Glencore, Battered Mining Giant, Retreats (WSJ)
Collapsing commodity prices have forced one of the mining world’s most aggressive chief executives into retreat, pushing Glencore PLC’s Ivan Glasenberg on Monday to scrap the company’s dividend, issue more stock and sell assets. The moves are the most dramatic yet among companies caught in the deepening, fast-ricocheting effects of the world-wide slump in prices for everything from copper to crude oil. With a massive trading operation built years ago by founder and controversial financier Marc Rich, Glencore was supposed to be less vulnerable to swings in the energy market. Instead, the company has been hit especially hard.

BofA Pushes to Keep Moynihan’s Dual Role (WSJ)
Activist institutional investors and major proxy advisers are lining up against the way the board made Mr. Moynihan chairman, arguing the bank’s board overstepped its authority and needs to work to regain shareholder trust. In response, Bank of America is trying to marshal support. The bank’s head of strategy and marketing, Anne Finucane, General Counsel Gary Lynch and Jack Bovender, the board’s lead independent director, have been speaking with big investors on the phone and in meetings at some investors’ New York offices. In addition, the bank has hired two outside firms to dial up individual investors.

Protesters bash American Apparel CEO look-alike piñata (NYP)
Six American Apparel employees got the boot on Aug. 28 after they participated in a large protest outside the retailer’s headquarters, during which a piñata made to look like the company’s new CEO was bashed to smithereens with a stick...A video of the protest shows a handful of people taking turns hitting the chocolate-filled, life-sized piñata that resembles Paula Schneider, chief executive of the company since December 2014. The protests have become a regular event at the company’s Los Angeles warehouse, where workers hold signs in support of bringing back the company’s founder and former CEO, Dov Charney, who was fired last year but still enjoys wide popularity among the workers.

Greetings From Bitcoin Island (Bloomberg)
Lady Chauffeurs is one of a growing number of businesses on the island that accept the digital currency. Bitcoin startups tend to cluster where the venture capital money is: London, New York, San Francisco. Taking on these behemoths might appear to be a stretch for a tiny British protectorate that can seem more time capsule than Tomorrowland. Yet the Manx government is indeed seeking to make the island the world’s foremost hub for the technology. Some 25 startups working with digital currencies or the blockchains that underpin them are already based here—and that number is growing steadily.

Spanish police say seized pot plants are getting them high (UPI)
Police in a Spanish town are complaining of feeling the "effects of smoking something illegal" as a result of smelling seized marijuana stored at their station. USPAC, the union representing police officers in the northeastern town of Olot, said the 2,000 marijuana plants seized during the summer are being stored in locations including the underground parking lot and some police offices due to lack of space and the smell from the plants have been making officers ill. The union said the "unbearable smell" from the plants has caused "discomfort" and "headaches" in some officers, while others reported "feeling the effects of smoking something illegal."

Rate Worries Pose Obstacle for Banks (WSJ)
...the intense market volatility kicked off by China’s decision Aug. 11 to devalue its currency, the yuan, has punished bank shareholders with large price declines and unusual intraday swings. Many portfolio managers are steering clear of the sector despite lower prices, saying they would prefer to wait for signs that volatility is abating. The reversal is the latest sign of the deterioration of investor sentiment this summer. In the past few weeks, traders said, large money managers have been selling financial stocks. Hedge funds have started making fresh bets against the sector.

JP Morgan to stop open outcry on London Metal Exchange (Reuters)
The LME is the only exchange in Europe continuing the open outcry practice. During the rings on the LME trading floor, a circle of padded red-leather seats, traders use arcane hand signals during five-minute bursts of intense trading in copper, aluminium, zinc, lead, nickel and zinc.

BlackRock sees new opportunity in China real estate (Reuters)
John Saunders, Head of Asia-Pacific Real Estate at BlackRock, told Reuters the fund would target mass-affluent shopping malls and grade "A" and "B" offices in China's first- tier and selective second-tier cities for investments.

‘Cuckoo’ millionaire leaves $100K nest egg to her 32 cockatiels (NYP)
A late Manhattan entrepreneur who pioneered direct mailing with her “rich list” left $100,000 to her 32 cockatiels — with nitpicky instructions on how to care for the birds. Leslie Ann Mandel, who was married to Arthur Herzog, author of the sci-fi thriller “The Swarm,” named her stepson, Matthew Herzog, as trustee of the pet fund. Her will lovingly lists each of the birds — Wheetie, Port, Blackie, Zippy, Tara, Zara, Shasha, Pigeon, Victory, Alie, Zack 12, Dart, Cubby, Max, Baby, Ruthie, Pumpkin, Tattoo, Susie, Tracy, Margie, Sammy, Angel, Inky, Sara, Tundra, Tanteleah, Eva, Cody, Nicki, Avis and Dragon — and asks that the birds “continue to live in the aviary” in her $4 million East Hampton property. As an alternative, they can be moved to “a protected place of similar size and dimension, made of the same materials, without a cage, for the rest of their natural lives,” the will says.