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Opening Bell: 5.25.22

Opening Bell: 5.25.22

Two sides; seriously, remember when Larry Summers was a Democrat?, Nelson Peltz is hungry; and more!

Jed De La Cruz, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Two sides; seriously, remember when Larry Summers was a Democrat?, Nelson Peltz is hungry; and more!

China Faces Growing Pressure to Iron Out Audit Deal With the U.S. [WSJ]
In a statement to The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, the [China Securities Regulatory Commission] said: “China and the U.S. maintain close communications and are committed to reaching collaborative arrangements that comply with both countries’ laws and regulations. Overall, the negotiation process is going smoothly.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. accounting regulator, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, on the other hand, have been more cautious about the prospect of any deal being reached and then implemented.

Larry Summers calls Biden’s efforts to limit corporate power ‘populist antitrust.’ [NYT]
He tweeted that the administration’s policy statements “better reflect legal doctrines of the 1960s than economic understandings of the last two decades.” Mr. Summers said attacking deals just because they were big ignored the benefits that could come from larger, more efficient companies…. “There are real risks,” Mr. Summers tweeted. “Policies that attack bigness can easily be inflationary if they prevent the exploitation of economies of scale or limit superstar firms.”

Quant hedge funds reap windfall during 2022 market ructions [FT]
Quantitative funds have profited in particular from bets against government bonds, which have been shaken by expectations that the Federal Reserve will keep raising interest rates aggressively to fight high inflation…. Among the winners lies BH-DG Systematic, a joint venture between David Gorton and hedge fund Brevan Howard. It has gained 32 per cent this year. Aspect Capital, co-founded by Martin Lueck, one of the three original founders of Man Group’s AHL unit, has gained 29.2 per cent in its Diversified fund, its second-best calendar year since launch in 1999.

Wendy's investor Peltz explores taking over burger chain [Reuters]
Wendy's shares rose about 14% in extended trading after Trian Fund Management, Peltz' firm, said it will explore a transaction on its own or with others that could include an acquisition, business combination or other transaction…. Peltz currently chairs Wendy's board, while [Peter] May, also a founding partner of Trian, is non-executive vice chairman and Matthew Peltz, Nelson's son and colleague at Trian, is a board member.

These Investors Are Putting $1 Billion Into Trump Media [NYT]
The hedge funds Pentwater Capital and Sabby Management are two of the bigger investors in the private placement, as previously reported by The Times…. Other big investors include Anson Funds Management, Kershner Trading Americas, K2 & Associates, Yorkville Advisors and MMCAP….
One large investor is an entity called Truth SPC. The name appears to be a reference to Truth Social, the Twitter look-alike that is a flagship product of Mr. Trump’s company, Trump Media & Technology Group. But online searches, including of U.S. corporate records, did not reveal any entity by that name.

Billionaire Must Stand Trial in Largest US Tax-Evasion Case [Bloomberg]
Testing shows [Robert] Brockman is “exaggerating his symptoms of severe dementia and his cognitive abilities are not as poor as reflected by his cognitive test results,” the judge wrote. “In other words, Brockman is malingering to avoid prosecution….” Brockman must also contend with the Internal Revenue Service, which imposed a $1.4 billion tax assessment against him in October. 

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Opening Bell: 11.16.17

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Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 01.03.13

