Vulture Investors Circle Wall Street

Like shoppers stalking deals at Filene’s Basement, savvy Wall Street vulture investors are swooping in to find deals among the carcasses of companies and investments felled by the subprime contagion, reports the New York Times. They're betting big—Blackstone Group just raised $10.9 billion from investors to buy distressed real estate—that many companies had to unload good investments in all the chaos.

“There are a lot of dead carcasses on the road, and the vultures are out sniffing,” said one former hedge fund manager. “This is the cycle of Wall Street. When bubbles crash, you get the value guys who come in and say, ‘This thing is cheap.’” Many corporate loans can be had for 90% of their value on the secondary market, and some mortgage bonds are selling for pennies on the dollar. (More Wall Street stories.)