Ireland Wins $113 Billion Aid; Germany Drops Threat on Bonds (Bloomberg)
European finance chiefs ended crisis talks in Brussels yesterday by endorsing a Franco-German compromise on post-2013 rescues that means investors won’t automatically take losses to share the cost with taxpayers as German Chancellor Angela Merkel initially proposed to the consternation of bond traders.

France, Germany Determined To Save Euro, Says Spokesman (Reuters)
They want this thing as much as you, swear.

Authorities Worldwide Clamp Down On Insider Trading (FT)
When US investigators were hot on the trail of Don Ching Trang Chu, a former consultant who made a living linking hedge fund traders with corporate insiders, they say they captured him on tape explaining that he preferred to do most of his work in Asia. Most of the “real time” information Mr Chu’s contacts provided was about publicly-traded US companies, but many of the calls and meetings allegedly took place abroad. “I don’t want to (be) involved in the States . . . It’s dangerous. SEC (the US Securities and Exchange Commission) is too strong. In Asia, the SEC can’t do too much there . . . In Asia, there, nobody cares,” Mr Chu allegedly said, according to a criminal complaint filed against him last week…The perception that the US takes insider trading more seriously is widely shared by traders and regulators. Although most countries have officially banned trading on non-public information for a decade or more, enforcement has been patchy or non-existent. That is starting to change in two critical ways: some Asian and European regulators are taking a much tougher stance against insider trading in their own markets and they are co-operating with the SEC and US prosecutors to deal with cross-border violations.

Mutual Fund Ties to Insider Probe May Prolong Withdrawals (Bloomberg)
The probe hits firms as they try to reverse $90 billion in withdrawals from U.S. stock funds since the beginning of 2009. Damage from the industry’s last run-in with regulators, a series of trading scandals in 2003 and 2004, took years to repair and led to more than $3 billion in fines against more than two dozen firms, including Bank of America Corp., Putnam Investments, Janus and MFS.

BP sells Pan American Energy stake for $7bn (BBC)
By offloading its 60% stake in Pan American Energy to Bridas Corporation, BP will raise $7bn (£4.5m;5.3bn euros). The oil giant has now sold $20bn of assets since announcing in July its plan to divest itself of up to $30bn by the end of 2011.

Roubini: Portugal Should Reconsider Rescue (AP)
Doom says Portugal should consider asking for a bailout before its financial plight worsens.

Pete Peterson’s Public Break From Private Equity’s Line on Taxes? (Dealbook)
Did Mr. Peterson say that he believes carried interest — the 20 percent cut of a fund’s profits to which hedge fund and private equity managers are entitled — should be taxed as regular salary? Put another way, did Mr. Peterson propose that his former Blackstone partners should be paying much higher taxes? You betcha.

Third Person Is Bitten By Aggressive Otter In West Boca (CBS)
The latest incident happened in Southwind Lakes when an otter came out of a canal and bit a man while he was in his backyard. Two other people were bitten Sunday in the Boca Chase area. Continue reading »

FrontPoint Investors Seek Withdrawals (FT)
“It is difficult for an entity to keep going because at a certain point the business ceases to be viable whether it has crossed the line or not,” said the head of one firm which invests tens of billions of dollars in hedge funds on behalf of clients. “The regulators effectively put them out of business.” Investors in these hedge funds say they have no choice but to pull their money at the first hint of trouble. “If I get even a whiff of an investigation, I want to get out before the next guy, especially if I know they have illiquid stuff or I don’t know what they have,” says the head of one fund of funds. “Everyone’s nightmare is to get stuck with the stuff in the basement.”

Architects of GM’s IPO Sought to Limit Windfall for Wall Street (Bloomberg)
Want to underwrite one of the largest initial public offerings in history? Chop your usual fee by three-fourths and commit to limiting Wall Street’s windfall. That was the deal David Miller and Tim Massad, the unheralded government architects behind the General Motors Co. stock offering, gave investment banks interested in handling the deal. When the two U.S. Treasury officials made their expectations clear, “we could kind of hear their jaws drop over the phone,” said Massad, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Nov. 29 issue. The IPO, led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley, was a nail-biter for Massad and Miller, who also manage the government’s bank and insurance company investments. “You want the deal to go well” without looking overly optimistic in pricing the shares, Miller said. “At the same time, we don’t want it to go up way too much” because that would mean taxpayers left money on the table on the first day of trading.

This Black Friday, Somebody’s Watching While You Shop (CNBC)
This weekend, as you pull into the shopping mall parking lot for the hottest Black Friday sales, it’s entirely possible that your picture will be snapped by a satellite orbiting high above the Earth. Its being done by retail-market analysts who want to know how many customers are heading to the stores — and what that means for retail stocks this season.

Howard Davidowitz: “Obama Is Toast” (BI)
Also: The situation in Europe, and specifically Ireland, is very similar to what’s happened in the United States, Davidowitz notes. The only major difference is the U.S. can still borrow very cheaply. But, unlike Europe we’ve “done nothing! Nothing!” to get spending under control. He fears “the U.S. dollar is at risk” and could face a crisis “in the next two years,” if we don’t start our own austerity plan.

Jonathan Weil: What to Do When the FBI Raids Your Hedge Fund (BW)
Soon the unsuspecting public will be told that financial stocks are plunging on the news that your firm is being raided. You have the benefit of knowing this in advance. The only remaining questions: Do you short Goldman Sachs? Do you short other large banks, too? More importantly, do you short them for your personal account, or for your fund’s? Sensing nothing but upside in the downside, you settle on all of the above.

The 7 Best Deep-Fried Turkey Disaster Videos (Eater)
Flameball. Continue reading »