Opening Bell: 10.30.14

The show must go on.

$1.5 Million Sent in Error to Money Manager (Both Are Missing) (Dealbook)
Credit Suisse says it wired a total of $1.5 million in three transactions to the hedge fund’s bank account on one day in January. Two weeks later, according to its lawsuit, the bank realized it had made a mistake: At the time of the wire transfers, the hedge fund, Galbraith Capital Investment Management, was winding down operations and it had no cash left in its account with Credit Suisse. The bank asked for its money back. It is still waiting. The bank sued Galbraith Capital and its manager, Joseph B. Galbraith, seeking to recover the money. Credit Suisse filed a motion in a New York State court in August seeking a default judgment against Mr. Galbraith and the hedge fund. At a hearing this month, a New York State judge orally granted a judgment against the hedge fund but not against Mr. Galbraith, a person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Galbraith has yet to file a legal response in the case or be personally served with court papers. So now Credit Suisse is left to play a different game: Where in the world is Joseph B. Galbraith? People who know Mr. Galbraith, 42, who renounced his United States citizenship in 2011, say they think he is living with his second wife in Europe, possibly in Monaco. Reached by a reporter recently via email, Mr. Galbraith said he had not been aware of the Credit Suisse lawsuit. In an email, he said the accusations against him were “ridiculous, bordering on laughable” and part of an effort to malign and slander his character.

Investor Activism, Already Robust, Expected to Rise in Next Year (Dealbook)
...virtually all the senior corporate executives and activist hedge fund managers surveyed by the law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel and the data provider Mergermarket said they believed that activism would rise over the next 12 months. More than half said the increase would be “substantial.” The results, to be released at an activism conference hosted by Schulte Roth on Wednesday, signal the undiminished confidence in the power of outspoken dissident investors. Over the last year alone, activist shareholders have prompted management changes at Darden Restaurants, helped spur breakups at a slew of companies, and gained seats on numerous corporate boards. Recent data suggests that the success of activism campaigns has more than doubled over the last decade, to more than 70 percent.

Bad Bets Rock Fortress’s Macro Fund (WSJ)
The $3 billion Fortress Macro Fund, which Mr. Novogratz launched in 2002, has lost more than 9% so far this year, with half of that drop coming this month. It is the latest setback for macro funds, which seek to anticipate global economic shifts in various markets. The Fortress loss is worse than most others and stands out following years of market-beating performance. The culprit? A series of bad bets against U.S. government bonds and the Japanese yen, along with a wrong-way wager on Brazil, investors say.

Pimco Brings Back Two Former Executives (WSJ, earlier)
The food truck, called Monsieur Madame, according to its Facebook page, will continue operating, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Barclays bribed Saudi royalty: lawsuit (NYP)
Barclays bribed a member of the Saudi royal family and ignored a defaulted lease payment from the country in order to secure a rare banking license inside Saudi Arabia, a lawsuit against the bank alleges. The giant UK bank should have gone after the lease payment but chose not to because it didn’t want to anger the government and risk losing the lucrative business, according to the lawsuit, filed by a Saudi real estate company in Manhattan state court. “Barclays knew that any such license would be extremely lucrative and that its litigations against the Saudi government made obtaining such a license impossible,” according to the suit. The real estate company, Jadawel International, also claims Barclays paid millions in a “thinly disguised bribe” to a company owned by a Saudi prince for advisory services. Barclays strongly denied the accusations.

Suspected meth dealer turned in by own dog while hiding behind Alabama home: police (NYDN)
The suspected meth head managed to run out the backdoor and down a 25-foot ravine where officers temporarily managed to lose him. It was at that moment they were greeted by Henderson's pit bull-husky mix who came out of the woods where Henderson had fled. "The dog, later identified as Bo, looked at one of the investigators and the investigator pointed at Henderson and said go get him. Bo without hesitation went down the ravine trailed by two Drug Enforcement Investigators," the police department said in a release. While the two investigators weren't immediately successful, Bo apparently was. Upon exiting the brush Bo tipped them off to some tall grass he was now hiding in, all by the swoosh of his tail. There with him they found Henderson lying flat on the ground. "Bo was rewarded with dog biscuits from our K-9 Sergeant," the Prattville Police Department said.

Goldman at odds with rivals over Alibaba (FT)
Goldman Sachs is at odds with its fellow Alibaba advisers after it awarded a “neutral” rating to the Chinese ecommerce group’s shares with a price target well below those of the other banks most closely involved in the initial public offering last month. The six banks who led Alibaba’s $25bn flotation published research on Wednesday after observing the research blackout that follows a new listing. Price targets for the shares over the next 12 months ranged between $102 from Goldman to $118 from Citigroup...Alibaba’s other lead advisers – JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Citi, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse – all rated the company a “buy” or “overweight” with price targets of $112 (two of them), $118, $111 and $114 respectively.

Harassed consumer scores $22.5K from Dish Network (NYP)
In a move that will bring a smile to every person who has had a frustrating run-in with a TV provider, Dish Network has been ordered by a federal judge to pay $22,500 to a West Virginia man after it made 31 calls to his cell phone to pestering him to pay an overdue bill. It turns out the man, Chester Moore, was never a Dish customer and didn’t owe the Charlie Ergen-controlled satellite-TV outfit a dime. Plus, Moore had alerted a Dish representative on two occasions of the screw-up. On both occasions, Dish’s reps assured Moore the calls would stop. But the calls — made by an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) — kept coming. It seems the former Dish customer the company was after had the same cell number as Moore.

Blackstone Group is the Barclays Center’s white knight (NYP)
Schwarzman is buying up old team and arena loans. Also, he is considering helping the Barclays Center rework its $511 million in Pilot (payment in lieu of taxes) bonds, enabling Barclays to lower an almost 7 percent interest rate on the bonds. “Blackstone has been approached and is analyzing it,” a source said. Goldman Sachs, which issued the Pilot bonds, is working on the arena’s behalf, sources said. Meanwhile, Blackstone in recent weeks through its GSO arm refinanced $60 million of Brooklyn Nets debt. That piece of the team’s $210 million loan was coming due, and Blackstone had the most enticing offer, sources said. The Nets — likely worth nearly $2 billion but posting $144 million in losses last year — are likely paying about 7.5 percent, a source said. Blackstone, too, has lent the Brooklyn Nets new Sunset Park practice facility $50 million, a source said.

Florida woman busted with 6 ounces of cocaine inside her vagina: cops (NYDN)
A 26-year-old Florida woman flying in from Jamaica was busted with six ounces of cocaine she’d hidden in her vagina, according to authorities. KathyAnn Ferguson was likely working as a “drug mule, for lack of a better term,” a judge said at her court appearance Monday, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported. Ferguson arrived in Florida on a JetBlue plane like this one that left from Montego Bay, Jamaica. The Hollywood, Fla., woman arrived on a JetBlue flight from Montego Bay, Jamaica, to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Sunday afternoon and was pulled aside for a secondary search, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by the newspaper. At that point she admitted she had a package of coke stuffed inside her privates. After her arrest, Ferguson voluntarily pulled some 175 grams, or about six ounces, of the drug from her vagina, the Sun Sentinel reported.