Lunchtime Links: Evercore's results appear to say that big banks are not the place to be

Evercore released its third quarter results today. Compared to the woeful showing from big banks, they're good.

Specifically, investment banking revenues were up 39% year-on-year to a record level, operating income was up 20% and compensation costs were up 40%. Evercore's results aren't entirely down to organic growth: it acquired Lexicon Partners in June and Lexicon had a turnover of 33m last year, suggesting that around $13m of Evercore's $40m in top line growth might be Lexicon related.

Nevertheless, Evercore still looks impressive. The only bad news is that hiring in its equity business may now be complete: it now employs 66 institutional equities professionals of whom only five were added in the past quarter.

John Corzine says he's personally responsible for decisions made in MF Global's fixed income unit. (Bloomberg)

Maybe Goldman Sachs will buy MF Global. (CNBC)

MF Global's bonds are yielding 17%. (BusinessWeek)

Nomura's cost cutting plan is based on a report by McKinsey. (The Times)

BNP and SocGen are cutting their trading books (and jobs?) more quickly than expected. (Bloomberg)

European banks have been given 8 months to raise €106bn (92.2bn). (Bloomberg)

Shares in Credit Agricole and BNP Paribas jumped 12% this morning. Shares in SocGen jumped 11%. Barclays jumped 10%. Deutsche jumped 7.9%. (Bloomberg).

How the Greek haircut is actually just 28%. (Zerohedge).

The ECB is purchasing Italian debt today. (Bloomberg)

It's likely that the IIF has merely shifted up the headline debt-reduction number, while also increasing its assumed discount rate. (Wall Street Journal)

These were the protestors outside Goldman Sachs this morning. (Twitpic).