To Buy Bonds or Not to Buy: Fed Hawks, Doves Air Views (WSJ)
The presidents of the Dallas, Richmond and Philadelphia Federal Reserve banks, long skeptics of the wisdom of the bond buying, said this week that they would like to see the purchases scaled back immediately. And San Francisco Fed President John Williams, who has been enthusiastic about the merits of the program, said Thursday that he is still prepared to reduce the size of the purchases “as early as this summer.” The president of the Boston Fed, meanwhile, suggested that there is a case that the Fed should be doing even more to boost the economy.

Dell Profit Missing Estimates Boosts CEO’s Buyout Plan (Bloomberg)
Profit excluding some items fell to 21 cents a share for the period that ended May 3, from 43 cents a year earlier, Round Rock, Texas-based Dell said in a statement yesterday. Analysts on average had projected 35 cents, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue (DELL) declined 2.4 percent to $14.1 billion, beating analysts’ average $13.5 billion projection. The plunge in profit lends credence to a plan by Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell and Silver Lake Management LLC to take the company private in a $24.4 billion leveraged buyout. … “The Icahn solution gets less attractive, and the bird in the hand looks better than the one in the bush,” said Chris Whitmore, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG in San Francisco, who has a hold rating for the shares.

How Elliott and Hess Settled a Bitter Proxy Battle (DealBook)
[T]he company began announcing steps intended to raise its stock price, including selling its gas stations, raising its dividend and announcing a stock buyback. It also replaced the slate of directors up for re-election this year — including Mr. Kean and Mr. Nunn — with a group that includes John Krenicki Jr., a former vice chairman of General Electric. Later, the company agreed to separate the roles of chairman and chief executive, both currently held by Mr. Hess, the son of the founder. (The board on Thursday named Mark Williams, one of its new directors, as nonexecutive chairman.) And the Hess family agreed to support a proposal in which directors would be re-elected every year, rather than every three years.

Day Traders Steer Tesla Higher (WSJ)
The whipsaw trading can complicate longer-term investors’ efforts to assess companies’ prospects and create volatility that draws the ire of corporate managers. … Such traders in recent years have targeted the shares issued by companies including Netflix, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Priceline.com. In 2010, Chipotle Mexican Grill hit the radar screen of day traders. Its share price quadrupled over the next two years while trading volume nearly doubled. At its peak, the stock was trading at 47 times projected future earnings, according to FactSet, more than double that of McDonald’s Corp. and Taco Bell operator Yum Brands Inc.

Hedge Fund Billionaire William Ackman, Investor Group in Contract to Buy a New York Penthouse for Over $90 Million (WSJ)
Mr. Ackman does not plan to move in, a person familiar with the plans said, and the group views the penthouse as an investment.

For Sale: A Video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Smoking Crack Cocaine (Gawker)
Rob Ford, Toronto’s conservative mayor, is a wild lunatic given to making bizarre racist pronouncements and randomly slapping refrigerator magnets on cars. One reason for this is that he smokes crack cocaine. I know this because I watched him do it, on a videotape. He was fucking hiiiiigh. It’s for sale if you’ve got six figures.
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JPMorgan presses Bloomberg on reporters’ access to data (Reuters)
The largest U.S. bank is seeking logs for five years of what precisely Bloomberg journalists accessed concerning the use of terminals by JPMorgan employees, a bank official said. Bloomberg has about 2,400 journalists worldwide. JPMorgan said it is also seeking “confirmation” of controls that Bloomberg has put in place to stop future breaches.

JPMorgan Shareholders Are Denied Access to Results (DealBook)
The firm that is providing tabulations of the JPMorgan vote stopped giving voting snapshots to the proposal’s sponsors last week. The change followed a request from Wall Street’s main lobby group, the firm says. … Lyell Dampeer, a senior executive at Broadridge, said his firm was required to give real-time results to companies, and for years Broadridge gave that same information to proposal sponsors. But late last week, he received a call from an employee of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Wall Street’s main lobby group, requesting that Broadridge cut off access to organizations that are sponsoring proposals, he said. Sifma represents JPMorgan and other big banks and brokerage firms.

What’s a CEO Worth? More Firms Say $10 Million (WSJ)
Compensation awarded to CEOs of 300 U.S. companies rose a median 3.6% to $10.1 million, the analysis found. The total includes salary and annual bonuses, plus the value of restricted stock and stock options at the time they were granted. The companies surveyed, all of them public, with revenue exceeding $7.5 billion, were the largest to file proxy statements between May 1, 2012 and April 30, 2013. … Last year’s relatively modest increase in CEO compensation followed a 2.3% bump in 2011.

Hedge Funds Dump Apple, Jump into Hess, Dell Fights in Q1 (CNBC)
Yesterday was 13F day.

Funds bet Greece will survive and thrive (FT)
This further fuelled an already eye-catching rally in Greece’s restructured bonds, sending the 10-year bond yield tumbling 74 basis points to well below the 9 per cent mark, the lowest in three years. The Athens stock exchange rallied to the highest since August 2011. The Greek debt management agency is even talking of issuing bonds next year, a prospect that not so long ago would have seemed highly optimistic. Now bankers and investors say selling shorter-term bonds would be feasible.

Wife of ‘Rain Man’ Libor Trader Starts to Talk on Twitter (WSJ)
Tom Hayes, the former UBS and Citigroup trader known to colleagues as “Rain Man” for his brainy but socially awkward demeanor, has been mostly silent since the U.S. Justice Department charged him last December with trying to manipulate Libor. … Recently, though, someone in Mr. Hayes’s corner has started speaking up: his wife, Sarah Tighe Hayes. A few days ago, she started tweeting under the handle @SarahTigheHayes. Mixed in with tweets about soccer and child-care are a handful of posts in which she has shared with her eight followers her thoughts about Libor and what she sees as the U.S. justice system’s propensity for overkill.

Twitter CEO Costolo on Improv, VCs and Burritos (PEHub)
“Out in the Midwest, you don’t have to worry about ‘I have to get them better burritos or they’re going to go somewhere else,” he says. “You have to worry about that stuff here.” … As for venture capitalists, another group disproportionately represented in Silicon Valley, Costolo was decidedly tongue-in-cheek. Asked what he likes most about VCs, Costolo replied: “They pick up the check at dinner.” Asked what he likes least about VCs, he had a one-word answer: “Dinner.”
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Euro-Zone Recession Extends Into 2013 (WSJ)
Economic output contracted in the euro zone for a sixth-straight quarter, as a slight recovery in Germany failed to offset recessions in France and Italy. The report underlines a challenge facing European policy makers struggling to turn improved conditions in financial markets into renewed business activity. Without expanding economies, unemployment is likely to keep rising, particularly in southern Europe, weighing on business and household spending. … Gross domestic product fell 0.2% in the first quarter from the final three months of 2012, according to a report Wednesday from the European Union’s statistics office Eurostat. In annualized terms, which is how the U.S. and some other countries report output, GDP fell 0.9%, according to J.P. Morgan.

Rising revenues to shrink deficit rapidly through 2015: CBO (Reuters)
The deficit is shrinking considerably more quickly than previously thought, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday in a report that could sap Congress’ sense of urgency to find further budget savings. In one fell swoop, the non-partisan budget referee slashed its deficit forecast for the current fiscal year by $203 billion from estimates made in February to $642 billion – making it the smallest budget shortfall since 2008.

HSBC eyes up to 14,000 fresh job cuts (FT)
HSBC announced another round of heavy cost-cutting on Wednesday in a programme that could lead to between 4,000 and 14,000 more job losses. The bank said it would seek $2bn-$3bn of additional annual cost savings on top of the $4bn already achieved. But Stuart Gulliver, chief executive, still had to row back from a key efficiency target. The bank would in future aim for a cost-income ratio of close to 55 per cent, rather than the 48-52 per cent range previously targeted.

JPMorgan investors take heat off Dimon (FT)
Large shareholders and other people familiar with early voting patterns said an investor proposal to strip Mr Dimon, the chief executive, of his dual role as chairman was on track to gather less than 50 per cent of the vote. However, some large investors who are backing Mr Dimon are voting against the re-election of other board members, leaving in doubt the position of directors such as Ellen Futter, a lightning rod for corporate governance activists, whose qualifications to serve on the board’s risk committee have been questioned.

Subscribers Fear Bloomberg Is Becoming Their Rival (DealBook)
The most obvious business line that competes with Wall Street is Tradebook, a subsidiary of Bloomberg that is registered to trade on behalf of clients, collecting valuable commissions for each trade. It is fighting for those commissions with trading desks across Wall Street. Tradebook was originally created in 1996, 14 years after Mr. Bloomberg founded the larger company. For many years, Tradebook failed to gain much traction, but in 2010 it hired an ambitious new chief executive, Ray Tierney, from Morgan Stanley. Mr. Tierney has helped Tradebook win a greater market share in stocks and options and has developed new products. Last fall, it introduced Bloomberg Pool, which serves as a competitor to Wall Street’s dark pools, where stock trades are executed away from the public exchanges.

