Stock market news today August 6

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One dirty word keeps popping up as Wall Street weighs the
next market crash 

What use is a killer trade idea if actually executing it is like
pulling teeth?

This is a question investors will likely have to start asking
themselves, if they haven’t already.

At the root of the issue is a dirty word that’s been showing up
in Wall
Street commentary with frighteningly
increased regularity: liquidity

For context, when these experts discuss the subject,
they’re referring to
the 
lack 
of
liquidity — and the myriad problems created when investors are
unable to trade without distorting markets. When liquidity is
constrained, volatility increases. And when price swings get
crazier, that’s when huge losses happen.

And no matter where you look in the market, liquidity is
evaporating. This is especially true in the US,
where Federal Reserve tightening
measures are quite literally siphoning off the supply of fresh
capital. As other global central banks look to end accommodation,
the situation will compound.

Inside the struggle at the top of Citigroup’s equities
unit

Armando Diaz didn’t see it coming.

One Friday in March this year, Diaz, who’d joined Citigroup two
years earlier as its global head of cash trading and helped the
bank claw back equities market share from competitors, was
suddenly summoned to his boss’s office hours before US stock
markets would open.

In an office looking out on the third-level trading floor, where
baseball bats stand in a corner and a bottle of whiskey sits on a
shelf, Citi’s global equities co-head Dan Keegan delivered the
news: Diaz was out
of a job.

For months, Diaz and Keegan had gone back and forth over
Citigroup’s central risk book (CRB), a desk where technology
aggregates risk across dozens of traders so it can be actively
managed. The CRB was led by an executive called Peter Lambrakis,
but the profit and losses of the book had been Diaz’s
responsibility, a tension-inducing mismatch. And Diaz and Keegan
couldn’t agree on how the CRB should be positioned.

More here.

Samumed, a $12 billion startup, just raised even more
funding as it plots an IPO

Samumed, a private biotech that’s racked up the heady valuation
of $12 billion,
just raised an additional $438 million.

The company is developing a pipeline of what could be
revolutionary treatments to regenerate hair, skin, bones, and
joints. The funding will be used to move those treatments further
along in development and potentially to approval.

“We are now in a fortunate position to both move our later stage
programs to commercialization, as well as expand on our earlier
stage science and clinical portfolio,” Samumed CEO Osman
Kibar said
in a statement on Monday .

The company had previously raised funding from backers
including high-net
worth individuals and sovereign funds
rather than venture capital. Samumed’s chief business officer
Erich Horsley said
in May that the company could go public in the next
three to four years.

Goldman Sachs is set to promote a top exec to co-head the
securities division

It pays to be close to the man ascending the throne.

Goldman Sachs is
expected to name Jim Esposito to help run the securities
division, elevating an executive considered to be within
incoming CEO David Solomon’s inner circle, according to a person
with knowledge of the appointment. Esposito will join Ashok
Varadhan as co-head of the department that helps clients trade
stocks, bonds, currencies and
commodities. 

Esposito’s announcement will likely come soon and may be made
public as early as Monday morning. 

PepsiCo’s first female CEO is stepping down after 12
years

PepsiCo CEO
Indra Nooyi is stepping down after 12 years, the
company announced on Monday.

She will be replaced by the company’s president, Ramon Laguarta,
according to a statement .
He will be the beverage maker’s sixth CEO.

Nooyi was the first female CEO in the company’s history. Her run
will end October 3 after 24 years with Pepsi, and she’ll remain
chair of the board through early 2019, the company said.

In markets news