Nikkei Enters Bear Market (WSJ) Markets across Asia suffered another bruising day as investors scrambled for the exits, with Japanese stocks falling over 6% and into a bear market, and heavy losses in China and across Southeast Asia. Declines continued in U.S. stock futures and in Europe. ... The most dramatic move was in Japan, with the Nikkei Stock Average falling 6.4% to 12445.38 and putting it 21.9% down from the intraday peak reached on May 23, the day Japan's 6-month rally turned south and begun three weeks of wild trading. The big money bails on Argentina - again (Reuters) The mass exodus, which has been limited only by leftist President Cristina Fernandez's capital controls, is threatening to undermine Latin America's No. 3 economy even further by leaving it short of hard currency and new jobs. The underlying problems range from Fernandez's hostile treatment of the private sector, to severe financial distortions such as a parallel exchange rate, to the general feeling that Argentina is due for one of the periodic spasms that have racked the country every 10 years or so going back to the 1930s. EU Urges U.K. to Probe Currency Rigging in Libor’s Wake (Bloomberg) “They need to get to the bottom of it,” Sharon Bowles, 60, chairwoman of the European Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee and a member of the U.K. Liberal Democrat party, said in an interview. “It’s quite upsetting we have got another bad-news story. It’s time we managed to restore the reputation of our banks.” Singapore Regulator Said to Plan Bank Reprimand on Rates (Bloomberg) Singapore’s central bank plans to reprimand banks in the city-state as early as Friday following an 11-month review into how benchmark interest rates are set, five people with knowledge of the matter said. ... The monetary authority isn’t planning to impose criminal sanctions on the banks or any employees, said two of the people. MAS will probably require some of the banks to set aside funds as a deposit with the central bank for a period of time and strengthen their internal controls, two people said. U.K. Committee Says Google Avoids Tax (WSJ) Google Inc. has aggressively avoided paying corporation tax in Britain and its reputation won't be restored until it begins to pay what is due, a U.K. parliamentary committee said Thursday, in the latest sign that governments around the world are stepping up scrutiny of the tax affairs of multinational firms. In a strongly worded 64-page report, the public affairs committee also criticized the U.K. tax authority, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, for failing to challenge Google about its "highly contrived" tax arrangement and called on it to fully investigate the Internet giant. ... "It's clear from this report that the public accounts committee wants to see international companies paying more tax where their customers are located, but that's not how the rules operate today. We welcome the call to make the current system simpler and more transparent," the spokesman said. Soccer star Lionel Messi used the same trick as Apple to cut his tax bill (Qz) Lionel Messi, the Argentine soccer sensation who plays for FC Barcelona, has IP worth at least $21 million a year. That’s the value of his endorsement deals, led by his relationship with Adidas. And according to the Spanish government, he has dodged nearly €4.2 million ($5.5 million) in taxes by using that IP in a very Apple-like way. Spain accuses Messi and his father, who manages the player’s finances, of selling the rights to his brand image to shell companies in tax havens like Uruguay and Belize, and then licensing those rights to the companies and products he endorses. Such a move would shift Messi’s income from Spain, where he lives and pays taxes, to those lower-tax states. Girl group bases style on Nikkei ups and downs (Japan Times) “We base our costumes on the price of the Nikkei average of the day. For example, when the index falls below 10,000 points, we go on stage with really long skirts,” Mori explained. The higher stocks rise, the shorter their dresses get. With the Nikkei index ending above 13,000 [in late April], the four went without skirts altogether on the day of their interview with The Japan Times, instead wearing only lacy shorts. ... Machikado Keiki Japan (roughly translated as Economic Conditions on the Streets of Japan) released their debut single, “Abeno Mix,” on April 7. It pays homage to Abe’s ultraloose economic policies that have been dubbed “Abenomics” by the media. Debt Makes Comeback in Buyouts (WSJ) Shareholders in BMC Software Inc. will receive $6.9 billion to sell the corporate-software developer to a group of private-equity firms. But the buyers, led by Bain Capital LLC and Golden Gate Capital, only intend to pay $1.25 billion in cash out of their own pockets. The rest will come from debt raised by BMC to finance its takeover. The little-noticed acquisition is another milestone in the return of cheap debt and higher-risk deals to Wall Street: The cash put down by BMC's private-equity buyers is the lowest as a percentage of the purchase price of any buyout with loans exceeding $500 million since 2008, according to data-provider Thomson Reuters LPC. Apollo Tyres skids 24% on Cooper deal fears (FT) Shares in Apollo Tyres, India’s largest tyre company by sales, plunged by a quarter on Thursday amid investor concerns about higher debt related to the group’s planned $2.5bn acquisition of US-based Cooper Tire and Rubber. The all-cash deal, which would be the largest-ever Indian acquisition of a US company, is also set to increase Apollo’s consolidated net debt to equity ratio from 0.8 to around 3.8, according to Angel Broking, a Mumbai-based brokerage. “The deal will leave the company with a huge debt and that is the biggest concern,” said