Newlywed, 21, busted allegedly soliciting hooker for sex on honeymoon (NYDN)
A newlywed husband solicited sex from a prostitute while on his honeymoon with his new wife, authorities say. Mohammed Ahmed, 21, allegedly left his blushing bride in their luxury suite so he could meet up with the hooker he’d spotted online — but she turned out to be an undercover cop. … When he didn’t return, his wife contacted cops to report him missing — only to find he’d been thrown in jail and booked on charges of soliciting prostitution.
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Dual-track Libor replacement lined up (FT)
The scandal-plagued Libor benchmark is likely to be replaced by a dual-track system with survey-based lending rates running alongside transaction-linked indices as soon as next year. … A UK committee charged with selecting a new Libor administrator is looking for a group that would be comfortable running rates based on estimates and qualified to design and administer a transaction-based replacement, he said. Short-listed candidates are to be interviewed next month.

A Top Contender at the Fed Faces Test Over Easy Money (WSJ)
Janet Yellen is a top contender for the job, assuming Mr. Bernanke steps down when his term ends in January, but her selection is far from certain. She faces a big question among investors: Is she wary enough about the risks of easy money to close the Fed’s credit spigot before financial bubbles emerge or consumer prices rise too far? As a first step, Fed officials have mapped out a strategy that maintains flexibility for winding down its $85 billion-a-month bond-buying program intended to spur the economy. But the timing of the withdrawal is still being debated.

Big Vote on Dimon May Hinge on Views on JPMorgan’s Top Director (DealBook)
Yet a year after the bank posted a multibillion-dollar trading loss that has helped drive out top lieutenants, spurred federal inquiries and prompted Congressional hearings, a growing number of investors are questioning whether Mr. Raymond has done enough to fortify risk controls and root out problems, say some of JPMorgan’s biggest shareholders. “I am really surprised that there has not been more blood spilled in the boardroom,” Mr. Gheit said. “It’s totally alien to the Lee Raymond I know.”

Holding Ourselves Accountable (Bloomberg)
Last month, we immediately changed our policy so that reporters now have no greater access to information than our customers have. Removing this access will have no effect on Bloomberg news-gathering. Now let’s also be clear what our reporters had access to. First, they could see a user’s login history and when a login was created. Second, they could see high-level types of user functions on an aggregated basis, with no ability to look into specific security information. This is akin to being able to see how many times someone used Microsoft Word vs. Excel. And, finally, they could see information about help desk inquiries.

Wall Street: How Much Does Bloomberg Know? (CNBC)
One hedge-fund manager, who wished to remain anonymous, described the Bloomberg practice as “shocking,” and he has asked his lawyers to review his agreement with Bloomberg to determine what kind of usage information Bloomberg can access from his fund’s terminal. “My initial reaction was a bit of schadenfreude. Like, finally, Goldman’s getting spied on. But then I realized, while it’s fine to spy on Goldman, they could be spying on me,” he said.

Horse-riding goat a normal occurrence, owner says (CBC)
“The goats like to always, of course, be close to the horse, and when she lies down, they lie down on her back,” Power said. “And, of course, goats being goats — you know, they’re pretty sure-footed little things — [the horse] gets up and most of the time they’ll just stay on and go for a ride around the farm.”
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Icahn and Southeastern Ready Rival Bid for Dell (DealBook)
The effort by Mr. Icahn and Southeastern, disclosed in a letter to Dell’s board Thursday night, is intended as a last-ditch effort to fight the management buyout led by Michael S. Dell, the company’s founder and chief executive, and the private equity firm Silver Lake. Unlike that bid, which would pay shareholders $13.65 a share in cash, Mr. Icahn and Southeastern are offering to pay shareholders about $12 a share either in cash or in additional shares in the company. The offer would still leave a portion of Dell publicly traded.

Yen’s Fall Trickles Through Japanese Economy (WSJ)
Just over a month after Japan’s central bank vowed to reignite economic growth by flooding markets with yen, the currency fell to ¥100 to the dollar for the first time in four years, a milestone in efforts to end nearly two decades of economic stagnation. … In new signs of the impact of Abenomics, Japanese domestic institutional money started flowing overseas in pursuit of higher yields while bank lending rose at the fastest pace in four years, data released Friday showed.

