Portalarium, the social and mobile game company founded by game pioneer Richard Garriott, has raised a second round of funding. Altogether, the Austin, Texas-based startup has raised $3.6 million to date.

The financing includes money from m8 Capital in the United Kingdom and Founders Fund (the investment fund which includes PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel) in San Francisco.

Garriott has vowed to create the same kind of fun games on Facebook as he did at earlier stages in his career. Earlier this year, Garriott said in an interview that Portalarium is aimed at exploiting the business opportunities in the “third age of video games.”

For those of you who didn’t grow up playing games, it may help to know that Garriott was present for the first age of video games, with the debut of great single-player games such as  Ultima, which was followed by many sequels. In 1997, under his alter ego Lord British, Garriott extended his role-playing fantasy world to the online multiplayer game Ultima Online. Garriott considers the rise of Internet-connected games to be the second age of video games. Garriott tried to exploit that age with Tabula Rasa, one of the most ambitious sci-fi online games, but that title met with an untimely death after six years of effort.

The third age began with the explosive growth of simple, quickly played social games like Zynga’s FarmVille on Facebook. In an interview at the Dice Summit game conference in Las Vegas, Garriott said he knows he is late and the gold rush into social games has happened without him so far. Portalarium launched two simple casino games on Facebook so far in order to test the company’s theories about player engagement, or the trick of getting gamers to play games for a long time.

“We are delighted to join Richard Garriott and the Portalarium team in creating the next great gaming company,” said Joseph Kim, general partner at London-based m8 Capital. “Richard is one of the giants of the industry. He’s a proven entrepreneur and has been a driving force at each of the industry’s major turning points.”

Kim said he liked Garriott’s vision for the future of mobile and social games. Ditto for Brian Singerman of the Founders Fund.

In the past year, Portalarium has released two games — Port Casino Poker and Port Casino Blackjack –  on Facebook and the hi5 social network. According to AppData, those games have just a small number of users. But Portalarium says that those are evergreen products that were created to quickly build out the company’s backend server technology and start interconnecting a player network across platforms and social networks. Port Casino Poker recently launched Apple’s iPad and both iPhone and Android versions are coming later this year.

Fred Schmidt, chief executive of Portalarium, said that the connection with m8 Capital will help the company shape its European strategy while the Founders Fund (which backed Facebook) connection is helping the company connect to the social media scene in Silicon Valley. Portalarium was founded in 2009 and has 12 employees.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. To participate in our Who’s Got Game? contest for the best game startup, click on this link.

Tags: Port Casino Blackjack, Port Casino Poker

Companies: Apple, Facebook, Founders Fund, M8 Capital, Portalarium

People: Richard Garriott

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Does a mere two and a half years to get out and 3&30 sound like something you’d be interested in?

Investors in the Chicago-based firm’s Kensington and Wellington funds can now take out 10 percent of assets every quarter, meaning they can aexit the funds entirely over two and a half years, according to people familiar with the matter. Currently, the client withdrawls are limited to one-sixteenth every quarter, requiring four years to get out.

Citadel, which has see its assets under management fall by almost half since a 2007 peak of $21 billion, is trying to win clients by relaxing investor terms, which are among the most restrictive in the industry…Citadel has told investors it is considering changing its fees. It is among a handful of funds that pass along all expenses to clients rather than charging the industry-standard 2 percent annual management fee. Expenses at the firm have reached as much as 8 percent of assets and typically range from 4 to 6 percent. The firm has told potential investors it may change its fees to 3 percent of assets and raise its percentage of profits to 30 percent.

[Bloomberg Brief]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

As you may have heard, UBS has been going through a bit of a rough patch. Despite posting an annual profit (of 7.2 billion Swiss francs) for the first time since 2006, things just haven’t been the same since the crisis, and some have suggested it never will be, claiming that the bank “doesn’t have a chance” getting back to pre-crisis levels because “too much damage has been done.” Not helping things is the fact that there’s been very high turnover in the last couple months, which may have something to do with the fact that people would like to get paid. While a handful of marquee names (within the industry) have been lured with big checks, many senior bankers have heard nary a peep re bonuses in several years (and the staff’s pay overall is nothing to write home about, either). As one might imagine, tension is running high and recently within the investment bank, there’s been a decision, among those who’ve yet to quit, to air their grievances. The reaction from management? Put a sock in it.

On early morning conference calls, UBS AG investment-banking chief Carsten Kengeter has told senior bankers that he was done with their complaints about pay. “You just don’t get it,” he told thousands of bankers on more than one recent call, according to bankers who were on the call. “He told us that bankers are spoiled children and we’re the ones who messed this place up,” said one senior banker who recently left the firm. “You would get off the calls and think, ‘how can I stay here any longer?’”

So, actually not quite sure what to make of this. On the one hand, people should be compensated for the work they do, especially those who didn’t contribute to the multi-billion dollar losses. On the other, UBS did fuck up, and not in a small way, and perhaps a little slap in the face to jolt everyone back to reality is warranted?
At UBS, Complaints And Exits [WSJ]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Shares of Cisco Systems (CSCO) are up 40 cents, or 2.3%, at $18.18 after the company this afternoon reported fiscal Q3 revenue in line with estimates and EPS better than expected.

Q3 revenue for the three months ended in April rose 5%, year over year, to $10.9 billion, yielding EPS of 42 cents.

Analysts had been expecting $10.9 billion and 37 cents per share. The revenue is in line with Ciso’s own forecast back in February for $10.89 billion in revenue. EPS was above Cisco’s forecast for 35 cents to 38 cents.

Gross margin came in at 63.9%, Cisco said, above the company’s forecast for margin of 62% to 63%.

CEO John Chambers remarked, “This quarter played out as we expected. We have acknowledged our challenges. We know what we have to do. We have a clear game plan, and we are a company with a track record of market-shaping innovation. We thank our shareholders, employees, customers and partners as we transition to the next phase of Cisco.”

Cisco said its “days of inventory” declined from 40 in Q2 to 37 in Q3. Inventory “turns” rose to 11.1 from 10.6 in the prior quarter, on a GAAP basis, it said.

Update: Shares are now up 64 cents, or 3.6%, at $18.42.

Update 2: Cisco’s conference call is now underway. You can catch it here.

During the call, Chambers said Cisco intends to cut $1 billion from its costs, as part of a broad “simplification” of its operating model.

Chambers also remarked that fiscal Q4 will continue to show some “weakness,” as “switching margins are under pressure in the high end part of our business.”

Chambers remarked that price-per-port is dropping as the company transitions to its “Nexus” line of switches, bringing pressure on gross margin:

The switching market is in the midst of a significant transition. Across the industry, prices at each speed have been driving down price per port, along with significant transitions from 1-gigabit to 10-gigabit, where we are at the forefront of this innovation. As we have said previously, in the short term, this has placed pressure on our revenue opportunities across the market as customers have begun to adopt these new technologies. Our gross margins have come under pressure due to the transition of our own products at the high end of our switching portfolio as customers adopt the Nexus 7000.

Chambers said the company plans a “workforce reduction,” the scope of which will be decided over the summer.

As for public sector, Chambers said further belt-tightening by government customers had led to a reversal from 30% growth four quarters ago to an 8% decline in Q3. “No excuses. We must adjust quickly,” he said, “We must address very aggressively the dramatic spending changes that will occur.”

Chief operating officer Gary Moore said on the call that Cisco will improve its gross profit margin, “through product simplification, aggressive value engineering, maximizing commodity pricing opportunities, and enhanced supply chain strategies.”

Update 3: This cautious commentary appears to have forced Cisco to give up its after-hours gains. The stock is now down 21 cents, or 1%, at $17.59.

Update 4: For Q4, the company is forecasting $10.84 billion to $11.05 billion in revenue, below the consensus $11.6 billion, and EPS of 37 cents to 39 cents, below the average 41-cent estimate of analysts. Gross margin is expected at about 62%.

Update 5: Cisco’s long-term revenue growth targets of 12% to 17% are “off the table,” management said.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Commodity hedge funds upbeat after mauling (FT)
Last week saw the largest daily trading volume in Brent crude’s history as investors – a large proportion of them hedge funds – began to liquidate positions in a stampede to reduce risk. It was a rush to the exits that was seemingly without cause, however. Many fund managers are at a loss to explain what triggered the panic, dismissing the explanations that have been proffered – weak US economic data, a hike in commodities trading costs or even hedging upcoming equity exposure to the giant Glencore listing…But crucially such losses – unattractive though they are – have done little, if anything, to dent managers’ confidence in the long commodities play.

AIG Offering Near Low End of Range (WSJ)
American International Group Inc. and the Treasury decided to move ahead with a stock offering this month for about $9 billion, far less than what officials had once hoped to fetch, people familiar with the decision said…[AIG's board] decided to proceed with plans for an offering near the low end of a range envisioned by people familiar with the plan of $7 billion to $25 billion, depending on investor demand and market conditions.

Banks Float $5 Billion Deal to End Foreclosure Probe (WSJ)
Such an offer is considerably less than the amounts sought by state and federal officials, some of whom are asking for more than $20 billion in penalties. The banks’ figure comes as mortgage companies and state and federal officials continue their efforts to strike a settlement of investigations sparked by allegations of “robo-signing” and other questionable foreclosure practices that came to light last fall.

Preemptive strike against high prices may be needed, Fed official says (WaPo)
The Federal Reserve needs to be prepared to take preemptive action against even the possibility of a surge of higher prices, a senior official of the central bank said Tuesday. Jeffrey M. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, added in an interview that he doesn’t think the recent rises in the price of fuel and other commodities will spiral into a broader inflation, but he cautioned that the central bank needs to remain vigilant.

Dodd-Frank Dissenters Sound Off (Dealbook)
And Ken Griffin, founder of the $15 billion hedge fund Citadel Investment Group, went the furthest by proclaiming that not only would the legislation not work as proposed, but it is “going to deeply entrench crony capitalism into the very fabric of our financial system, which I am terrified about.”

Ex-Galleon Trader Kimelman Wants Jury Told He Rejected Plea Deal With U.S. (Bloomberg)
Former Galleon Group LLC trader Michael Kimelman said he wants jurors at his upcoming insider- trading trial to be told that he could have avoided jail by admitting guilt and rejected a plea deal because he’s innocent. Kimelman is scheduled for trial on May 16… The government’s offer would have had Kimelman plead guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and “was still available last week,” according to the filing.

FDIC warns on moral hazard for money market funds (Reuters)
[Sheila] Bair, outgoing chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, said regulators needed to be mindful of so-called moral hazard in creating a backstop for the $2.7 trillion industry. During the financial crisis, the federal government was forced to backstop the market after the collapse of Lehman Brothers pushed the value of the Reserve Fund money market fund below $1 a share, wreaking havoc on the industry.

China Inflation Signals More Tightening to Come (Bloomberg)
China’s inflation held above 5 percent in April and lending exceeded analysts’ estimates, signaling that further monetary tightening may be needed to cool the fastest-growing major economy…Today’s data showed that inflation has exceeded Premier Wen Jiabao’s 4 percent target each month this year.

German Inflation Accelerated More Than Estimated (Bloomberg)
The inflation rate, calculated using a harmonized European Union method, jumped to 2.7 percent from 2.3 percent in March, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said today. That’s an upward revision from the first estimate of 2.6 percent on April 27. From March, consumer prices rose 0.3 percent, more than the 0.2 percent initially reported.

Bank of England cuts growth forecasts (FT)
The Bank’s central forecast now predicts growth of about 2.7 per cent in the four quarters to the end of this year, down from its February forecast of growth of 2.9 per cent, assuming no change in monetary policy. Growth in the year to the end of 2012 is expected to be about 2.8 per cent rather than 3.2 per cent. Inflation is forecast to peak this year at about 5 per cent in the fourth quarter, rather than at about 4.5 per cent. By the end of next year, inflation is expected to reach 2.4 per cent, compared with an earlier forecast of 1.7 per cent.

Greek unions hold new general strike, plan demonstrations, to protest harsh austerity (WaPo)
A 24-hour general strike in Greece Wednesday brought most public services to a halt, while thousands marched through Athens to protest the government’s introduction of harsh austerity measures intended to keep the debt-ridden country solvent. This month, the Socialist government is planning to pass further cutbacks aimed at saving an estimated €23 billion ($33 billion) through 2015.

Google Sets Aside $500 Million for Probe (Bloomberg)
Google set aside $500 million related to the possible resolution of a U.S. Justice Department investigation of its advertising business, resulting in lower first-quarter profit. The expense trimmed net income to $1.8 billion, or $5.51 a share, in the period, Google said yesterday in a regulatory filing.

Stanford Trial Set for September (WSJ)
Jailed money manager R. Allen Stanford will go to trial on wire-fraud and other charges in September, a federal judge in Houston has ruled. Jury selection will begin Sept. 12 in the trial of Mr. Stanford, who has been accused of running a $7 billion fraud, according to an order issued by U.S. District Judge David Hittner in Houston on Tuesday.

‘Mack’ the life (NYP)
Mark Madoff’s widow, Stephanie, filed two name change petitions to distance herself and her children from her husband’s notorious last name. After the couple received numerous threats, Mark gave Stephanie his blessing to change her last name to “Morgan” in February 2010, and since then she’s been called Stephanie Morgan. When the name change request was reported, sources say Morgan filed a second petition to change her family name to “Mack.”

Female peacock escapes from Bronx Zoo, still on the loose on NYC streets (NYDN)
The Bronx Zoo cobra may be back in captivity, but a female peacock is on the loose. Three zoo workers wielding nets made a failed attempt to recapture the green peahen about noon on Tuesday…Zoo workers crawling stealthily through the grass got within a few feet of the feisty fowl before she flew off again. She hasn’t been seen since…”We’ll get her eventually,” vowed Nancy Clum, the zoo’s curator of ornithology.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Canaccord Genuity analyst Mike Walkley today writes that his “checks” of Apple’s (AAPL) business in April suggest iPhone 4 topped sales at AT&T (T) and Verizon Communications (VZ) last month. iPad 2 sales were also “very strong” in April.

Walkley predicts Apple customers will tend to stick with its “i” devices because of the Apple ecosystems’s “higher price points for tablet applications,” a phrase that is somewhat mysterious. I am assuming he is referring to the amount invested by consumers in amassing the various apps they have on the iPhone, etc.

Walkley is modeling Apple’s iOS device installed base to rise from 189 million currently to 246 million by the end of this fiscal year that wraps up in September, and 404 million by the end of next year.

Walkley thinks that the high stickiness, if you will, of Apple customers is complemented by the “higher-end markets” it is in, and that as result, replacement rate of iPhones should be about 40% per year, above the industry average of 35%. Walkley expects Apple “will maintain dominant value share of both the tablet and smartphone markets to drive healthy long-term earnings growth.”

Walkley maintains a Buy rating on Apple shares and a $480 price target.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Moving deeper into  mobile chips, Nvidia said it has agreed to buy mobile wireless chip design firm Icera for $367 million.

Icera specializes in making baseband processors for 3G and 4G cellular phones, and it has more than 550 patents. The deal will put Nvidia in a better position in a $15 billion market to compete against Qualcomm and integrate Icera’s technology into Nvidia’s own solution for tablets and smartphones.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia already makes its Tegra family of mobile gadget application processors. The Icera technology enables Nvidia to advance further into making baseband processors, or the actual radio chips in cell phones. By offering both major chips in a cell phone, Nvidia now has a chance to double its revenue opportunity within each device, the company said.

‪“This is a key step in Nvidia’s plans to be a major player in the mobile computing revolution,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, in a statement. “Adding Icera’s technology to Tegra gives us an outstanding platform to support the industry’s best phones and tablets.

Lynley Gwennap, an analyst at the Lynley Group, said that Icera can design chips that are about a quarter of the size of competing chips from Qualcomm. If true, that could give Icera a big advantage in both manufacturing cost and power consumption compared to the rival. Gwennap estimates that the purchase price was about four times Icera’s 2010 revenue, which means its revenue last year was about $91.7 million or so. In the near term, he said that the companies could sell their chips separately. But in the long term, the could combine the chips into a single chip.That will enable Nvidia to reach a broader market.

Icera was founded in 2002 and is based in Bristol, England. It has more than 300 employees in seven countries, and its senior executives have backgrounds in microprocessor design and cellular communication. Icera’s chips are used in wireless modems and have been approved for use by 50 carriers around the world. The company makes next-generation, multi-protocol wireless processors with radio components. A single chip can offer everything from 2G to 4G service and can be custom configured. Stan Boland is the company’s chief executive.

The deal is expected to close in 30 days, subject to customary closing conditions. The transaction will be slightly dilutive to Nvidia’s earnings through the first half of calendar 2012.

Tags: 4G, baseband processor, chips

Companies: Icera, Nvidia, Qualcomm

People: Jen Hsun Huang

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Shares of JDS Uniphase (JDSU) are up $1.85, or 9.3%, at $21.85, continuing the stock’s big after-hours jump last night after JDSU beat Q3 estimates.

JDSU said an industry inventory correction would lead to a decline in sales quarter over quarter, missing analysts’ estimates. But the sense today is that in a rough patch for optical, JDSU is actually holding up better than some. (Note Oplink’s (OPLK) 10% decline when it announced earnings on Tuesday.)

For example, Nathan Johnson with Pacific Crest Securities thinks the Q4 outlook suggested the company’s optical business can outperform the broader fiber-optic component market over the next several years, by consolidating the industry.

“While JDSU providing an outlook for a sequential decline of 2% to 4% in its optical business would not normally be a reason for celebration, the expected decline is better than the majority of JDSU’s optical peers are likely to experience,” writes Johnson.

“And we think it is better than many on the Street had come to expect.” Specifically, the whisper number was for a 7% decline, he writes.

Johnson reiterated an Outperform rating on the shares and increases his price target to $28 from $27.

Mark Sue of RBC Capital Markets is less enthusiastic, but he does accentuate some of the positives in the report.

Sue, who has a Sector Perform rating and a $23 price target on JDSU, remarks that “lead times are still contracting” for optical component orders, which makes him think it’s too early to get into JDSU shares.

However, the “core business” is still intact, notes Sue, despite the miss on Q2 numbers, hence the positive reaction in the shares. Some of the best-performing products, including the “Tunable XFP,” and the “Super Transport Blade,” may “help to offset weakness in other areas.”

Citigroup’s Kevin Dennean, who has a Buy rating on JDSU, today raised his price target to $25 from $24.

The company’s Q4 forecast, “was much better than feared heading into the print, and shows the benefits of diversification,” writes Dennean. “We believe there are still better days ahead for JDSU.”

Dennean raised his full-year 2012 EPS estimate to $1.08 from $1, while cutting this year’s number to 94 cents from 96 cents.

He sees upside from better gross margins in the company’s test and measurement business, and, as Sue suggests, from new products in optical components.

As for the rest of the industry, Dennean has a Hold rating on Finisar (FNSR), for whom he sees “significant risk to consensus [estimates for] +4.5% July revenue growth.” Finisar is “unlikely to see 20 times next twelve months’ P/E again this cycle, limiting upside.”

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Intel’s (INTC) today announced it has “reinvented transistors” with a new manufacturing technique it calls “Tri-Gate,” and nicknamed the “3-D transistor” that is meant to increase performance 37% over its current line. Intel will start manufacturing the chips at 22-nanometer feature sizes later this year in a chip called “Ivy Bridge.”

Intel describes the new feature as a “three-dimensional fin that rises up vertically from the silicon substrate,” as opposed to traditional transistors made up of grooves etched into silicon and subsequently built upon in layers of various materials deposited onto the chip.

The point is that the “gate,” the thing that turns current on and off, wraps around the “channel,” the thing through which current flows, on three sides. That is supposed to offer greater control for turning on and off the flow of current. I’ve posted the delightful video by Intel below explaining this better than I can.

Analysts have been looking forward to Ivy Bridge to provide a significant improvement in CPU and graphics performance while offering much lower power consumption, as part of Intel’s bid to beat back competition in mobile devices from chips based on designs by ARM Holdings (ARMH).

Today’s announcement had been hinted at several times, most recently during the conference call to discuss Intel’s blow-out Q1 report on April 19th, when CEO Paul Otellini reiterated that an upcoming technology at 22-nanometer would be “revolutionary.”

Glen Yeung of Citigroup, who’s been avidly following the hush-hush work on 3-D at Intel, today offers a rousing endorsement of Intel’s competitive position versus ARM, reiterating a Buy rating on the stock and a $27 price target.

Writing that Intel has a three- to four-year lead on other chip makers, Yeung points out that the 3-D technique will reduce current leakage when the chip is sitting around doing nothing, and reduce operating voltage when it is busy doing work. He thinks the latter aspect offers the biggest gains for Intel.

We expect multi-gate will vault Intel squarely into the battle for mobile devices (tablets and handsets). We expect [thermal design points] for handset/tablet processors could drop to 0.5 watts to 1 watt, all else being equal, clearly competitive with ARM. Notebook battery life, all else being equal, will double.

Raymond James analyst Hans Mosesmann, who has an Outperform rating on Intel shares, writes, “Intel’s 3-D Tri-Gate transistor breakthrough is a big deal and is incrementally positive for the shares.” He notes that GlobalFoundries, the contract chip maker that spun out of AMD (AMD) is also working in this area, and that Samsung (SSNLF) is considering 3-D technology.

Regardless of what it does for Intel’s competitive standing, the 3-D chip fabrication is a remarkable threshold for the industry. To give you a sense of how far things have come in 3-D chips in two decades, author Don Lindsay with Microprocessor Report wrote as follows in 1993 about the state of the art — basically, gluing things together:

Although multichip modules (MCMs) are fairly new for production parts, they are already reaching their limits in research projects, and to go much further requires a 3-D approach. Several research groups have glued SRAM chips into stacks, with interconnect traces down one face of the stack. One of these groups thins the chips first to get more compact stacks. Beyond this is the possibility of stacking things that are really thin–on the order of a few microns–producing a chunk of silicon resembling a tiny multi-layer PC board using vias for interchip communication.

Intel shares this afternoon are up 29 cents, or 1.3%, at $23.34.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

U.S. May Pursue More Lenders After Suing Deutsche Bank on Loans (Bloomberg)
“We go where the evidence takes us, and if it takes us to the larger players on Wall Street, so be it,” Kanovsky said. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said it wouldn’t be a “fantastical stretch” for prosecutors to scrutinize other lenders.

Steep Drop Tarnishes Big Bets On Silver (WSJ)
George Soros’s big hedge fund, a firm operated by high-profile investor John Burbank and some other leading firms have been selling gold and silver, according to people close to the matter, after furiously accumulating precious metals for much of the past two years…Some others with stellar records—including Mr. Burbank, of Passport Capital, and Alan Fournier, of Pennant Capital—also have been passionate about precious metals, giving encouragement to individual investors to follow. Now they are selling, in each case for distinct reasons…[John] Paulson told investors Tuesday morning that gold prices could go as high as $4,000 an ounce over the next three to five years, as the U.S. and U.K. flood the money supply…Andrew Hall, a former star trader at Citigroup who runs hedge fund Astenbeck Capital Management LLC and trades for Phibro, a unit of Occidental Petroleum Corp., told his clients last month that gold and silver will continue to “march higher” unless evidence emerges of “an imminent rise” in interest rates.

Official: Portugal bailout to be $115 billion‎ (BusinessWeek)
“The government got a good deal, one that safeguards Portugal,” Prime Minister Jose Socrates said in a televised address to the nation. He did not take questions.

Portugal aid terms likely to spark 2-year recession (Reuters)
An official source told Reuters the austerity measures to be included in the deal, such as higher taxes, point to a “contraction of 2 percent in gross domestic product in 2011 and in 2012″. That will make it yet more challenging for the heavily indebted country, which has had some of the lowest growth rates in Europe for a decade, to ride out its crisis and return to financial health. The source told Reuters taxes will rise on cars and property and there will be cuts in deductions on health, education and housing.

US Becomes Net Exporter of Fuel (FT)
The US has become a net exporter of fuel for the first time for nearly 20 years as drivers struggle with high petrol prices.

4 Billionaires at Glencore (BBC)
When Glencore publishes its full flotation prospectus later this morning, it will show that there are four billionaires working for the world’s leading commodities, minerals and energy trader. These are led by the chief executive Ivan Glasenberg, who will be shown to be worth around $10bn. But it is the quartet of billionaires, plus many others worth more than $100m each, and hundreds who are millionaires, that makes Glencore quite extraordinary.

U.S. Regulators Face Budget Pinch as Mandates Widen (NYT)
On a recent trip to New York to tour a trading floor, a group of employees from the commodities watchdog rode Mega Bus both ways, arriving late to their meeting despite a 5:30 a.m. departure. The bus, which cost $30 a person round trip, saved the agency roughly $1,000 over Amtrak…The money squeeze comes as Wall Street regulators take on added responsibilities in the wake of the financial crisis, including monitoring hedge funds, overseeing the $600 trillion derivatives market and other tasks mandated by the Dodd-Frank law.

Euro Approaches 18-Month High Versus Dollar Before ECB Decision (Bloomberg)
The 17-member common currency strengthened against all but one of its most actively traded peers as a report showed European services and manufacturing growth accelerated in April. The Dollar Index declined toward the lowest level since July 2008. New Zealand’s dollar dropped to a two-week low after a government report showed the nation had the biggest net outflow of residents in more than 10 years. The pound slumped to the weakest in more than a year against the euro.

Foreign Banks Get Scrutiny in Britain (WSJ)
The Financial Services Authority’s goal is to prevent certain companies from exploiting European rules to set up banking and brokerage operations that the agency views as potentially risky because they use a structure that doesn’t face tough local supervision. But the move by the FSA is controversial. Some observers said the pressure conflicts with Europe’s “passporting” rules, under which financial institutions from anywhere in the 30-country European Economic Area are allowed to open outposts in other member countries. Those “branches,” which can house a range of business activities, face limited oversight by local regulators. Instead, they primarily are the responsibility of regulators in their home countries.

KKR and TPG look to move into Brazil (FT)
KKR and TPG are hunting for a senior figure to lead their offices in Brazil, who will then recruit start- up teams, people in the industry said.

At Nasdaq, a Pitch and Woo (WSJ)
Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. has rolled out the red carpet to hedge funds, racing to persuade them to buy up shares of NYSE Euronext to derail the Big Board’s planned tie-up with Deutsche Börse AG…Some merger arbitragers and hedge-fund investors have met with Nasdaq Chief Executive Robert Greifeld three times in the last few weeks, people familiar with the matter said. They also are being offered private meetings with Mr. Greifeld and special tours of Nasdaq headquarters, these people said.

Southampton’s Former Goldman Sachs Party Pad Sells for $4.1M (Curbed)
In 2009, the New York Post caught wind that Goldman Sachs exec Richard Kimball Jr. was in hot water with the Southampton Police. Turns out Kimball, the ex-husband of Holly Peterson, was throwing pretty rowdy pool parties at his Southampton rental. But while Kimball was partying, the rental was trying to find itself a more permanent buyer.

Wall Street’s Cult Calculator Turns 30 (WSJ)
Thirty years after the launch of the 12c, it’s still commonplace for financial analysts filing into a conference room to set down their calculators next to their papers and cellphones. Indeed, the 12c, which costs $70 on H-P’s website, is H-P’s best-selling calculator of all time, though the company won’t reveal how many units it has sold over the years. (A standard calculator costs about $10.) Its chief competitor is Texas Instruments’ $28 BA II Plus, which is the only other calculator test-takers are permitted to use on the official CFA exam.

Florida woman, Gloria Esther Perez, busted for hiding knife in her ‘private area’ (NYDN via Daily Intel)
Perez was searched and found to be hiding dozens of prescription pills, police said. Perez then “became ill,” the police report states, and was taken to a hospital. Once there, it was discovered she was concealing two knives. One was tucked within the folds of her fat while the other was “hidden in her vagina.”

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker