Dimon receives $10m shares (FT)
Jamie Dimon on Thursday received shares worth about $10m after exercising 10-year-old stock options, just days before he was due to be granted a 2009 pay package estimated at $15m-$20m. People close to the situation said that Mr Dimon had no intention of selling the 250,000-plus JPMorgan shares received on Thursday after exercising his options. The stock was worth about $9.6m at Thursday's closing price.
Lehman Was Bank of America Acquisition Target, Not Merrill, E-Mails Show (Bloomberg)
"It's the way we approved acquisitions that ticks me off the most!!!" director Chad Gifford later wrote in an e-mail about the last-minute switch, according to a securities-fraud complaint Cuomo filed today in New York against the bank, former Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis and ex-Chief Financial Officer Joe Price over their handling of the Merrill deal.
Fund Manager Led Investigators to Galleon Informant (DealBook)
The fund manager, Mark E. Lenowitz, who has been cooperating with investigators, was sentenced to three years of probation, including six months home detention, by Judge Sidney H. Stein of Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Dodd Denounces Pace of Banking Overhaul (NYT)
"The fact is, I am frustrated, and so are the American people," Mr. Dodd said, adding that few of the rules of Wall Street had changed, nearly two years after the collapse of Bear Stearns at the inception of the financial crisis. Mr. Dodd said the White House was "on the right track" with its new ideas but warned of difficulty ahead. "The refusal of large financial firms to work constructively with Congress on this effort borders on insulting to the American people, who have lost so much in this crisis," he said. He added that the financial services industry had sent "an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms the public demands."
UBS to reorganize struggling US wealth management (Reuters)
The Swiss bank said today the recently appointed heads of its wealth management unit, Robert McCann and Robert Mulholland, had outlined broad plans for a restructuring and management reshuffle, in order to stop clients for running for the exits.
Top 2009 Forecasters Saw Bad Times (WSJ)
The two Morgan Stanley economists who beat 50 other forecasters in guessing how bad 2009 would be did it by predicting soaring unemployment--though even they didn't see it hitting 10%--and a U.S. economy that would start sputtering back to life by the end of the year. All the survey economists, to some degree, were blindsided by the depth of the recession.
Does Size Matter (In The NFL)? (WSJ)