Heading to G7 meeting, U.S. tells Japan to stick to currency rules (Reuters)
The United States warned Japan on Friday to stick to the rules when it came to the value of its currency, setting the stage for a potentially uncomfortable meeting of G7 finance ministers outside London. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said that Japan had “growth issues” that needed to be dealt with but that its attempts to stimulate its economy needed to stay within the bounds of international agreements to avoid competitive devaluations.

JPMorgan sued over credit card debt collecting (FT)
JPMorgan Chase has been sued by California’s top law enforcement official for allegedly flooding the state’s courts with thousands of “unlawful” suits aimed at collecting credit card debts. The state’s attorney-general, Kamala Harris, filed suit against JPMorgan on Thursday, saying the bank “engaged in widespread, illegal robo-signing, among other unlawful practices, to commit debt-collection abuses against approximately 100,000 California credit card borrowers over at least a three-year period.” The state is seeking a $2,500 civil penalty for each violation.

Blackstone Targets Bulging Corporate Coffers Via New Unit (Bloomberg)
The firm has started a money-management unit called Blackstone Treasury Solutions Advisors LLC that will cater exclusively to corporations. Its portfolio managers include Blackstone Chief Financial Officer Laurence Tosi and Treasurer Matthew Skurbe, who help run New York-based Blackstone’s internal cash management strategy. Blackstone is targeting company treasurers as the U.S. considers requiring money funds to shift from stable share prices to floating valuations.

Terminally nosy (NYP)
Irked Goldman Sachs brass recently confronted Bloomberg LP over concerns reporters at the business news service have been using the company’s ubiquitous terminals to keep tabs on some employees of the Wall Street bank, The Post has learned. … In one instance, a Bloomberg reporter asked a Goldman executive if a partner at the bank had recently left the firm — noting casually that he hadn’t logged into his Bloomberg terminal in some time, sources added. Goldman later learned that Bloomberg staffers could determine not only which of its employees had logged into Bloomberg’s proprietary terminals but also how many times they had used particular functions, insiders said. … “In light of [Goldman’s] concern as well as a general heightened sensitivity to data access, we decided to disable journalist access to this customer relationship information for all clients,” Bloomberg spokesman Ty Trippet said.

Man Attacked by Alligator While Fleeing Deputies (AP)
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office says 20-year-old Bryan Zuniga was pulled over for failing to maintain a single lane Thursday at about 2:50 a.m. Deputies say Zuniga stopped the vehicle and jumped out of the passenger door. He then broke through a vinyl fence and escaped. The Tampa Bay area man was found at a local hospital a few hours later. He told deputies he had been attacked by an alligator near a water treatment plant. He was being treated for multiple puncture wounds to the face, arm and armpit area.
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Einhorn’s advice to investors: don’t take my advice (Reuters)
Einhorn, this year’s star attraction at the Sohn Investment Conference, an annual confab where the industry’s top investors share their favorite trade ideas, wrapped up his presentation by offering some words of warning about his public comments. “It doesn’t make sense to blindly follow me or anyone else into a stock,” said Einhorn, president and co-founder of the $8.8 billion hedge fund Greenlight Capital. “Do your own work.” He may have been talking to the converted. Einhorn’s limited impact on Apple Inc shares after he implored the technology giant earlier this year to better use its cashpile has been noted by industry analysts.

Hedge Fund Billionaire Paulson Glosses Over His Losses (Reuters)
“Don’t focus on weekly or monthly returns,” Paulson told attendees at the fifth annual Skybridge Alternatives Conference, adding clients should not micro-manage their fund managers but find someone they like and stick with them for the long term, the people who heard the comments said. Paulson was being interviewed by Anthony Scaramucci, who founded SkyBridge Capital and is a large investor with Paulson’s Recovery Fund. … There was little tough questioning for the man who has notched some of the $2.25 trillion hedge fund industry’s heaviest losses in the past two years and is losing more money this year due to his wager on gold.

Hedge Fund Impresario Plays Host in Las Vegas (DealBook)
Just outside the grand ballroom at the Bellagio hotel early Wednesday morning, Anthony Scaramucci, the backslapping host of the country’s largest hedge fund conference, spotted Gregory J. Fleming, president of Morgan Stanley Investment Management and one of Mr. Scaramucci’s most important business relationships. “Is your kid still in town? Does he want to meet Train?” Mr. Scaramucci asked, referring to the adult-contemporary rock band performing at the event.

Big Banks Push Back Against Tighter Rules (WSJ)
FYI

Earnings Not Yet a Viral Sensation (WSJ)
On April 2, the SEC announced that companies “can use social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to announce key information…so long as investors have been alerted about which social media will be used to disseminate such information.” Since then, only about a dozen firms have said they might break news on Facebook, Twitter and the like. And few of those companies make much noise online. A Facebook spokesman said the company plans to “disseminate information as broadly as possible, and that will include using Facebook.” He wouldn’t say when that would begin or if Facebook will ever use its own site as the primary place to report earnings.

CIA’s New Chief Spy Outed on Twitter (Gawker)
The day after it was announced that the interim head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service had been passed over for the full time position because of her connections to the agency’s controversial interrogation program, her successor was reportedly outed on Twitter by former Washington Post assistant editor John Dinges and then confirmed by veteran intellegence reporter Jeff Stein.

Berlusconi loses appeal in tax fraud case (FT)
Silvio Berlusconi, former prime minister and billionaire media mogul, has lost his appeal against a four-year jail sentence imposed last October for alleged tax fraud involving his Mediaset company. Although Mr Berlusconi can make a second and final appeal, during which time the case may expire under the statute of limitations, the verdict reached by a Milan court on Wednesday evening could lead to friction within Italy’s new coalition government.
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Big Funds Undecided On Dimon (WSJ)
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. has yet to persuade three of its largest shareholders to back the company in a coming vote over whether James Dimon should retain his dual role of chairman and chief executive. BlackRock Inc., Vanguard Group Inc. and Fidelity Investments remain undecided with two weeks to go before final votes are tallied on May 21, said people close to the firms. … All three money managers have sided with J.P. Morgan Chase management in shareholder votes in the past. Last year, BlackRock, the largest institutional investor, with 248 million shares across its funds, voted against a similar proposal, as did Fidelity and Vanguard.

Paulson Bid to Resurrect Reputation Hurt by Gold Gone Bad (Bloomberg)
On a conference call with investors last month, billionaire John Paulson boasted that one of his biggest hedge funds would have been up 15 percent this year — if only he hadn’t owned gold stocks.

A Humbled Kleiner Perkins Adjusts Its Strategy (DealBook)
Kleiner has held a series of status-report meetings with its outside investors this year, acknowledging that recent fund performance “wasn’t great,” one attendee said. “They really believed green tech was going to be the next big technology wave,” this investor added. Kleiner has also cut some management fees and reorganized its investment approach, eliminating three “silos” that separated teams making investments in clean technology, health care and technology. The firm has added more investing partners with digital expertise, like the former Twitter executive Mike Abbott, after it missed the early window on hot media start-ups like Facebook and Twitter and jumped in later at higher valuations.

Hedge funds in search of distress take a look at Detroit (Reuters)
With $8.6 billion in long-term debt, Detroit would be comparable to the biggest corporate failures if it eventually files for bankruptcy, a major advantage for big hedge funds that are used to investing hundreds of millions of dollars at a time. The sheer size of Detroit’s debt should make it easier for the funds to track down very large chunks of bonds, magnifying their profit potential, cutting their research and advisory costs and giving them leverage when it comes to restructuring talks.

Hedge Funds Rush Into Debt Trading With $108 Billion (Bloomberg)
Hedge funds using debt-trading strategies honed on Wall Street are expanding at a record pace as they profit from risks big banks are no longer taking. … “The regulatory posture in the U.S. and in Europe is unequivocal: They want to transfer risk to the shadow-banking system,” said Roy Smith, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner. “It does come at the cost of interfering with some financial capabilities of the large banks to function as market makers and arbitrage providers.”

Man returning homemade pipe bomb gets arrested at L.A. gun buyback event (CBS)
Police arrested a man attempting to turn in a homemade pipe bomb during the latest Los Angeles gun buyback event, CBS Los Angeles reports. According to Police Chief Charlie Beck, the man told authorities he was prompted to turn in the device after a conversation with God. The man said “God no longer wanted him to use that bomb to blow up the Hollywood sign, now he wanted him to turn it in,” Beck told CBS Los Angeles.
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HSBC Profit Rises as It Cuts Costs (WSJ)
Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver said the bank has cut 46,000 jobs since 2011, far more than he envisioned when he presented a three-year strategy that year. Then he said he’d shave around 10% from a 300,000-strong workforce. Mr. Gulliver said the bank has had to react to tough economic conditions in many markets, although he said he now sees the banking industry moving “into calmer waters” as the euro-zone crisis appears to have settled down. … The bank, Europe’s largest by assets, reported a sharp rise in first-quarter net profit, to $6.35 billion from $2.58 billion. After stripping out the fluctuating value of HSBC’s own debt and sold businesses, underlying pretax profit rose 34% to $7.59 billion from $5.65 billion in the first three months of 2012. Underlying revenue was up 5%, to $17.56 billion from $16.8 billion.