Fresh Budget Fights Brewing (WSJ) If Congress doesn't do more in the coming months, Moody's warned, the company could follow Standard & Poor's in downgrading U.S. debt. "Further measures that bring about a downward debt trajectory over the medium term are likely to be needed to support the AAA rating," Moody's said Wednesday. But the battles on how to do that are far from over. Republicans say any further deficit reduction or legislation to avoid across-the-board spending cuts should come from reducing spending. President Obama and many Democrats advocate a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. The most serious skirmish will arrive toward the end of February, when the U.S. Treasury is expected to be unable to pay all the government's bills unless Congress boosts the federal borrowing limit. Then on March 1, the across-the-board spending cuts of the fiscal cliff, deferred in this week's deal, are scheduled to begin slicing into military and domestic programs. And on March 27, a government shutdown looms unless Congress approves funding for government operations for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. CEOs Pan Fiscal Cliff Deal, Vow to Continue Debt Fight (Reuters) "I think this deal's a disaster," said Peter Huntsman, chief executive of chemical producer Huntsman Corp. "We're just living in a fantasy land. We're borrowing more and more money. This did absolutely nothing to address the fundamental issue of the debt cliff." Former Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich said the agreement confirms that Washington and both parties are totally out of control. "I think it's a joke," Kovacevich said of the deal. "It's stunning to me that after working on this for months and supposedly really getting to work in the last 30 days that this is what you come up with." Obama’s Warning to Boehner Started Road to Budget Plan (Bloomberg) President Barack Obama had a warning for John Boehner at a Dec. 13 White House meeting: Stop opposing higher tax rates for top earners, or the president would dedicate his second term to blaming Republicans for a global recession. The next day, the House speaker called the president and said he was open to a tax-rate increase on annual income of more than $1 million...While the budget deal Obama and Boehner were negotiating fell apart, the speaker’s concession on tax rates ultimately allowed Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, to craft the last-minute plan Congress passed Jan. 1. Nouriel Roubini: US Will Soon 'Get Messy' Again (CNBC) "It won't be long before there is another crisis. Two months, in fact." Pershing to Take 'Passive Shareholder' Role in General Growth (WSJ) Pershing Square Capital Management LP agreed to sell $271.9 million in General Growth Properties warrants to Brookfield Asset Management Inc., as part of a deal between the mall owner's two biggest shareholders that would resolve their recent disputes and see Pershing become a passive shareholder. Brookfield, in turn, offered to sell the warrants, which represent the right to acquire 18.4 million shares of General Growth stock, back to General Growth for the same purchase price. Pershing also agreed to limit its ownership stake in General Growth to no more than 9.9% and intends to become a passive shareholder. Brookfield agreed to limit its ownership in General Growth to 45%. Bank Of Canada won’t discuss melting plastic bills, says national security behind silence (NP) Disclosing details of behind-the-scenes discussions about tales of melting banknotes could endanger national security or international relations, says Canada’s central bank. In response to a formal request from The Canadian Press, the Bank Of Canada released 134 pages of internal records — almost completely blanked out — concerning allegations its new polymer bills melted in the scorching summer sun. The bank began issuing $100 polymer banknotes in late 2011, saying they were harder to counterfeit than paper notes and would last much longer. Unconfirmed reports of cooked currency emerged in July when a Kelowna, B.C., bank teller said she had heard of cases in which several bills had melted together inside a car. Soon after, Mona Billard of Cambridge, Ont., reported that she had returned eight plastic bills in January, after her son stashed his $800 Christmas bonus in a tin can and hid it near a baseboard heater. When he retrieved them the next day to make a deposit, the $100 banknotes had shriveled and melted. Ms. Billard exchanged clean bills for the shrunken, unusable ones. “The leather couch is up against the baseboard heater, it doesn’t melt,” she said. “The kids’ toys are back there, they don’t melt.” The Bank of Canada will reimburse damaged notes, but only if they clear an examination by an Ottawa laboratory. Paulson&Co Added To Abacus Suit Against Goldman (Bloomberg) Paulson & Co. was named as a defendant in a proposed revised lawsuit by ACA Financial Guaranty Corp. against Goldman Sachs over a collateralized debt obligation called Abacus. Paulson conspired with Goldman Sachs to deceive ACA Financial, which provided financial guaranty insurance for the deal, ACA Financial said in papers filed yesterday in Manhattan. Private Sector Added 215,000 Jobs Last Month (WSJ) Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expected ADP to report a gain of 150,000 private jobs. Preet Bharara and other financial heavyweights opposing Paul Singer's attempt to get Argentina to pay debt (NYP) US Attorney Preet Bharara and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink are among the latest bold-faced names to oppose Singer’s attempt to get Argentina to pay him and others $1.3 billion on defaulted debt. Singer, the hedge fund billionaire who runs Elliott Management, is among the 8 percent of Argentina debtholders who refused to accept a 70 percent haircut following a 2001 default by the embattled South American country. Singer inched closer to winning the epic legal showdown in November when a federal judge ruled Argentina could not pay Fink’s BlackRock or other holders of the reorganized debt without putting money in escrow for Singer’s band of investors. An appeals court slowed Singer’s victory parade but refused to set aside the judge’s order. Now, Bharara, Fink’s $3.67 trillion bond firm and others are urging the appeals court to throw the case out. Basel Becomes Babel as Conflicting Rules Undermine Safety (Bloomberg) While higher capital requirements, curbs on banks trading with their own money and other rules have reduced risk, they have magnified the complexity of supervision, according to two dozen regulators, bankers and analysts interviewed by Bloomberg News. Even if the new regulations can be enforced, they don’t go far enough to ensure safety, said Robert Jenkins, a member of the Bank of England’s financial policy committee. Cops: Woman, 50, Battered Boyfriend, 32, Because Six Came Before Nine (TSG) Jennie Scott, 50, was booked into the Manatee County lockup on a misdemeanor charge stemming from the 11 PM encounter in the Palmetto bedroom of Jilberto Deleon, 32. Scott has dated Deleon “for the last 5 years on and off,” according to a sheriff’s report. Deputies were summoned to Deleon’s home by a witness who heard the couple arguing and saw Scott atop Deleon “punching and scratching him.” She also allegedly struck Deleon with a stick and threatened to hit him with a wrench before the tool was taken from her hand by the witness. When questioned by a cop, Scott explained that she and Deleon “were giving each other oral pleasure in the bedroom” when Deleon “finished first and stopped pleasuring her.” Scott added that she “became upset and they began arguing.” A deputy noted that Scott said that she was also mad at Deleon because she had “heard [him] having sex with another woman over the phone earlier in the day.” Scott struggled with deputies before being placed in a police cruiser, where she kicked a window until being warned that she would be maced unless she stopped.

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Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 3.26.21

Bring on the bank buybacks; Buffett’s backup bid; Larry Summers should shut up; and more!

Uranium is the heaviest naturally occurring element. It's also a great name for a hedge fund, apparently. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 9.15.21

Summer slowdown; don’t ask Annie; hedge funds bank on two volatile elements; and more!

Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 02.26.13

J.P. Morgan’s Investor Day: Cut That Headcount (Deal Journal) JP Morgan is looking to cut another $1 billion out of its expenses this year, including somewhere around 4,000 jobs, according to a new presentation...And that may not be all the cuts. In a separate presentation on the consumer bank and mortgage operations the bank expects to cut costs in mortgage banking by $3 billion over this year and next year and cut headcount there by between 13,000 and 15,000. Banks Face Hurdle In Libor Fight (WSJ) Next week, lawyers for Barclays PLC, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, UBS AG and more than a dozen other banks still under investigation are expected to ask a federal-court judge to throw out many of the suits, which seek class-action status. The suits, filed in civil court in California and New York by plaintiffs ranging from a retired cable-car driver in San Francisco to the city of Baltimore, have been piling up for nearly two years. They seek damages that could reach into the tens of billions of dollars from financial institutions that help determine the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Barclays, RBS and UBS already have paid about $2.5 billion, and admitted wrongdoing, to settle rate-rigging allegations by U.S. and U.K. regulators. In court filings, lawyers for the 16 banks accused of wrongdoing say the lawsuits have no legal validity. The lawyers say regulatory settlements reached so far don't support the central allegation in most of the civil suits that banks engaged in illegal, anticompetitive behavior. Berlusconi Concedes as He Weighs Alliance (Bloomberg) Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi acknowledged rival Pier Luigi Bersani’s narrow victory in the lower house of Parliament and said he’s open to a broad alliance to avoid a second election. “Everyone needs to think what good can be done for Italy and this will take some time,” Berlusconi said in an interview with Canale 5, a station owned by his Mediaset SpA broadcaster. The country can’t be left without a government, he said. Lew gettin’ close: Senate panel to OK as next Treasury boss (NYP) Treasury Secretary-nominee Jack Lew will get the green light to replace Tim Geithner despite taking heat during and after his confirmation hearing over a loan he received from New York University. The 57-year-old former White House chief of staff has enough votes from the Senate Finance Committee, headed by Max Baucus (D-Mont.), to pass a vote today that will likely lead to his confirmation, sources said. A full Senate vote is likely to be scheduled in a couple of days and held sometime next week. Larry Summers: Sequestration 'Meat Cleaver' Is Irresponsible (CNBC) Avoiding the "sequester" is "round three" in the debt-reduction debate, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers told CNBC Tuesday, arguing for a "balanced approach" because President Barack Obama has agreed to more spending cuts than revenue during the process. In a "Squawk Box" interview, Summers said the funding constraints of the Budget Control Act of 2011 — which resolved that year's debt ceiling crisis — were round one. "You had spending cuts that were far larger from the discretionary side, that were far larger than anything [on revenue] that happened in December. Right now, we're way in balance toward more spending cuts." Dominique Strauss-Kahn seeks to ban 'half-man half-pig' book (Telegraph) The "biographical novel" by Marcela Iacub, a lawyer and journalist, recounts her seven-month affair with the 64-year-old Mr Strauss-Kahn last year. It is due to be published on Wednesday under the title, Belle et Bête, or Beauty and Beast. But the one-time Socialist presidential hopeful will this morning seek to have the book banned for "violation of the intimacy of private life" and the author and her publisher fined 100,000 euros (£88,000) in damages...In the work, she claims Mr Strauss-Kahn would have transformed the Elysée Palace into a "giant swingers' club" had he been elected French president. In fresh accounts by those who have read the book yesterday, the last chapter narrates the pair's final encounter, ending in Miss Iacub receiving treatment in casualty after "the pig" left her with an "eaten ear". Mr Strauss-Kahn has slammed the work of a woman who "seduces to write a book, claiming to have amorous feelings to exploit them for financial gain". Gupta's Gotta Pay GS $6.2 Million (NYP) Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta was ordered yesterday by a Manhattan federal judge to fork over a whopping $6.2 million to repay the Wall Street bank for legal fees it spent during the government’s probe of Gupta’s insider-trading case. The 64-year-old fallen star was convicted last year of giving up secrets he learned while on Goldman’s board to his pal and hedge fund honcho Raj Rajaratnam. Among the counts, the jury found Gupta guilty of giving Rajaratnam a tip on Warren Buffett’s $5 billion investment in Goldman in the throes of the financial crisis. Gupta, the former head of consulting firm McKinsey, is out on bail while he appeals the ruling. Goldman had requested restitution of $6.9 million — and submitted 542 pages of billing records from its lawyers at Sullivan Cromwell. Yahoo’s Mayer Risks Productivity With Work-From-Home Restriction (Bloomberg) Jackie Reses, Yahoo’s executive vice president of people and development, sent a memo last week asking employees with work-from-home arrangements to make their way to the company’s offices, starting June. “To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side,” according to the memo, whose contents were confirmed by a Yahoo employee who asked not to be identified because it’s not a public document. “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.” At a time when Mayer is under pressure to jump-start growth and create innovative products, the shift may compromise Yahoo’s ability to attract employees seeking the freedom to work outside the office -- a perk offered by many of the company’s competitors. Research suggests that working from home enhances productivity, said Jody Thompson, co-founder of workforce consultant CultureRx. BP Oil-Spill Trial Begins (WSJ) Both Transocean and the Justice Department focused part of their opening statements on a 10-minute ship-to-shore phone call between two BP engineers, Donald Vidrine and Mark Hafle, less than an hour before the blast. From the rig, Mr. Vidrine allegedly talked about unusual results from a test designed to ensure the cement sealing in the bottom of the well was successful. Investigators later found that rig workers misinterpreted the results of the test. Dennis Rodman Bound For North Korea (Reuters) Retired U.S. basketball player Dennis Rodman is to visit North Korea to film a television documentary and will arrive in the capital Pyongyang on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. Rodman, now 51 years old, won five NBA championships in his prime, achieving a mix of fame and notoriety for his on- and off-court antics. Thirty-year-old North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who has launched two long-range rockets and carried out a nuclear weapons test during his first year in power, is reported to be an avid NBA fan and had pictures taken with players from the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers during his school days in Switzerland. "At a time when tensions between the two countries (the United States and North Korea) are running high, it's important to keep lines of communication open, no matter how non-traditional those channels are," AP quoted Shane Smith, the founder of VICE, which is to make the TV series, as saying.

Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 09.12.12

German court seen okaying EU bailout fund, strings attached (Reuters) Germany's Constitutional Court is expected to give its approval on Wednesday to the euro zone's new bailout fund while insisting on guarantees to safeguard German parliamentary sovereignty and limit Berlin's financial exposure. Exchanges Plot Fixes For Their Glitches (WSJ) One proposal under discussion involves implementing so-called "kill switches" between brokers and exchanges, according to people involved in the discussions. Kill switches, which are common in futures trading but not in the U.S. stock market, allow exchanges to automatically shut off customers from trading once they hit a preset limit, such as one based on the total dollar amount of the firm's trades in a set time frame. Moody's Warns On US Rating (WSJ) Moody's Investors Service, in the latest reminder of the tense fiscal negotiations looming for Congress and the White House, said it could downgrade the U.S. government's credit rating next year if steps aren't taken to tackle the rising debt. Specifically, it said if Congress repeals looming spending cuts and tax increases set to begin next year and doesn't replace them with large-scale deficit-reduction measures, the government would lose its top-notch rating. Deutsche Bank Overhaul Leaves Firm Trailing Peers on Capital (Bloomberg) Deutsche Bank plans to boost core tier 1 capital to at least 8 percent of assets weighted by risk under Basel III rules by the end of March 2013, and to more than 10 percent two years later, co-CEOs Anshu Jain and Juergen Fitschen said in Frankfurt yesterday. Its biggest competitors will reach similar levels months or years sooner, based on forecasts from the banks. Deutsche Bank is winding down assets deemed among its riskiest under rules devised to prevent a repeat of the bank rescues that followed the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Jain said yesterday that while capital concerns have had an effect on the stock, tapping shareholders would be “irresponsible” without pursuing other options first. Pittsburgh professor who invented emoticons hates the little yellow icons they have become (Independent via BB) To some, an email isn't complete without the inclusion of :-) or :-(. To others, the very idea of using "emoticons" – communicative graphics – makes the blood boil and represents all that has gone wrong with the English language. Regardless of your view, as emoticons celebrate their 30th anniversary this month, it is accepted that they are here stay. Their birth can be traced to the precise minute: 11:44am on 19 September 1982. At that moment, Professor Scott Fahlman, of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, sent an email on an online electronic bulletin board that included the first use of the sideways smiley face: "I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways." This weekend, the professor, a computer science researcher who still works at the university, says he is amazed his smiley face took off: "This was a little bit of silliness that I tossed into a discussion about physics," he says. "It was ten minutes of my life. I expected my note might amuse a few of my friends, and that would be the end of it." But once his initial email had been sent, it wasn't long before it spread to other universities and research labs via the primitive computer networks of the day. Within months, it had gone global. Nowadays dozens of variations are available, mainly as little yellow, computer graphics. There are emoticons that wear sunglasses; some cry, while others don Santa hats. But Professor Fahlman isn't a fan. "I think they are ugly, and they ruin the challenge of trying to come up with a clever way to express emotions using standard keyboard characters. But perhaps that's just because I invented the other kind." Peregrine CEO Enters Plea Deal (WSJ) Under the agreement, Russell Wasendorf Sr. would plead guilty to charges of embezzlement and mail fraud alongside two counts of lying to government regulators, assistant U.S. attorneys said in a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, court Tuesday. The development comes more than two months after Mr. Wasendorf, founder of Peregrine and a business leader in his adopted hometown of Cedar Falls, attempted suicide outside his firm's headquarters, leaving behind what authorities called a confession detailing a yearslong scheme to defraud his investors. Facebook Taking Steps to Address Mistakes in Mobile Products (Bloomberg) “Now we are a mobile company,” Zuckerberg said in an on- stage interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco today. “Over the next three to five years I think the biggest question that is on everyone’s minds, that will determine our performance over that period, is really how well we do with mobile.” Zuckerberg, who appeared at ease while trading laughs with his interviewer, for the first time elaborated on technical struggles that have impeded Facebook from creating a user- and advertiser-friendly mobile application. The company spent too long trying to build mobile products using a programming language known as HTML5, Zuckerberg said. Navistar vs. Icahn gets ugly in Illinois (NYP) Embattled truck and diesel engine maker Navistar International yesterday poured gasoline on the fire ignited Sunday when billionaire investor Carl Icahn called the company’s board a “poster child for abysmal business decisions and poor corporate governance.” Less than a day after the billionaire investor blasted the Warrenville, Ill., company for not consulting shareholders on its new CEO hire, Navistar dismissed his complaints as “unproductive tactics of threats, attacks and disruption.” Legg Mason CEO To Step Down (WSJ) Facing pressure from activist investor Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management LP and battling investor outflows, Legg Mason Inc. said Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Fetting will step down Oct. 1. The Baltimore-based money manager faces a Nov. 30 deadline after which Trian, Legg Mason's largest shareholder, will be free to raise its 10.5% stake in the firm, potentially giving Mr. Peltz more influence. Man Shot Uncle To Death Over Pork Steaks (STLT) The shooting stemmed from an argument between Lowe and Cunningham over whether the cuts of meat they were planning to cook were pork steaks or pork chops, police say. Cunningham said they were pork steaks, police said. Lowe disagreed. After the argument became physical about 1 a.m. Monday, the two had to be separated by someone else in the home, police say. Cunningham went to another part of the home, grabbed a shotgun and shot Lowe, police said. Lowe died later at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Cunningham, who was correct about the meat, was taken into custody.

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Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 1.11.21

Trumpless Twitter; how do you like dem apples, D-Sol?; the TikTok trade; heli-commutes aren’t just for the summer anymore; and more!