Yaresh Kothari, an automotive analyst at the broker. Shares in Apollo were down 24 per cent at Rs67 by 2pm in Mumbai on Thursday. The deal was announced after markets closed in Mumbai on Wednesday. Clearwire Endorses Dish’s Sweetened Bid (DealBook) Clearwire on Wednesday switched its allegiance to Dish Network, recommending that shareholders accept its bid of $4.40 a share over a rival offer from Sprint Nextel. Clearwire also postponed a shareholder vote from Thursday to June 24. Meanwhile, Dish extended its tender offer, which had been set to expire on Friday, to July 2. The change in recommendation is a setback for Sprint, which is seeking to buy the roughly 49 percent of Clearwire that it does not already own for about $3.40 a share. Its approach for Clearwire is meant to gain full control of an important affiliate whose wireless spectrum holdings are the cornerstone of a campaign to improve its network and make the company more competitive. Coty Raises About $1 Billion in Its Public Debut (DealBook) The company, whose products include Sally Hansen nail polish and perfumes endorsed by Beyoncé and Katy Perry, priced its initial public offering at $17.50 a share on Wednesday, in the middle of its expected range of $16.50 to $18.50. The stock sale values the company at about $6.7 billion. The offering, which raised just less than $1 billion in proceeds, is one of the three biggest initial offerings in the United States this year, according to data from Renaissance Capital. Washington pushed EU to dilute data protection (FT) The Obama administration successfully lobbied the European Commission to strip its data-privacy legislation of a measure that would have limited the ability of US intelligence agencies to spy on EU citizens, according to three senior EU officials. The measure – which was known within the EU as the “anti-Fisa clause”, after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorises the US government to eavesdrop on international phone calls and emails – would have nullified any US request for technology and telecoms companies to hand over data on EU citizens, according to documents obtained by the Financial Times. However, the safeguard was abandoned by commission officials in January 2012, despite the assertions of Viviane Reding, the EU’s top justice official, that the exemption would have stopped the kind of surveillance recently disclosed as part of the National Security Agency’s Prism programme. Miracle-Gro’s Potty-Mouthed CEO Should Have Known Better (Bloomberg) Responding to the use of rough language during World War II, Norman Vincent Peale, a minister (and author of “The Power of Positive Thinking”), lamented to the New York Times, “The public men of other years may have cussed plenty in private, but they had the good taste to keep it out of public address.” Public expletives have become more common, and executives have moved to leverage, or perhaps weaponize, foul language to their benefit. A San Francisco appeals court has ruled that a werewolf erotica novel must be returned to Andres Martinez, an inmate of Pelican Bay State Prison, after prison guards took it away from him on the grounds that it was pornography. Although the court grants that novel in question, The Silver Crown, by Mathilde Madden, is "less than Shakespearean," it argues that the book nevertheless has literary merit and shouldn't be banned under prison obscenity laws. The court also notes that "the sex appears to be between consenting adults. No minors are involved. No bestiality is portrayed (unless werewolves count)."

Morgan Stanley Posts Loss (WSJ) "The rebound in fixed income and commodities sales and trading indicates that clients have re-engaged after the uncertainty of the rating review in the previous quarter," Chief Executive James Gorman said, referring to Moody's Investors Service's move over the summer to downgrade the credit rating on more than a dozen banks. "We are beginning to unlock the full potential of the Global Wealth Management franchise, having increased our ownership of, and agreed on a purchase price for the rest of, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management." For the quarter, Morgan Stanley reported a loss of $1.02 billion, compared with a year-earlier profit of $2.2 billion. The per-share loss, which reflects the payment of preferred dividends, was 55 cents compared with a profit of $1.15 a year earlier. Stripping out the impact of debt-valuation changes, the per-share profit was 28 cents versus two cents a share a year ago. Revenue fell 46% to $5.29 billion, including a negative impact of $2.3 billion from the tightening of credit spreads related to debt. Stripping out debt-valuation changes revenue was up 18% to $7.55 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of 24 cents, excluding gains related to debt, on revenue of $6.36 billion. Morgan Stanley Reduces Investment-Bank Pay to $5.2 Billion (Bloomberg) The ratio of compensation to revenue in the unit fell to 44.9 percent, compared with 48.4 percent in the same period a year earlier, when excluding accounting gains and losses related to the firm’s credit spreads. That’s still higher than Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan’s investment bank. Compensation and benefits for all of Morgan Stanley totaled $12 billion in the first nine months, down 4 percent. Goldman Ex-Employee Says Firm Pushed Europe Bank Options (Bloomberg) Goldman Sachs sought to profit last year by persuading clients to buy and sell stock options on European banks such as BNP Paribas SA and UniCredit SpA, according to former employee Greg Smith’s new book. “We must have changed our view on each of these institutions from positive to negative back to positive ten times,” Smith writes in “Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story,” scheduled for release on Oct. 22. “I remember thinking, ‘How can we be doing this with a straight face? No thinking client could believe that conditions on the ground could change that frequently.”’ [...] Smith also describes being disappointed with his $500,000 bonus at the end of 2006. “By any measure, I should have felt exceptionally lucky and grateful,” he writes. “But by the warped logic of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, I was being screwed.” U.S. to Get Downgraded Amid Fiscal ‘Theater,’ Pimco Says (Bloomberg) “The U.S. will get downgraded, it’s a question of when,” Scott Mather, Pimco’s head of global portfolio management, said today in Wellington. “It depends on what the end of the year looks like, but it could be fairly soon after that.” Asian Scion's Trades Draw Scrutiny (WSJ) A federal probe into an alleged multimillion-dollar insider trading scheme is focusing on the son of a deposed Central Asian autocrat once courted by the U.S. as a key ally in the war on terror, according to people involved in the investigation. The globe-spanning criminal case marks a turnabout by the U.S. against a ruling family it once relied on to keep open military supply lines to Afghanistan. For years, the U.S. maintained good relations with then-Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Now, the U.S. has prepared charges against the former strongman's son, Maksim Bakiyev, who officials say spent some of his exile in London profiting from illegal tips on stocks trading on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. On Friday, the younger Mr. Bakiyev, 35, was arrested in England on an extradition request from the U.S. Mr. Bakiyev's U.K. attorney, Michael O'Kane, declined to comment. Computer programmer 'quadruples productivity' after hiring a woman to slap him in the face every time she catches him looking at Facebook (DM) Maneesh Sethi placed an advert on Craigslist to recruit someone willing to monitor what he was looking at on his laptop. The computer expert and writer, from San Francisco, now pays a female employee £5 ($8) an hour to strike him in the face if she spots him wasting time on social media. Mr Seethi claims the unusual motivational system has helped him boost his productivity from just 35 percent to around 98 percent during the working day...Mr Seethi published details on his blog of his Craigslist advert, which was entitled '(Domestic gigs) Slap me if I get off task'. In it he wrote: 'I'm looking for someone who can work next to me at a defined location (my house or a cafe) and will make sure to watch what is happening on my screen. 'When I am wasting time, you'll have to yell at me or if need be, slap me. 'You can do your own work at the same time. Looking for help asap. Mr Seethi said he was inundated with offers from potential slappers and quickly hired a volunteer he names only as Kara. He wrote: 'Within minutes, my inbox began blowing up. Up to 50% of Greek Workforce Strikes; Tipping Point Nears (CNBC) As European Union leaders prepare to meet in Brussels on Thursday, Greece’s workers aim to make their voices heard by holding a 24-hour strike bringing the country to a halt. With the economy in the fifth year of a recession, the lost production could prove counterproductive and cost the economy 100 million euros ($131 million), according to one expert. Most business and public sector activity is expected to grind to a halt during the strike called by the ADEDY and GSEE unions that represent around 2 million people — half of Greece’s workforce. A protracted news blackout is also expected as television and radio broadcasters and newspapers shut for the day, according to Reuters. Spain Banks Face More Pain as Worst-Case Scenario Turns Real (Bloomberg) Spain’s request for 100 billion euros of European Union financial aid to shore up its banks is increasing concern about the nation’s growing liabilities. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country’s debt rating by two levels to BBB-, one step above junk, from BBB+ on Oct. 10, saying it wasn’t clear who will bear the cost of recapitalizing banks. It cut the ratings of 11 lenders including Banco Santander SA and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, Spain’s largest, two days ago, citing the sovereign downgrade. Brothels Rescue Cash-Strapped Greek Soccer Team (AP) Players on a cash-strapped Greek soccer team now wear pink practice jerseys with the logos "Villa Erotica" and "Soula's House of History," two bordellos it recruited as sponsors after drastic government spending cuts left the country's sports clubs facing ruin. Other teams have also turned to unconventional financing. One has a deal with a local funeral home and others have wooed kebab shops, a jam factory and producers of Greece's trademark feta cheese. But the amateur Voukefalas club — whose players include pizza delivery guys, students, waiters and a bartender — has raised eyebrows with its flamboyant sponsorship choice. Prostitution is legal in Greece, where brothels operate under strict guidelines. Though garish neon signs advertising their services are tolerated, the soccer sponsorship has ruffled some feathers in the sports-mad city of Larissa. League organizers have banned the pink jerseys during games, saying the deal violates "the sporting ideal" and is inappropriate for underage fans...Brothel owner Soula Alevridou, the team's new benefactor, has already paid more than 1,000 euros ($1,312) for players to wear her jerseys. The team is appealing the game ban, but that doesn't worry the 67-year-old Alevridou, who says she's only in it because she loves soccer. "It's not the kind of business that needs promotion," she said, dressed all in white and flanked by two young women in dark leggings at a recent game. "It's a word-of-mouth kind of thing."