Societe Generale Announces New Cuts as Profit Falls 50% (DealBook)
The bank said first-quarter net income fell 50 percent, to 364 million euros ($476 million), from the period a year earlier. That was well below the 674.6 million euro profit expected by analysts surveyed by Reuters. Société Générale, the second-largest French lender, said it planned 900 million euros of cost reductions through 2015, adding to the 550 million euros of cuts last year. Severin Cabannes, the bank’s deputy chief executive, told CNBC television that the bank was in talks with its unions about eliminating 600 to 700 jobs at its headquarters, but added that there would be “no forced layoffs.”

German finance minister softens stance on EU banking union (Reuters)
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble signaled a softening of his stance on a European banking union on Tuesday, saying the euro zone should press ahead on the basis of current law without waiting for a controversial overhaul of the EU’s Lisbon treaty. … Just last month, Schaeuble appeared to slam on the brakes by saying the European Union needed to consider treaty change before proceeding, due to the “doubtful legal basis” on which the project rested. Those comments sparked a backlash from EU officials and German partners like France.

Portugal’s Notes Rise as Nation Sells 10-Year Debt; Bunds Slide (Bloomberg)
“Portugal’s sale is important because it marks another step in the exit from the crisis,” said Luca Cazzulani, a senior rates strategist at UniCredit SpA (UCG) in Milan. “In the current market environment, there will probably be demand. Investors are rushing into anything that grants you a good yield and when you look at the Portuguese curve the 10-year is around 5.5 percent and so I think the sale will find demand.”

Soros Rumor Underpins Turning Tide Against Aussie (CNBC)
Rumors that George Soros was planning to short the Australia dollar has taken the wind out of the robust currency, fueling expectations that the tide is turning for the Aussie dollar. The Aussie fell 0.6 percent against the U.S. dollar late Monday on a report in the Sydney Morning Herald that bets against the currency totaling $1 billion were placed via Hong Kong and Singapore, believed to be by Soros Fund Management.

Christie reveals secret stomach surgery to lose weight (NYP)
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie secretly underwent lap-band stomach surgery to aggressively slim down for the sake of his wife and kids, he revealed to The Post last night. … “A week or two ago, I went to a steakhouse and ordered a steak and ate about a third of it and I was full,” he said of his newly tamed appetite. He declined to say how much he lost, but sources said he has already shed nearly 40 pounds. … Sources said Christie didn’t make the decision lightly — he even had private conversations about the operation with once-rotund Jet coach Rex Ryan.
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Berkshire Hathaway’s 2013 Shareholder Meeting (DealBook)
Ms. Loomis of Fortune asks a question on behalf of a shareholder in the audience: How would you explain Berkshire and its value premise to the investor’s 13-year-old daughter? Mr. Munger takes first crack as Mr. Buffett helps himself to some See’s Candy fudge: “We like to stay sane while others go crazy. That’s a competitive advantage.”

JPMorgan Investors Urged to Split Chairman Role, Oust Directors (Bloomberg)
Stockholders should vote in favor of a proposal to split the roles of chairman and chief executive officer, both currently held by Jamie Dimon, at New York-based JPMorgan’s annual meeting May 21, Institutional Shareholder Services said in a report. ISS, which advises investors on proxy voting and corporate governance, cited “failures of stewardship” in opposing the re-election of three risk-committee directors. … ISS recommended that shareholders oppose the re-election of Risk Policy Committee members David Cote, Ellen Futter and panel Chairman James Crown. Former KPMG International Chairman Timothy Flynn, who was appointed to the committee after the loss disclosure last year, should be re-elected, ISS said. “The CIO losses revealed multiple points of failure in the risk oversight process, and certain members of the RPC lack relevant industry expertise,” ISS wrote.

As Companies Step Up Buybacks, Executives Benefit, Too (WSJ)
As corporations step up stock repurchases to return cash to shareholders, compensation targets tied to per-share earnings—a common factor in executive-pay calculations—are helping to increase many executives’ pay. The link worries some investors and compensation advisers because they fear the figure is too easily manipulated. The debate is a tricky one, though, because buybacks are generally seen as a plus for shareholders and thus something to be encouraged.

In Commerce Pick’s ’08 Answers on Finances, Possible Hints at Road Ahead (NYT)
Republican senators are likely to be interested in the Pritzker family’s reputation as innovators in the use of offshore trusts and foreign bank secrecy laws to shelter their wealth from income, capital gains and inheritance taxes. Even after tax code loopholes were closed, the family’s trusts were grandfathered in and it kept benefiting from them. Indeed, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, has called for scrutiny of her family’s trusts, saying she was “associated with the kind of tax avoidance activity that the president dismisses as fat cat shenanigans for others. It’s hypocritical to overlook tax avoidance when it’s convenient.”

Warren Buffett: Stocks Will Go ‘Far Higher’ Over Time (CNBC)
Even as stock indexes hit all-time highs, Warren Buffett predicts they’ll go “far higher” in the long run. … Acknowledging that milestones like Dow 15,000 can draw attention to stocks, Buffett said people should pay more attention when indexes cross those milestones on the way down because that’s when stocks are “cheaper” and more attractive to buy. There could be a pullback for stocks at any time, Buffett said, advising against attempts to time the market. “People pay way too much attention to the short term.”

Harvard’s Niall Ferguson Apologizes for ‘Stupid’ Keynes Remarks (CNBC)
Asked about Keynes’ observation that “in the long run we are all dead,” Ferguson said that Keynes had been indifferent to the long run because he had no children, and that he had no children because he was gay. … On Saturday, Niall Ferguson posted an apology on Twitter: “I apologize deeply and unreservedly for stupid and tactless remarks about Keynesthat I made. I should not have suggested—in an off-the-cuff response that was not part of my presentation—that Keynes was indifferent to the long run because he had no children, nor that he had no children because he was gay. This was doubly stupid,” Ferguson wrote on his blog. “First, it is obvious that people who do not have children also care about future generations,” he wrote. “Second, I had forgotten that Keynes’s wife Lydia miscarried.”
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Job market shows surprising strength (Reuters)
Nonfarm payrolls rose 165,000 last month and the jobless rate fell to a four-year low of 7.5 percent, the Labor Department said on Friday. Payrolls rose by 138,000 jobs in March, 50,000 more than previously reported, and job growth for February was revised up by 64,000 to 332,000, the largest gain since May 2010. Economists polled by Reuters had expected April payrolls to rise 145,000 and the unemployment rate to hold steady at 7.6 percent.

EU economies to breach deficit limits as economic picture darkens (FT)
Three of the eurozone’s five largest economies will bust through EU-mandated deficit limits this year as the bloc’s recession continues to deepen, according to highly anticipated European Commission forecasts published on Friday. In addition to the anticipated breaches by France, Spain and the Netherlands, the currency union’s third-largest economy, Italy, will come within a hair’s breadth of missing the limit of 3 per cent of economic output, with a 2013 deficit forecasted at 2.9 per cent.

RBS presses for sell-off of state stake (FT)
The chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland on Friday said he wanted the UK government to be able to start selling its 81 per cent stake in the group from the middle of next year – or even earlier. Sir Philip Hampton made the comments as the bank announced disappointing first-quarter results that prompted shares in the bank to fall 5.6 per cent to 290p in morning trading in London.

BNP Paribas CEO ‘Satisfied’ After 45% Profit Drop (CNBC)
BNP Paribas said quarterly earnings fell to 1.58 billion euros ($2.07 billion) from 2.87 billion euros in the year-ago period, when profits were boosted by the sale of part of its stake in real-estate subsidiary Klepierre. The profit figure slightly beat analysts’ expectations of 1.53 billion euros, according to an average of analysts’ forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters.

JPMorgan Caught in Swirl of Regulatory Woes (DealBook)
The latest is from FERC.

Buffett Supports Dimon’s Dual Roles 100% at JPMorgan (Bloomberg)
Warren Buffett, who has said he personally owns shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), is backing the bank’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon as shareholders vote this month on whether to split his roles. “I’m 100 percent for Jamie,” Buffett told Bloomberg Television’s Betty Liu yesterday in Omaha, Nebraska. “I couldn’t think of a better chairman.”

Hong Kong’s giant rubber duck (CNN)
Thousands lined the harbor front and work ground to a halt in offices with sea views as the much-hyped ‘Rubber Duck’ made its grand entrance. For two weeks local media has been on something of a “duck watch,” closely monitoring the movements of the 16.5-meter (54 feet) inflatable sculpture. The man behind the seriously over-sized bath toy, Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, described the Hong Kong response as overwhelming and said he was happy to have finally made it to the city, his first visit. … “If it makes you smile, then that’s OK, but maybe it makes you cry because of the urban environment. I make work not to give answers but to question things,” said the 36-year-old father of three.
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ECB Cuts Key Interest Rate to Record Low as Recession Lingers (Bloomberg)
Policy makers meeting in Bratislava today lowered the main refinancing rate to 0.5 percent from 0.75 percent, a move predicted by 45 of 70 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. The ECB kept the deposit rate at zero and reduced the marginal lending rate to 1 percent from 1.5 percent to preserve a symmetrical rate corridor. President Mario Draghi holds a press conference in the Slovakian capital at 2:30 p.m. Since Draghi said last month that he stood ready to act if Europe’s economic outlook worsened, inflation plunged, economic confidence slumped and unemployment rose. Today’s cut, the first since July last year, takes the ECB closer to exhausting its conventional policy tools, raising the prospect of a negative deposit rate or new non-standard measures.

Fed Presses Ahead With Bond Buys as Inflation Slows (WSJ)
The Federal Reserve said it would press forward with an $85 billion-a-month bond-buying program and hinted it might even dial it up if the job market or inflation figures fail to meet the Fed’s expectations. The Wednesday pronouncement after a two-day policy meeting marked a shift in the U.S. central bank’s public tone.

Bank of Japan reveals concerns over easing policy (FT)
Board members at the Bank of Japan voiced fears over the consequences of the “massive” monetary easing unleashed by governor Haruhiko Kuroda last month, minutes published on Thursday showed. … There were concerns, too, that the bank’s “financial soundness” could be threatened by ramped-up purchases of bonds and risky assets such as exchange traded funds and real estate investment trusts, with one member proposing that the BoJ consider “an arrangement” with the government to cover potential losses.

Clubby London Trading Scene Fostered Libor Rate-Fixing Scandal (WSJ)
Brokers and traders interviewed by The Wall Street Journal said brokers routinely reward valued traders by returning a percentage of their commissions in the form of entertainment. Brokers have paid for traders to spend weekends in the Alps and Saint-Tropez, and on occasion, have even bought them cocaine or prostitutes, according to people who witnessed such activity. A few years ago, U.S. and British regulators allege, some brokers were so eager to please bank traders that they helped with an illegal Libor-rigging scheme.

Obama picks Pritzker for Commerce, Froman for USTR (Reuters)
President Barack Obama on Thursday will nominate Mike Froman and Penny Pritzker for the last two vacant Cabinet slots on his economic team, turning to a law school classmate who is already one of chief advisors and a billionaire businesswoman who helped put him in the White House. … Pritzker, tapped to become the U.S. Commerce secretary, is an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, runs her own real estate and investment companies, is ranked 271st on Forbes Magazine’s list of the wealthiest Americans and eighth on Chicago Magazine’s list of the city’s most powerful people.

Derby’s Falling Sky Shows Goldman Sachs’s Covello Spreading Risk (Bloomberg)
Goldman Sachs Inc. partner James Covello says that when it comes to race horses, his work on Wall Street has taught him it’s all about spreading the risk. … Falling Sky will go off at 50-1 in the Derby, the first leg of thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown. Since Covello and his partners bought the colt, he has won the Sam F. Davis on Feb. 2, come in third at the Tampa Bay Derby on March 9 and fourth in the Arkansas Derby, the longest of his races at 1 1/8 miles, to earn $205,000 so far in 2013. … “He’s going to be a longshot; he should be a longshot,” Covello said. “Honestly, there are 20 horses running and I don’t think any horse has more than 5 percent chance to win.”

Lindsay Lohan to bring lots of baggage to rehab: 270 outfits for 90 days (Today)
The troubled actress, who will start her court-mandated 90-day rehab sentence on Thursday at the Morningside Recovery Center in Newport Beach, Calif., won’t be traveling lightly. On Tuesday night, she posted a photo on her Instagram account of herself surrounded by luggage and clothing, along with the caption “90 days and 270 looks.” Lohan’s rehab wardrobe, which would give her three separate outfits per day, will be put to good use at the rehab facility, which boasts group activities such as bowling, sporting events and even supervised barbecues on the beach.
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