Global-Bank Deal Targets Reserves (WSJ)
Regulators have said new rules will help restore confidence in the global banking system. Banks have warned that such requirements could limit economic growth by crimping their ability to lend. Many bankers had believed their arguments were gaining traction, but the new limits regulators appear close to mandating are stiffer than some had expected in recent days.

Boehner Calls For Two Year Freeze On All Tax Rates (AP)
House Republican Leader John Boehner onWednesday proposed a two-year freeze on all tax rates and a cut in government spending to the levels of 2008, before a deep recession took hold of the economy. In a broadcast interview, the Ohio Republican said he was offering a “bipartisan” alternative to the package of business tax incentives and infrastructure spending that President Barack Obama was slated to announce later Wednesday in Cleveland.

Paulson & co Hit By US Economic Woes (FT)
The firm’s flagship $9bn Advantage Plus fund, which aims to profit from trading corporate events, lost 4.26 per cent in August, according to an investor, writing back tentative gains made in July. The fund was down 6.6 per cent in the second quarter. Paulson’s $3billion Recovery fund lost 9.13 per cent over the month, erasing its 6.5 per cent gain in July and compounding its 12.6 per cent second-quarter loss.

Goldman Sees $80 Trillion Emerging-Nation Stock Market by 2030 (Bloomberg)
The market value of emerging-market stocks may surge more than fivefold to $80 trillion in two decades, overtaking developed nations, as China becomes the world’s largest stock market, Goldman Sachs said. Faster economic expansion and growing capital markets may lift emerging nations’ share of world equity capitalization to 55 percent by 2030 from 31 percent today, Goldman strategists led by Timothy Moe wrote in a research report. Institutional investors in developed nations will probably buy a net $4 trillion of emerging-market equities, lifting holdings to 18 percent of their total portfolios from 6 percent now, Moe wrote.

SEC Looking At ‘Quote Stuffing’ (WSJ)
Mary Schapiro said the agency is looking at a practice others have called “quote stuffing” to assess whether it violates “existing rules against fraudulent or other improper behavior.” The practice involves trading in which unusually large numbers of orders to buy or sell stocks are placed in a fraction of a second, only to be canceled almost immediately. Ms. Schapiro said the agency is considering requiring traders to hold orders open for minimum periods.

Ryanair’s O’Leary Mulls One-Euro Toilets, Standing Passengers (Bloomberg)
“Why does every plane have two pilots?” asks Michael O’Leary, chief executive officer of Ryanair Holdings Plc, the largest low-cost airline in Europe. Wearing sneakers, jeans, and an off-the-rack short-sleeved shirt, O’Leary is pontificating in his office at the company’s headquarters on the outskirts of Dublin Airport. “Really, you only need one pilot,” he tells Bloomberg Businessweek in the Sept. 6 edition. “Let’s take out the second pilot. Let the bloody computer fly it.” What happens if the pilot has a heart attack? One member of the cabin crew on all Ryanair flights would be trained to land a plane. “If the pilot has an emergency, he rings the bell, he calls her in,” O’Leary says. “She could take over.”

Marilyn Manson Loses His Make-Up, Gains A Mullet (STP)
Interview reports that Manson is a “diehard” fan of HBO’s “Eastbound & Down,” the critically worshiped comedy starring Danny McBride as a washed-up former baseball star whose trademark mullet and angry face Manson is imitating in this photo. “Whenever I see Manson, he’s repeating entire chunks of dialogue and dressed like Kenny,” Adam Bhala Lough, who’s directing Manson in the upcoming film “Splatter Sisters,” told Interview. Lough went on to say that Manson dresses like “Eastbound” character Kenny Powers all the time, and provided this photo, credited to Manson himself, as “evidence.”

Hedge Funds Shrink In July As Billions Walk (Reuters)
The global hedge fund industry shrivelled a little more in July when investors pulled out nearly $3 billion (1.9 billion pounds) after the loosely regulated portfolios posted losses in May and June, researchers reported on Tuesday. Assets stood at $1.53 trillion, their lowest level since November 2009, according to data released jointly by TrimTabs and BarclayHedge, firms that track performance and flow data.

