calls “lifetime tenure” and workers call job security.

Ties optional

Another sign that the apocalypse may be nigh is the Labor Department’s announcement that it’s considering the addition of stock options to its quarterly Employment Cost Index. Of course, it’s not that nigh, since it’s the government and nothing real will happen until at least two years of studies are conducted — and the dot-com bubble may have burst by then.

Much sooner, in June, the index will add hiring and referral bonuses. Overtime and shift differential, something unions were keen on when there were unions, still aren’t included.

Naughty, naughty

On the legal front, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused New York hedge fund manager Michael Berger of lying about losing $300 million for investors by shorting Internet stock. The SEC said Manhattan Investment Fund Ltd. perpetrated “a massive fraud”…NASD Regulation Inc. alleged that New York brokerage Josephthal & Co. had defrauded investors by running up the price of a tech offering it underwrote in 1996 — days after settling charges it had done the same thing to somebody else. A Josephthal statement pooh-poohed the charge, saying the complaint didn’t mention fraud and the matter involved “total commissions of under $500,000.” Why, that’s barely enough to feed a Wall Street pigeon. The flying kind, of course, not the kind that buys stock.