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Opening Bell: 4.11.16

Banks expected to report worst quarter in a decade; Daily Mail mulls Yahoo bid; Bank Robbers Wrap Up Head-To-Toe In Aluminum Foil For Heist; and more.
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Interest Heats Up for Yahoo as U.K.’s Daily Mail Mulls Bid (WSJ)
The U.K.’s Daily Mail has emerged as a suitor for Yahoo Inc.’s assets, joining a wide group of interested companies that includes telecom giant Verizon Communications Inc. as an April 18 deadline for preliminary offers nears, according to people familiar with the matter. The parent company of the Daily Mail, the British newspaper and global tabloid website, is in talks with several private-equity firms to launch a bid for Yahoo, the people said. Daily Mail & General Trust PLC, whose main interest is Yahoo’s news and media properties, is just one of some 40 players that have expressed interest in the Web portal.

U.S. banks' dismal first quarter may spell trouble for 2016 (Reuters)
Analysts forecast a 20 percent decline on average in earnings from the six biggest U.S. banks, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data. Some banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), are expected to report the worst results in over ten years.

Russia’s Most Important Bank Needs a Bailout (WSJ)
Vnesheconombank for years kept its books in balance by borrowing heavily from foreign lenders. But after being slapped with sanctions by Europe and the U.S. following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the bank faces the task of paying off about $20 billion in foreign-currency debt, about $3 billion of which comes due this year, with much-diminished access to capital markets.

Panama Furor Rumbles Into Second Week as Global Pressure Mounts (Bloomberg)
David Cameron will face lawmakers on Monday as he seeks to draw a line under the crisis stemming from information about the use of offshore tax havens leaked from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. Iceland’s prime minister has resigned, Malta’s government faces a confidence vote and Argentine President Mauricio Macri promised to put his assets in a blind trust after he was linked to two companies listed in Panama.

Zillow’s defense: Exec was erasing p0rn, not evidence (NYP)
A Zillow executive at the center of a $2 billion lawsuit alleging the theft of trade secrets is claiming he wasn’t trying to destroy evidence when he tried to erase all the data on his home and work computers. Instead, Curt Beardsley’s destructive urge erupted in an effort to cover up his hard-core p0rn habit, Zillow claims in court papers. Zillow has much riding on that sordid defense ahead of a key hearing on Monday over whether Beardsley and his former boss at Move Inc., Errol Samuelson, destroyed evidence crucial to the legal battle between the real estate listings rivals.

Banker at Center of $81 Million Heist May Turn State Witness (Bloomberg)
The Philippine bank manager accused of helping to launder $81 million stolen from Bangladesh’s foreign reserves may turn state witness and aid the investigation into one of the largest bank heists in modern history. Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. branch manager Maia Santos Deguito may seek protection under the Philippine government’s Witness Protection Program “at the right time,” her lawyer, Ferdinand Topacio, said in an interview on Friday. “We invoked my client’s right against self-incrimination very sparingly at the last Senate hearing because we want to help the government get to the bottom of this,” Topacio said. “She isn’t part of the grand conspiracy.”

BlackRock Joins $46 Billion Japan Pullout (Bloomberg)
Losing the faith of foreigners would be a blow to the Japanese prime minister -- they’re the most active traders in a market Abe has held up as a litmus on his growth strategies. “Japan is back," and “Buy my Abenomics!” he proclaimed during a visit to the New York Stock Exchange in September 2013, when shares were marching to an eight-year high. Now about half of those gains are gone and BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, is among firms ending bullish calls on Japan equities.

Bill Gross sees one or two Fed rate hikes in 2016: Barron's (Reuters)
Bond manager Bill Gross predicts that the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates once or twice in 2016, according to an interview in Barron's. Gross, who is the manager of the Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund (JUCAX.O), told Barron's that he does not expect U.S. Treasury yields, which are currently around 1.7 percent, to change dramatically this year.

Obama to meet Fed Chair Yellen on Monday (Reuters)
President Barack Obama will meet with U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Monday to discuss the economy and Wall Street reform, the White House said on Sunday.

Bank Robbers Wrap Up Head-To-Toe In Aluminum Foil For Heist (HP)
Bank robbers in southern Brazil donned a highly unusual disguise for a heist. The duo covered themselves from head to toe in aluminum foil for the early Saturday morning raid on the Banco do Brasil branch in Praia Grande. Police said the two believed their improvised outfits would beat the bank’s alarm system and stop it from sounding. “They wanted to make sure the alarms didn’t detect their presence by using the aluminum foil,” a spokesman for the Santa Catarina state’s military police told Brazilian national newspaper O Globo. Astonishingly, the robbers’ plan appeared to work. But, as their cloaks didn’t allow Harry Potter-style invisibility, the hapless pair was still captured by the bank’s surveillance cameras.

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Moody's Gives EU Warning (WSJ) Moody's Investors Service has put the European Union's triple-A credit rating on a negative outlook in a move that reflects actions the ratings firm has taken on some of the euro-zone's largest members, including Germany and the Netherlands. "Moody's believes that it is reasonable to assume that the EU's credit-worthiness should move in line with the credit-worthiness of its strongest key member states considering the significant linkages between member states and the EU," Moody's said in a release. Fears Rising, Spaniards Pull Out Their Cash and Get Out of Spain (NYT) After working six years as a senior executive for a multinational payroll-processing company in Barcelona, Spain, Julio Vildosola is cutting his professional and financial ties with his troubled homeland. He has moved his family to a village near Cambridge, England, where he will take the reins at a small software company, and he has transferred his savings from Spanish banks to British banks. “The macro situation in Spain is getting worse and worse,” Mr. Vildosola, 38, said last week just hours before boarding a plane to London with his wife and two small children. “There is just too much risk. Spain is going to be next after Greece, and I just don’t want to end up holding devalued pesetas.” In July, Spaniards withdrew a record 75 billion euros, or $94 billion, from their banks — an amount equal to 7 percent of the country’s overall economic output — as doubts grew about the durability of Spain’s financial system. According to official statistics, 30,000 Spaniards registered to work in Britain in the last year, and analysts say that this figure would be many multiples higher if workers without documents were counted. That is a 25 percent increase from a year earlier. Europe Bank Chief Hints At Bond Purchases (WSJ) The comments by Mario Draghi in a closed hearing at the European Parliament on Monday came ahead of the ECB's monthly policy meeting Thursday. That meeting has been keenly awaited in the financial markets for further details of how the bank could help bring down the funding costs of countries such as Spain and Italy to prevent them from having to seek full euro-zone bailouts like Greece, Ireland and Portugal. Switzerland Flirts With Recession (WSJ) "Three months ago, the Swiss economy looked charmingly strong against the backdrop of the euro zone and now it is looking on the brink of recession," said Janwillem Acket, chief economist at Julius Bär in Zurich. Nigeria Uncovers Cocaine-Stuffed Roasted Chicken (AP) The roasted chickens had an unusual stuffing — $150,000 worth of cocaine, according to Nigerian police. A Nigerian mechanic who struggled in Brazil for more than six years had hoped the drugs would buy him a life of luxury in his native land, Nigerian authorities said Monday. "This was like a retirement plan for him," said Mitchell Ofoyeju, spokesman for the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency. The accused was arrested over the weekend at the airport in Lagos after he came in from Sao Paulo with 2.6 kilograms (5.7 pounds) of cocaine, Ofoyeju said. Photos from the agency showed egg-shaped packages wrapped in gold aluminum foil and tucked into the browned chickens. Citibank Hid Firm’s Financial Troubles, Ex-Partner at Dewey & LeBoeuf Says (NYT) In a recent court filing, the former partner, Steven P. Otillar, says Citibank conspired with Dewey's management to hide the law firm's true financial condition in the months before its collapse. Mr. Otillar made the claim in response to a lawsuit brought against him by Citibank seeking repayment of a $210,000 loan. The bank lent Mr. Otillar the money to pay for his capital contribution to Dewey when he joined the partnership in August 2011. (New partners typically must make a financial contribution to a law firm when they join.) The filing said that Citibank had extended Mr. Otillar the loan as part of a fraudulent scheme intended to benefit Citibank and Dewey's management. By recruiting him and other partners to join the financially troubled firm in the months leading up to its demise—and collecting millions of dollars from them—Dewey's partners enriched themselves and kept the firm afloat. Credit Suisse Exec Facing Arrest Order (Reuters) A judge in Argentina has ordered the arrest of Credit Suisse executive and former US Treasury Undersecretary David Mulford because he failed to testify over a 2001 Argentine debt swap, the state news agency reported today. 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He made that diagnosis last week in a rebuttal to those who blame an 8.3 percent unemployment rate on structural shifts in the economy wrought by the financial crisis and who contend joblessness is permanently elevated. “I see little evidence of substantial structural change in recent years,” Bernanke told fellow central bankers and economists at the annual monetary-policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “Following every previous U.S. recession since World War II, the unemployment rate has returned close to its pre-recession level.” Ice Picks Are Still Used As Weapons (NYT) Mann Rosa, 32, who lives on Perry Avenue about a block from the scene of the recent attack, said ice picks were back in vogue among street gangs all across the city. “The ice pick, from what I know, is the new thing,” Mr. Rosa said, noting how easy it was to buy and conceal. “It’s definitely the new wave.” Toward the end of the conversation, almost as if he had an afterthought, Mr. Rosa said he had been stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick about two years ago during a street fight. He rolled up the sleeve of his T-shirt to reveal two dime-size wounds, not unlike scars from a smallpox vaccination, on his shoulder and upper arm. “I was stabbed once in the chest, once in the back and twice in the arm,” Mr. Rosa said; it took 12 stitches to close the wounds. Asked if the police ever caught the perpetrator, Mr. Rosa laughed and shook his head. “We got this thing called street justice. We don’t go to the cops over something like that.”

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Thompson’s undoing stems from erroneous biographical references to him as holding a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Stonehill College. A former EBay Inc. (EBAY) executive, he earned a degree in accounting from the Easton, Massachusetts- based school, and the information is correctly listed in EBay regulatory filings and some Yahoo press releases. The incorrect degree showed up in Yahoo’s April 27 10-K filing, as well as on the company’s website. As part of the board changes, Daniel Loeb, chief executive officer of Third Point, joins as a director along with Harry Wilson and Michael Wolf. A fourth nominee, Jeffrey Zucker, said in today’s statement that he withdrew his nomination to allow a quick transition. Euro Officials Begin to Weigh Greek Exit (Bloomberg) Greek withdrawal “is not necessarily fatal, but it is not attractive,” European Central Bank Governing Council member Patrick Honohan said in Tallinn on May 12. An exit was “technically” possible yet would damage the euro, he said. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble reiterated in an interview in Sueddeutsche Zeitung that member states seeking to hold the line on austerity for Greece could not force the country to stay. LightSquared Moves Toward Bankruptcy Filing (WSJ) Hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone's LightSquared Inc. venture was preparing Sunday to file for bankruptcy protection after negotiations with lenders to avoid a potential debt default faltered, said people familiar with the matter. LightSquared and its lenders still have until 5 p.m. Monday to reach a deal that would keep the wireless-networking company out of bankruptcy court, and there were some indications over the weekend that a final decision hadn't yet been reached on its fate. Still, the two sides remained far apart, and people involved in the negotiations expected LightSquared to begin making bankruptcy preparations in earnest. 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In a statement, Citigroup "has a small amount of straight-forward economic hedges managed at the corporate center to mitigate our credit exposure, principally relating to consumer loans." About half of that total is in cash, with most of the rest in U.S. Treasury bonds and other conservative investments. At Morgan Stanley, the portfolio most similar to J.P. Morgan's investment office is a $32 billion "available for sale" portfolio. The portfolio primarily consists of easily traded U.S. Treasury and government agency securities. It doesn't hold any derivatives instruments, a person familiar with Morgan Stanley's operations said. Goldman Sachs has no similar unit to the one at J.P. Morgan that suffered the loss. 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The New York-based private- equity firm hasn’t made a decision, another person said. Under the go-shop provision of the Silver Lake merger agreement, Dell’s board has through March 22 to seek superior proposals, and can negotiate beyond that date if it receives an offer it deems serious. Fannie Sees A Way To Repay Billions (WSJ) The rebounding housing market has helped return Fannie Mae to profitability and now might allow the government-controlled mortgage-finance company to do the once unthinkable: repay as much as $61.5 billion in rescue funds to the U.S. Treasury. The potential payment would be the upshot of an accounting move that Fannie Mae's senior executives are looking to make whereby the company would reclaim certain tax benefits that were written down shortly after the company was placed under federal control in 2008. The potential move was disclosed last week in a regulatory filing in which the company said it would delay the release of its annual report, due by Monday, as it tries to reach resolution with its accountants and regulator over the timing of the accounting move. UBS becomes latest bank to quit Euribor rates panel (Reuters) UBS said it would pull out of money market rate Euribor, one of the most prominent banks to do so after a global benchmark rate-setting scandal, in a move that renews questions about the rate's future. "We have decided to withdraw from the Euribor panel and to focus on our core funding markets Swiss franc and U.S. dollar," a UBS spokesman said, adding the decision was linked to an October decision to shut down vast parts of its investment bank. 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In recent presentations, he has pledged to sustain easing, defending $85 billion in monthly bond purchases during congressional testimony last month and warning that “premature removal of accommodation” may weaken the expansion. Deli Workers Have Some Choice Words for Mayor Bloomberg’s New Cigarette Proposal (Daily Intel) "It's stupid. He needs to f*ck off," Fernando, the manager at M&M Market Deli on Broome Street, said. "You want to smoke, you're going to smoke no matter what. And especially at that young age, you're curious about everything." It was the principle of the thing that so irritated Fernando more than any potential loss of business. "You don't make money on cigarettes," he said. "I mean, our profit on cigarettes is 75 cents, a dollar? The whole purpose of cigarettes is to get people in — you want to buy cigarettes, then you also pick up a sandwich."

By Luccadomina (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Opening Bell

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