Opening Bell: 6.23.15
Ex-Fed chief: Keep Alexander Hamilton on $10 bill (NYP)
Former Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke took to the Web on Monday to rebuke Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew for threatening to replace Alexander Hamilton with a woman on newly designed $10 bills, suggesting Andrew Jackson be replaced on the $20 bill instead. While Hamilton was a United States founding father who established a predecessor to the Fed and founded The New York Post, Jackson, the seventh president, didn’t trust paper currency, abolished the Second US Bank, and lead a genocide against Native Americans. “Replace Andrew Jackson, a man of many unattractive qualities and a poor president, on the twenty dollar bill,” Bernanke said in a blog post.
Citadel Makes Swaps Inroads (WSJ)
Citadel LLC has emerged as a top dealer in U.S. interest-rate swaps, becoming one of the first nonbank firms to step into a breach created by postcrisis rules overhauling trading in those derivatives. The Chicago hedge-fund firm’s Citadel Securities unit has the largest market share by number of trades and the third largest by dollar volume in the second quarter, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal showing the firm’s rankings on a swaps platform operated by Bloomberg LP.
Suit Sheds Light on Secret Trading Technology (WSJ)
At the core of the dispute is a methodology designed by Ashbury that helps predict “how stock prices would move, largely based on economic information and extrapolations from companies’ network of customer-supplier relationships,” the complaint says. Ashbury’s system helps an investor accurately model the impact of disparate events on publicly traded companies using supply-chain analysis, according to court documents. For instance, it might help a company predict what would happen to Intel Corp.’s share price if International Business Machine Corp. sees a drop in sales. A 2010 white paper by its creators said the system uses similar tools to how Google ranks pages on the Internet alongside a branch of mathematics called graph theory to “provide a meaningful, consistent analysis of the economy over the long term and ultimately provide a basis for alpha generation.” An innovation in the system was its ability to estimate values that weren’t publicly available, Ashbury said in court documents.
Bill Ackman launches $1B bond in effort to take on big target (NYP)
The hedge fund on Monday announced the launch of senior notes. While it did not say how large the offering was, banking sources said it was about $1 billion — though jitters in Europe about Greece had raised uncertainty about the amount...Ackman plans to use the debt proceeds to help the fund take on a big target, according to an individual who was on a conference call for potential investors earlier this month.
Diddy charged with assaulting son’s football coach (NYP)
The university confirmed the incident Monday saying, “Shortly after 12:30 p.m. today, Sean Combs (also known as P. Diddy) was arrested at UCLA’s Acosta Athletic Training Complex on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, which was a kettlebell. No one was seriously injured and UCPD is investigating.”
Dealbreaker Dramatic Reading Night Returns Wednesday (DB)
Buy your ticket now.
The Loneliness of the Short-Seller (Dealbook)
For some, they are the scourge of Wall Street. Yet short-sellers — investors who stake bets against stocks — are often the first to sound the alarm on a market’s froth or a company’s fraud. Now, six years into a bull market run, with stocks in the United States smashing one record after another, these naysayers have all but lost their voice. William A. Ackman, who has yet to prevail in a billion-dollar bet against Herbalife, said he would “think very hard” before making another short bet. James S. Chanos, the short-seller who helped expose Enron, and who has long been seen as the fiercest of the short-selling bears, is now adding a fund that will instead focus on buying stocks. “Short-selling is an incredibly lonely proposition,” Mr. Ackman said in an interview.
Planet Fitness Files To Go Public (Dealbook)
Last year, Planet Fitness reported $37.3 million in profit on $279.8 million in revenue, both up from a year earlier. In the prospectus, Planet Fitness listed a preliminary $100 million fund-raising target, a figure meant to determine listing fees. It will eventually trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol PLNT.
Twitter’s CEO Search Rules Out Dorsey If He Stays at Square (Bloomberg)
Twitter Inc. said it is seeking a chief executive who can make a full-time commitment to the company, ruling out interim chief Jack Dorsey as long as he remains in the top job at Square Inc.
Naked, drunken Ohio couple arrested after joyride (NYDN)
An Ohio couple was busted after a drunken, naked joyride — but that wasn’t the end of the night, authorities said. Kenneth Gillespie followed up the arrest by urinating in the back of a patrol car, according to Westlake police. His partner in crime, Alexandria Mauer, was released to a sober relative only to be arrested again less than an hour later, wandering down the side of the road. The hijinks began about 12:20 a.m. on Saturday. An overnight worker spotted the two standing sans clothes next to a car in a company parking lot, authorities said. The worried witness tipped off police after watching them drive off, hopping a curb and barreling through a lawn as they went. Westlake officers stopped the duo nearby. Mauer, 24, of Bay Village, was eating a slice of pizza in the driver’s seat “without a stitch on,” police Capt. Guy Turner said. Gillespie, 33, of Cleveland, was cradling an open beer between his feet, he said. Officers ordered them to get out of the car and put some clothes on. Gillespie, who was on probation for a drug conviction, could only partially comply because he had only a sweatshirt and underwear, authorities said. Police booked him on charges of disorderly conduct while intoxicated and indecent exposure. They gave him a pair of old jail pants and shoes to wear when he was released later Saturday morning.