Hurd To Get $950,000, Eligible For $5 Million Bonus At Oracle (AP)
The biggest part of Hurd’s pay package will be the 10 million stock options Oracle plans to give him. The company said Hurd’s options will carry an exercise price equal to the market value of the shares on the date they are granted. While the filing did not offer a specific date, Oracle shares closed Tuesday at $24.26, which would value 10 million shares at $242.6 million. If he stays with the company, Hurd will be given options to buy another 5 million shares each year for the next five years.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Barclays Taps Diamond As CEO (WSJ)
In an unexpected shake-up, the giant London-based bank announced Tuesday morning that Mr. Diamond, Barclays’s president and investment-banking chief, will replace current CEO John Varley. After serving as CEO since September 2004, Mr. Varley will step down on March 31. Mr. Diamond will assume the title of deputy group CEO on Oct. 1. The announcement comes as a surprise, since Mr. Varley hasn’t previously indicated he has plans to retire. The 59-year-old Mr. Diamond, an avid golfer and die-hard Boston Red Sox fan, is four years older than Mr. Varley, who is 55. He lost out to Mr. Varley for the CEO job in 2003.

Obama Plans Business Tax Relief, Spending to Spur Growth (Bloomberg)
Obama will announce an expanded tax incentive to encourage business investment, an administration official said on condition of anonymity. Obama also will urge Congress to extend permanently and expand a research-and-development tax credit for businesses, costing about $100 billion over a decade. He began the rollout of initiatives yesterday in Milwaukee, calling for $50 billion in the first of a six-year program to fix roads, railways and runways and modernize the air-traffic control system. “All of this will not only create jobs now, but will make our economy run better over the long haul,” Obama said, announcing his public-works program. “It’s a plan that history tells us can and should attract bipartisan support.”

No Defense Against Double-Dip-Recession, Roubini Says (Telegraph)
“The US has run out of bullets,” said Nouriel Roubini at the annual Ambrosetti conference on Lake Como. “More quantitative easing (bond purchases) by the Federal Reserve is not going to make any difference. Treasury yields are already down to 2.5pc yet credit spreads are widening again. Monetary policy can boost liquidity but it can’t deal with solvency problems,” he told Europe’s policy elite. “There is a 40pc chance of double-dip recession in the US, and worse in Japan. Even if it is not technically a recession it will feel like it,” he added.

Burry of `The Big Short’ Bets on Farmland, Gold After Profits on Subprime (Bloomberg)
Michael Burry, the former hedge-fund manager who predicted the housing market’s plunge, said he is investing in farmable land, small technology companies and gold as he hunts original ideas and braces for a weaker dollar. “I believe that agriculture land — productive agricultural land with water on site — will be very valuable in the future,” Burry, 39, said in a Bloomberg Television interview scheduled for broadcast this morning in New York. “I’ve put a good amount of money into that.” Burry, who now manages his own money after shuttering the fund in 2008, said finding original investments is difficult because many trades are crowded and asset classes often move together. “I’m interested in finding investments that aren’t just simply going to float up and down with the market,” he said. “The incredible correlation that we’re experiencing — we’ve been experiencing for a number of years — is problematic.”

Cameron lines up HSBC’s Green as trade minister (FT)
Stephen Green is expected to announce on Tuesday he is standing down as chairman of HSBC to become trade minister, ending David Cameron’s long search to find a high-profile business figure to fill the role.

Bounties Spur Surge In Fraud Tips (WSJ)
The Dodd-Frank financial law passed in July provides for the larger bounties, with the hope of fingering wrongdoers such as Bernard Madoff before they swindle thousands of people. People who supply “original information” about large frauds could net as much as 30% of the penalties and recovered funds collected by the SEC, which could add up to a multimillion-dollar payout. Lawyers who represent whistle-blowers have been spreading the word about the new incentives. “We’ve gotten some very high-quality tips,” said SEC official Stephen Cohen.

Why You Can’t Beat Wall Street (NYM)
The current economic malaise would cause trouble for whichever party is in power. But having helped open the valves of anti-Establishment fervor, the Democrats may have not only failed to harness the energy they unleashed, but lost what capitalist allies they had as well. If there is still such a thing as an Establishment, the Obama administration increasingly faces the prospect of alienating it while still getting pilloried for being it. That’s a political perfecta no one was looking to pull off.

Flight Attendant, Jet Blue Part Ways After Dramatic Exit (CNN)
JetBlue spokeswoman Jenny Dervin told CNN on Saturday that Steven Slater no longer works for the airline. She said that the separation occurred last week, but declined to elaborate how Slater and the company parted ways.

Buffett, Gates to Take Philanthropy Trip to China (CNBC)
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates will reportedly travel to China later this month to “learn how to do philanthropy” in that nation. China’s Economic Observer newspaper says Gates and Buffett have invited a “select group” of 50 to 60 members of the nation’s “business elite” to a “private party” in Beijing. Some of those invited, however, have declined to attend, apparently over concerns they’d be asked, or even pressured, to make a donation pledge at the event.

Europe’s Bank Stress-Tests Minimize Debt Risk (WSJ)
An examination of the banks’ disclosures indicates that some banks didn’t provide as comprehensive a picture of their government-debt holdings as regulators claimed. Some banks excluded certain bonds, and many reduced the sums to account for “short” positions they held—facts that neither regulators nor most banks disclosed when the test results were published in late July.

Bankers Gather To Assure Industry Is On The Right Track (NYT)
Top executives from some of the world’s leading banks are due to gather for a conference in Frankfurt later this week as lenders seek to avoid what they see as overly harsh regulation following the global financial crisis. Two years after Lehman Brothers’ collapse heralded the global financial system’s breakdown, chief executives at Morgan Stanley, Unicredit and Commerzbank are expected to try and convince the audience at the “Banken im Umbruch” conference that they have done their work to stabilize their banks and should not be thrown back by new banking rules.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Related: Paul Krugman: Dan Loeb & Co Are Mad At Obama Because They’re A Bunch Of Petty Little Rich Boys

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

You know, it was one thing when Obama broke up with James Dimon and started cavorting with representatives of other banks, like Vikram Pandit and Brian Moynihan, whose asses he essentially owns anyway. But now this? UBS, is he joking? And to play basketball, which he never invited JD to do and which he knows was a sport Big D excelled at in high school, making team captain junior year? Unnecessarily cruel. [AP]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

BofA Seeks End to Crisis-Era Constraint (WSJ)
Bank of America wants out of a secret U.S. sanction imposed during the financial crisis, but regulators are keeping the 15-month-old penalty in place as they evaluate whether the giant lender has satisfied all of their requirements, said people familiar with the situation. The question of when the nation’s largest bank by assets can be free of the confidential memorandum of understanding is currently the subject of negotiations between bank officials, the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, these people said. It is a “reasoned disagreement,” said one person familiar with the discussions. As long as the memorandum is in place, Bank of America is subjected to intensified scrutiny from regulators and restraints on certain moves. The “pendulum,” said one person close to the bank, is swinging from “the permissive side to the highly restrictive side.” Regulators now “are super vigilant about everything.” One benefit of lifting the sanction would be freedom from the memorandum’s psychological stigma.

Wall St. Faces Specter of Lost Trading Units (NYT)
“This is the real stuff,” said Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “It shows that if you squeeze Wall Street, like a balloon it will come out somewhere else, and we really are squeezing Wall Street. Their business models are changing.”

Barclays warns against forced break-up (FT)
The bank has launched a spirited defence of its approach of combining retail and investment banking under one roof, with executives on Thursday delivering a thinly veiled warning to the UK government that a break-up could force it overseas. John Varley, chief executive, said Barclays’ so-called universal model had proved its resilience and profitability through the financial crisis. He said it would have been “discourteous” of him to pre-judge the conclusions of the UK government-appointed Commission on Banking, which will spend the next year considering whether universal banks should be broken up. But, Mr Varley went on, the evidence to justify any break-ups would have to be “empirical, unemotional and thorough enough not to cause unintended consequences”.

Obama: Taxpayers Will Be Paid in Full For the GM Bailout (CNBC)
“We expect taxpayers will get back all the money my administration has invested in GM,” Obama said. “Over time, that is going to be extraordinarily significant. It means we stood up this industry and you know what, we got a return.”

Key White House economic adviser Christina Romer stepping down (Reuters)
Resignation effective Sept. 3, at which time Romer will return to being a professor in California.

2 Top Economists Differ Sharply on Risk of Deflation (NYT)
Nerd-off: “When the latest unemployment figures are announced today, all of Wall Street will be watching. But for Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley and Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs, the results will be more than just another marker in an avalanche of data. Instead, the numbers will be a clue as to which of the two economists is right about where the American economy is headed. Their sharp disagreement over that question adds yet another twist to the fierce rivalry between the firms, Wall Street’s version of the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.”

You Won’t See This On Shark Week: Video (AnimalNY)
“After fighting a bull shark for 45 minutes according to this video’s YouTube description, a fisherman decided to demonstrate an alternative technique for subduing the massive fish as the children held their ears and eagerly looked on.”

Legacy of the ‘Flash Crash’ (WSJ)
In the days leading up to the May 6 “flash crash,” some stock-market veterans were picking up disturbing rumblings. Philip Vasan, who heads the Credit Suisse prime-brokerage unit catering to hedge funds, began hearing from fund managers who were ratcheting back on trading because, they told him, stocks were behaving strangely. The funds were acting like “a dog that growls before an earthquake,” Mr. Vasan told several clients.

US Students Seek Degrees Abroad (WSJ)
Over the past five years, CEIBS has seen a jump in American applicants, says Lydia Price, the school’s dean. Almost 8% of the class of 2009 was made up of American students. Many are self-selecting for an education in Asia, taking Mandarin language courses and studying up on Chinese markets and business well before applying. “It’s not enough to want an M.B.A., you need to want a China M.B.A.,” Ms. Price says. “And China isn’t necessarily a gold mine, with hyper competition, under-developed markets, high demands for customer service and quality.”

Slidell youth baseball coach who beat rival coach tested positive for steroids (NOLA)
A youth baseball coach who beat up a rival coach after a crucial Slidell Bantam Baseball Association game in 2008 had off-the-chart levels of animal steroids in his system after his sentencing for battery, according to test results recently obtained by The Times-Picayune. Jason Chighizola, 34, who coached the Yankees team for 8-year-olds, was convicted Aug. 20, 2009, of battery of a recreation athletic contest official. During sentencing, Lamz said he suspected — “due to your huge muscular appearance” — that Chighizola likely was on steroids or other performance enhancing drugs.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Michael Barr, assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury: “I have no idea if the president has a favorite banker or who he might be.” [HAVING SAID THAT!] “I’ve met Brian Moynihan, he’s a delightful guy. I would say that Moynihan stepped up to the table and was very involved in trying to make progress on financial reform. We didn’t always agree but he was quite thoughtful and engaged.” [Charlotte Observer]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Solera Networks has raised $15 million in a third round of funding for its real-time network forensics and monitoring business. It’s another sign that the security technology industry is going through a revival.

The funding comes on the eve of the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences this week in Las Vegas. There have been a number of fundings (Lookout raising $11 million) and acquisitions (McAfee buying Trust Digital) in the space as the evolving threat landscape requires new kinds of technologies.

The South Jordan, Utah-based company makes forensic tools that companies can use to decipher what happens after they’ve been hit by a cyber attack or other malware, said Steve Shillingford, chief executive of the company. When hackers strike at company web sites, there is often no easy way to figure out what happened. Solera helps companies reconstruct exactly what transpired. The value of that data is often critical to figuring out who did it, much like the evidence found at a crime scene is often most critical in the first 48 hours, Shillingford said. It’s important that network forensics be done in “real time,” or instantaneously, to give companies the best situational awareness possible.

“It’s unrealistic to expect that everything bad on the network can be caught, so you have to have a good forensics system,” Shillingford said.

Trident Capital led the round and its managing director J. Alberto Yepez will join Solera’s board. Solera will use the capital to expand sales and marketing, accelerate product development and set itself up for growth. Solera was founded in 2005 in the hopes of creating another line of defense for networks. That line of defense turned out to be a full record of network traffic, instantly accessible and searchable so that security experts could find out who was attacking them. Solera now makes a series of hardware appliances that capture, store and index network traffic for a period of time. It also makes a suite of applications that provide real-time forensic functions.

It’s a lot like having a security camera monitoring a company’s headquarters; it’s more useful if you can pinpoint the right data when you need it. Market researcher Gartner says that on-demand investigations and post-incident analysis are the most common uses for network forensics tools. Gartner recommended that mainstream enterprises beef up their network forensics capability.

Government agencies quickly sought out Solera and began testing its capabilities and helping the company improve what it could do, Shillingford said. The large amount of money raised suggests that security is a hot market, in no small part because global cybercrime keeps rising and the Obama administration has put more attention on the problem. In the past, only government intelligence agencies used network forensics. But now it’s becoming necessary in the modern enterprise, Shillingford said.

The company has 40 employees. Its rivals include NetWitness, Niksun, and Endace. Solera focuses on differentiating itself with better search functions, stability, and the ability to store and process more data. Besides Trident, investors include Allegis Capital and Canopy Ventures. To date, the company has raised $31.9 million. The company says its bookings have grown 100 percent compared to last year, and that has happened for multiple years now.

Companies: Solera, Trident Capital

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » Deals & More

So Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein, the former of whom was once one of Obama’s boys, the latter of whom the President just thought was a cute li’l fella especially when his face gets all scrunched up, were very publicly not invited to yesterday’s signing of the financial reform bill. The White House asked every other Wall Street CEO to attend and probably would’ve even let Ken Lewis in if for some reason he’d showed up. And while they’re perhaps hurt, while they definitely got together last night to hold a “fuck that guy” party of two, what Lloyd and Jamie are not going to do is act out and embarrass themselves. You’d like that to happen, I’m sure but somewhere between the 8th and 9th round they decided a couple of things. 1) That waitress was totallyyyy throwing LB the vibes and 2) That living well is the best revenge. Obama’s gonna see them in the press, doing all kinds of awesome shit, doing even better than when they were together and he’s gonna think “Man, I blew it.” (It’ll hurt even worse when he realizes the only person he has to console him are Vikram and the guy who replaced John Mack). First step in Operation You Made The Biggest Mistake Of Your Life Baby? The suggestion of an overseas affair.

Mr Cameron held a private meeting with senior Wall Street bankers, including Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs, and Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase. The two men were among the most vocal critics of President Barack Obama’s Wall Street reform plans.

Businessmen To Be Made British Ambassadors [Teleraph]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

So Obama and Wall Street, who once had a love that not only did not dare not speak its name but rather shouted it from the roof of the NYSE and decided one night to get each others’ initials tattooed to their asses, apparently now “hate” each other. Supposedly the President doesn’t think Wall Street gets what it’s done wrong, and Wall Street feels unjustly maligned by the one guy they thought they could trust. So, you know, they want nothing to do with each other! Don’t call me, don’t text me, don’t think about me and don’t you even dare respond to this email because I’m not interested in hearing what you have to say we’re to infer one side probably said to the other at some point in these last few months. And now, there’s this:

On July 28, the president will attend two private dinners in Manhattan to benefit the Democratic National Committee. He’ll be guest of honor for a $30,000-a-head event at the four-story Sullivan Street townhouse of Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who is an outsider to the traditional fundraising firmament of Wall Street investors. That more moneyed club — which views even the arbiter of high fashion as part of a lower circle of donor — will have its own earlier event at the Grill Room at the Four Seasons. That venue wasn’t the first choice of these insiders. The White House nixed an earlier plan to hold the dinner at the home of Marc Lasry, a major Wall Street figure and supporter of the president.

He’ll still go to parties and mingle with them and maybe even head over to the pool room for a splash if that’s the direction the night is taking but he won’t go to their apartments. DAMN, girl. SHOTS FIRED.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Jamie and Lloyd weren’t invited (not that they’d slum it at something like this anyway), and James Gorman, Robert Wolf, Brian Moynihan and Bob Diamond declined to attend having other plans but Vikram will be there, Mr. President! With bells on!

When President Barack Obama signs the financial overhaul bill into law on Wednesday, many of the most recognizable faces in the banking world won’t be among the hundreds of people in attendance. Bank of America Corp. CEO Brian Moynihan was invited but can’t attend. Same goes for Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman and UBS Americas CEO Robert Wolf, a close friend of Obama. Barclays PLC President Bob Diamond was invited, though it’s unclear if he’ll be there. Citigroup Inc. CEO Vikram Pandit? He’ll be there.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker