Truly stunning news broke yesterday when the mysterious wizards behind the curtain of our favorite annual music festival in the desert decided to announce just weeks after this year’s event that Coachella 2012 will be held over not one, but TWO weekends. Oh, and tickets for both go on sale this FRIDAY, as in two days from today.  This is peculiar for a number of reasons, but mostly because advanced notice isn’t really Coachella’s thing, and if you recall, didn’t even announce last year’s festival dates until the middle of August. Keep reading for all the details on yesterday’s major Coachella 2012 revelations and how to not be SOL with your ticket situation. More»

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via guestofaguest.com: This being an odd numbered year, about 300,000 art lovers are set to gather in Venice, Italy for the the 2011 Venice Biennale. The tremendous bi-annual (dur) contemporary art exhibition begins this week and we have the all the details on what to expect from this year’s event. MORE>>

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S.E.C. Case Stands Out Because It Stands Alone (NYT)
But [Fabrice] Tourre’s world would soon be turned upside down. In fall 2009, the S.E.C. issued him a Wells notice, a formal warning that he was likely to be named in a civil fraud suit for his role in the mortgage deals. Mr. Egol also received such a notice in 2010. In their Oct. 10 response to the S.E.C., Mr. Tourre’s lawyers, including Pamela Chepiga of Allen & Overy, made an argument that they have not emphasized publicly. They contended that “singling Mr. Tourre out for criticism regarding the content of this clearly collaborative effort is unreasonable.” These legal replies, which are not public, were provided to The New York Times by Nancy Cohen, an artist and filmmaker in New York also known as Nancy Koan, who says she found the materials in a laptop she had been given by a friend in 2006.  The friend told her he had happened upon the laptop discarded in a garbage area in a downtown apartment building. E-mail messages for Mr. Tourre continued streaming into the device, but Ms. Cohen said she had ignored them until she heard Mr. Tourre’s name in news reports about the S.E.C. case.  She then provided the material to The Times. Mr. Tourre’s lawyer did not respond to an inquiry for comment.

Did the NYT hack Fabrice Tourre’s email? (Reuters)
Felix Salmon: “Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson have a long and rambling story about the court case against Goldman’s Fabrice Tourre, which is mainly interesting for how it was sourced…I’m sure this was extremely carefully formulated, but it does raise a lot of questions without answering them. Tourre’s name was splashed over the newspapers in April 2010, so it stands to reason that the NYT has had some kind of access to Tourre’s private, password-protected email account — not to mention archives going back at least to 2006 — for a good year at this point. I’d also guess that the NYT is going public with its source now because Tourre finally got around to changing his password, and the stream of emails then dried up.”

SAC Faces Probe of Biotech Trading (WSJ)
MedImmune shares jumped 18% on April 23, 2007, the day its takeover was announced. Trading was heavy before the announcement, driving shares up more than 50% over six weeks, suggesting that rumors of a deal may have reached traders ahead of the announcement. SAC significantly increased its holdings of MedImmune during the quarter prior to the one in which the deal was announced, according to public filings. SAC increased its holdings from 151,000 shares in the fourth quarter of 2006 to 796,000 shares in first quarter of 2007. It cut its holdings to 30,000 shares at the end of 2007′s second quarter, then reported that it sold the position completely, according to filings.

Greece nears IMF/EU deal, dismisses drachma talk (Reuters)
Greece should complete talks by the end of the week with inspectors from the EU and IMF on a medium-term budget plan plus a vital next slice of international aid, sources close to the negotiations said on Wednesday.

EU warns US to speed up bank reform (FT)
In a letter sent last week to US Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, Michel Barnier, the European commissioner in charge of financial markets, argued that Brussels was ahead of the US in several areas – including capital requirements for banks and limits on bonuses for financial executives. Mr Barnier urged the US to match European efforts. “The level playing field must be a reality, not an empty slogan,” he wrote in the May 27 letter, which was obtained by the Financial Times.

Irish lenders outline loss plans for bondholders (FT)
Three of Ireland’s lenders revealed plans to impose losses of up to 90 per cent on bondholders in attempts to make them shoulder some of the cost of recapitalising the country’s banks. Bank of Ireland said it would shortly announce a cash offer for €2.6bn ($3.7bn) of its subordinated debt, with discounts of either 80 per cent or 90 per cent depending on the type of bond. Two smaller lenders, Irish Life & Permanent and EBS, planned to impose similar losses on holders of about €1bn of debt.

UBS May Move Stamford Investment Bank to World Trade Center (Businessweek)
UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest lender, may move the staff of its U.S. investment bank from Stamford, Connecticut, to the World Trade Center in Manhattan by 2015, a person with direct knowledge of the plan said.

Attorney General orders more episodes of the “The Wire”, or a movie (Reuters)
“I want to speak directly to Mr. Burns and Mr. Simon: Do another season of ‘The Wire’,” Holder said, drawing laughter and applause from the audience. “That’s actually at a minimum. … If you don’t do a season, do a movie.  We’ve done HBO movies, this is a series that deserves a movie. I want another season or I want a movie. I have a lot of power Mr. Burns and Mr. Simon.”

‘Expert Networker’ Jiau Faces Trial in U.S. Insider-Trading Investigation (Bloomberg)
Winifred Jiau, a former consultant with so-called expert networking firm Primary Global Research LLC, faces jury selection as her insider trading trial begins today, the third tied to a nationwide probe of illegal stock- tipping.

Citigroup Close to China Securities Partnership Deal (WSJ)
Citigroup Inc. is close to an agreement with a partner in China to set up a joint-venture securities business that would give the New York bank a long-sought foothold in China’s domestic capital markets, according to people familiar with the situation. Citigroup is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with Shanghai-based Orient Securities Company Ltd. as soon as Thursday morning China time.

EIB halts Glencore lending on governance concerns (Reuters)
The EIB, the European Union’s lending institution, provided in 2005 a $50 million loan to Mopani Copper Mines, a Zambian subsidiary of Swiss-based Glencore, to help pay for the modernisation of a copper smelter. But Mopani has since been accused by some non-governmental organisations — most recently by campaign groups in an open letter signed by a group of European parliamentarians — of tax evasion and of causing widespread pollution.

Morgan Stanley Invests in Short-Sale Target Yongye International of China (Bloomberg)
Morgan Stanley agreed to invest $50 million in Yongye International Inc. (YONG), the U.S.-traded producer of plant nutrients in China that is the target of a short seller who says the company has misrepresented its business.

South Korea Probes Foreign Banks (WSJ)
Financial Supervisory Service Deputy Gov. Kim Yung-dae said at a briefing Tuesday that some foreign-bank branches in South Korea were handing over day-to-day trading operations involving money held in local accounts to a larger foreign branch or regional headquarters in places like Hong Kong and Singapore. Such outsourcing is illegal in South Korea…Mr. Kim said HSBC Holdings PLC and Crédit Agricole SA have already been sanctioned for improper outsourcing of operations involving derivatives…A person familiar with the situation said Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC may also be sanctioned for engaging in similar activity, with the FSS likely to decide on the matter in June or July.

Sovereign ratings still relevant – but mostly when they go negative (FT Alphaville)
Bond markets still react to sovereign ratings announcements, though they tend to react more when the rating agencies say something negative. That’s the conclusion of a new working paper from the European Central Bank, which looked at changes in yields and CDS spreads after rating actions from Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch on two dozen European Union countries from 1995 on.

Lehman Veteran Is Back in Game (WSJ)
Mark Walsh is best known for the gigantic real-estate deals that backfired on Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. before it collapsed in 2008. As the financial crisis recedes, the 52-year-old Mr. Walsh is mounting a low-key comeback at a new real-estate firm by leaning on connections made before the real-estate bubble burst. “Unfortunately, Mark has to live with the talk of having done a couple of bad deals, rather than people focusing on the overwhelming amount of good ones,” says New York real-estate developer Steven Witkoff.

Accuser was maid to wait (NYP)
A female manager at the ritzy Pierre hotel was suspended yesterday for shrugging off a room attendant who reported that an Egyptian business big shot had just sexually assaulted her in his room, the hotel revealed yesterday. The manager, whose name was not released, merely noted the maid’s shocking claims in a logbook — and never reported them to Pierre security, her own bosses or police, officials said.

Sarah Palin, Donald Trump split a pepperoni pizza at Famous Famiglia in Times Square (NYDN)
“She didn’t ask me (to run with her) but I’ll tell you, she’s a terrific woman,” Trump said as he ushered Palin into a branch of Famous Famiglia pizza on Broadway at 50th St.

ACLU wants porn to be allowed for South Carolina inmates (ABC)
The American Civil Liberties Union is pushing for porn at a detention center in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. The move came after reports surfaced that the facility only allowed inmates to read the Bible. But prison officials said that isn’t true and inmates have a wide variety of reading material at their disposal.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

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

Planning on getting out of town most weekends the next few months but not going points further than a 300 mile radius? Perhaps out East, on Shelter Island or Martha’s Vineyard? If you answered yes, please be sure transport doesn’t involve helicopter or, god help you, a car, because roads as a means of transport have been declared “over.”

Andre Balazs has a new toy. He is part owner of a seaplane, an eight-passenger Cessna 208 Caravan Amphibian aircraft that has been refurbished and painted bright red, the color that has become synonymous with his hotel chain. StndAir looks like an adorable figment of Snoopy’s imagination. It operates off the pier at 23rd Street and the East River. The plane can travel within a 300-mile area of New York, and it can be chartered to go to places like Martha’s Vineyard ($4,875), Provincetown ($5,575) or Montauk ($3,275). Through the summer, it will make regularly scheduled stops in East Hampton for $495, and Shelter Island for $595. There is also something slightly confusing called an online Flight Board where individuals can book tickets for off-peak flights for as low as $30 a seat. Small pets are welcome on the plane, luggage allowance is 20 pounds and no golf clubs are permitted.

[...]

On Friday, twenty minutes before takeoff, an employee of Mr. Balazs was waiting on the dock welcoming passengers. “Would you like some water?” she said, grabbing a miniature bottle branded with StndAir’s red logo on it from a basket. “While you wait, we also have suntan lotion and spray if you need to put some on.” Inside was plenty of room, and the niceties were especially, well, nice. Before take off, gummi Swedish fish—the color of the plane—were distributed through the cabin. So was a red thermos that read “Rosé.”

And in a blink, StndAir was in the water, pulling up to the beach at Shelter Island. There were dogs on the sand and a naked child waving. It felt very St.-Tropez. “Roads are over,” said Mr. Brambilla, [a friend of Balazs] as he stepped onto the shore.

Taking Off-via SeaPlane- To The Hamptons [WSJ]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

ISI Group’s Abhey Lamba this afternoon writes that Apple‘s (AAPL) iPhone, as well as the constellation of Google (GOOG) “Android” -powered smartphones, should both see stronger Q2 results as Nokia’s (NOK) phone business suffers.

Regarding Nokia management’s remarks that it faced particular difficulty in China and in Europe, Lamba writes that the company’s phones based on the Symbian operating system had already been in trouble in those areas: IDC data showed a drop in Asia-Pacific Symbian market share from 72% in 2009 to 54% in 2010, and just 42% at the end of Q4. (I would note, however, that Symbian is a platform that’s used by multiple vendors, not just Nokia; I have a feeling these data points refer to all Symbian licensees.)

Android market share of smartphones should be over 40% this quarter, he estimates, giving a lift to HTC, among others.

For Apple, “Nokia’s management team admitted to strong competition from Apple as well.” Lamba expects Apple will build on this momentum when it hosts its developer conference next week in San Francisco.

Previously: RIM: RBC Sees Risk, Opportunity In Nokia Fall, May 31st, 2011.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Zarti, reprising the role of Jake LaMotta

In early 2008, Libya’s sovereign-wealth fund controlled by Col. Moammar Gadhafi gave $1.3 billion to Goldman Sachs Group to sink into a currency bet and other complicated trades. The investments lost 98% of their value, internal Goldman documents show… In July 2008, Mustafa Zarti, the fund’s deputy chairman, summoned Mr. Kabbaj, Goldman’s North Africa chief, to a meeting with the fund’s legal and compliance staff, according to Libyan Investment Authority emails reviewed by the Journal. One person who attended the meeting says Mr. Zarti was “like a raging bull,” cursing and threatening Mr. Kabbaj and another Goldman employee. Goldman arranged for security to protect the employees until they left Libya the next day, according to people familiar with the matter.

Update: According to Lucas van Praag, the Libyans’ anger was misplaced:

Van Praag said the trades that resulted in a huge loss for Libya were designed and approved by the LIA and that Goldman was hired to execute the trades. He also said the Journal report doesn’t mention that in mid-2008, Goldman recommended restructuring the investments and asked the LIA if they wanted to discuss it. Van Praag said the LIA did not respond to Goldman’s query.

[WSJ]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

RBC Capital’s Mike Abramsky, who has a Sector Perform rating on shares of Research in Motion (RIMM), and a $53.45 price target, writes that the deterioration of Nokia‘s (NOK) business, expressed in Nokia’s financial update this morning, could present opportunity for RIM.

With 16% market share in Europe, RIM “has the opportunity to replicate the success that BBM [the BlackBerry messenger software] has had in the U.K.,” where RIM has the top spot in smartphones with 24% share.

Abramsky had downgraded RIM shares from Outperform back in April.

However, Nokia’s erosion could be an omen, too, of what happens to platforms that are “in transition”:

NOK’s warning, along with RIM’s Q1 warning, shows the risks investors face from handset vendors transitioning to new platforms. Just like carriers de-committing from Nokia’s legacy Symbian platform, carriers may be reluctant to maintain significant channel inventory of upcoming BlackBerry 7 devices which could result in more moderate interim sell-through ahead of next-generation QNX-based smartphones that are expected to launch in early 2012. The difference however is that RIM’s fan base appears more loyal to its core Blackberry experience (helping upgrade cycles) vs. Nokia’s base which has defected to HTC, Samsung (SSNLF), RIM, and Apple (AAPL).

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

More commentary is coming in as regards Nokia’s (NOK) cut in its outlook this morning, with bears warning that things will get worse before they get better. It’s not just the continued deterioration of the Symbian-based phones, but also some risk still in the company’s ability to make its partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) pay off:

Jennifer Fritzsche, Wells Fargo: Reiterates a Market Weight rating on Nokia, while cutting her range of possible stock values to $6.90 to $7.40, from a prior $9 to $10. “While NOK has continued to say that 2011 is a transition year, we believe today’s announcement highlights how quickly the shift is occurring in the competitive environment. While we believe the Windows phone could be a transitional even for NOK there is still much to prove, in our view and much integration risk that comes with such an event.” Fritzsche cut her estimate for this year to 21 cents from a prior 59 cents per share in earnings, and cut her 2012 outlook to 49 cents from 77 cents.

Alkesh Shah, Evercore Partners: Reiterates an Underweight rating and cuts his price target to $6 from $8, writing that the company is not yet in the “transition trough,” arguing that the stock is “not cheap at 28 times our fiscal 2012 EPS forecast,” or 18 times, when factoring in cash per share. Smartphones are going to be under pressure from low-end smartphones, while Nokia’s feature phones will face competition from “white box manufacturers.” Things may “worsen over the next few quarters,” shah thinks, and “consensus estimates may still not be low enough.” Shah lowered his own EPS estimate for this year to 22 cents from 48 cents, and cut his 2012 estimate from 61 cents to 25 cents.

Meantime, Nokia shares have rallied from the lowest point of the day, now down just $1.18, or 14.5%, at $7.01, versus an intraday trough of $6.79.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

If Einhorn wins Reyes must agree to play for a year’s supply of Shake Shack burgers with a player/team option to renegotiate for fries when his contract is up.

When first told that Einhorn is a poker player, Pelfrey, an avid card player himself, said, “Tell him to come to the back of the plane—bring his wallet.” But a few seconds later, when told Einhorn finished 18th in the 2006 World Series of Poker, Mike Pelfrey had second thoughts, saying, “He can play with [shortstop Jose] Reyes then.”

[WSJ via BI]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker