Opening Bell: 5.22.17

Saudis’ $20 Billion Wager With Blackstone Marks Record Bet on U.S. Public Works (WSJ)
Saudi Arabia’s planned $20 billion investment alone would be about 25% larger than the biggest infrastructure fund ever raised, a $15.8 billion pool Global Infrastructure Partners completed earlier this year. [RELATED: Top executives who descended on Riyadh for a CEO summit timed to coincide with Trump’s visit included JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, Blackstone Group LP CEO Steve Schwarzman, and Marillyn Hewson, the CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp.]

The Quants Run Wall Street Now (WSJ)
“You take tours of offices, and everyone is always pointing out some guy off in a corner, working on his own,” says Alexandru Agachi, chief operating officer at Empiric Capital Ltd., a startup quant hedge fund in London. “They say with pride: ‘Over there is our quant. He’s building signals.’”

Ford to fire CEO Fields as challenges mount (Reuters)
Ford Motor Co. is set to replace Chief Executive Mark Fields with James Hackett, the head of its mobility arm, company sources said, responding to growing investor unease over the U.S. carmaker's stock performance and prospects. The departure of Fields, 56, is likely to be announced on Monday, the sources said, adding Hackett, 62-year-old head of the division responsible for autonomous driving, would take the helm in a broader shake-up aimed at speeding up decision making and improving execution.

Commodity Traders Have a Really Big Problem (BBG)
“The most valuable commodity out there is information, and the most useful information is the proprietary, critical information that you obtain from your own supply chain,” said John Driscoll, the chief strategist at JTD Energy Services Pte, who has spent more than 30 years in the petroleum trading industry in Singapore. “You have to have skin in the game. You have to have access to assets, whether it’s infrastructure, terminals, vessels or refineries.”

One In Three Students Willing To Use Sex To Finance Their Studies (UK Independent)
Of the 920 participants who answered the question: “How far would you have gone for a free education supplied by someone who you were attracted to?”, 75 per cent said they would have at least given up some of their time to a sugar daddy figure.

Barclays tightens email security after Jes Staley hoax (FT)
After a bruising annual meeting this month, Barclays’ chief executive Jes Staley replied to an email purporting to be from John McFarlane, which was in fact from a disaffected Barclays customer using the Gmail account john.mcfarlane.barclays@gmail.com. To prevent a recurrence of the security lapse, Barclays has decided to activate a warning message whenever an employee sends a message to an external email address on a mobile device, which previously only happened on desktop computers.

Americans Are Paying $38 to Collect $1 of Student Debt (BBG)
Even when borrowers don't default, debt collection efforts often yield little. Close to 80 percent of borrowers who rehabilitate their debt make the minimum $5 monthly payment, according to a 2015 estimate. That means the Education Department is paying its debt collectors up to $1,710 per borrower to collect around $45, regardless of whether the borrower continues to make her payments.

Barclays to hire 100 staff in private banking push (Reuters)
The push marks a change in direction for the British lender after a previous failed expansion ended in 2014 with Barclays folding its wealth management business back into its retail bank as it missed ambitious growth targets. [...] "It's an unforgiving and brutal market at the moment, with a very expensive delivery model and competition that's driving pricing down," said Seb Dovey, managing partner and private banking expert at Scorpio Partnership.

Donald Trump Gropes Orb of Power (Jezebel)
Maybe the Global Center for Combatting Extremist Ideology only has one orb left and these three men all want it. Maybe Trump’s been led to think the orb has magical powers. That is definitely the face of a man who believes he will soon be growing his own hair again. Or, could it be that Trump was lured to the center in the first place by the promise of getting to do freaky orb stuff? The US President is moaning loudly, rhythmically, and everyone around him is pretending not to notice. [COUNTERPOINT: The Trump administration, lookism, and the Saudis]