$$$ The Galleon Case Is Nowhere Near Over (NYT)

$$$ Little Guys Are Everywhere in Rajaratnam’s World (Bloomberg)

$$$ BofA’s Moynihan Says U.S. Lender ‘Still Struggles Mightily’ on Mortgages (Bloomberg)

$$$ Rating agencies win dismissal of lawsuits (Reuters)

$$$ Gasoline slump drags oil prices to second big drop (Reuters)

$$$ Corn, Wheat, Soybean Futures Decline as USDA Supply Outlook Tops Forecast (Bloomberg)

$$$ U.S. Budget Deficit Narrowed to $40.5 Billion in April as Revenue Climbed (Bloomberg)

$$$ Sell riskiest investments now, Grantham urges (MarketWatch)

$$$ Senate Democrats seek to highlight tax breaks for oil companies ahead of Hill visit by CEOs (AP via WaPo)

$$$ RAB set to delist as assets evaporate (FT)

$$$ Earthquake hits southern Spain, ten dead (Telegraph)

$$$ Google’s Chrome Laptops to Go on Sale in June (NYT)

$$$ How to Turn 100 Trillion Dollars Into Five and Feel Good About It (WSJ)

$$$ Hipsters to blame for billions of dollars in Census losses? (Metro)

$$$ New York delegation goes after foreign parking violators (Politico)

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We’re not saying there’s any foul play afoot at the Raj Rajaratnam trial, we’re just saying it’s interesting that the jury couldn’t come to a decision re: the Galleon founder’s guilt or innocence after 7 days of deliberating and now, they have to start all over due to the dismissal of one guy for “medical reasons,” the very same week Rajaratnam gets a doctor’s note saying he can’t report to court due to emergency surgery he had on his foot over the weekend to treat a “bacterial infection.”

Deliberations in the insider-trading trial of Raj Rajaratnam are to begin anew after a juror was dismissed for medical reasons. The prosecution and defense agreed to replace the juror with an alternate. The nine women and three men had been considering securities fraud and conspiracy charges in Manhattan federal court since April 25.

“The law requires you to base your verdict solely upon the evidence,” , U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell told the jurors in the courtroom today. “The verdict must represent the verdict of each juror, including the new juror that’s been seated.”

[Bloomberg]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

We’re not saying there’s any foul play afoot at the Raj Rajaratnam trial, we’re just saying it’s interesting that the jury couldn’t come to a decision re: the Galleon founder’s guilt or innocence after 7 days of deliberating and now, they have to start all over due to the dismissal of one guy for “medical reasons,” the very same week Rajaratnam gets a doctor’s note saying he can’t report to court due to emergency surgery he had on his foot over the weekend to treat a “bacterial infection.”

Deliberations in the insider-trading trial of Raj Rajaratnam are to begin anew after a juror was dismissed for medical reasons. The prosecution and defense agreed to replace the juror with an alternate. The nine women and three men had been considering securities fraud and conspiracy charges in Manhattan federal court since April 25.

“The law requires you to base your verdict solely upon the evidence,” , U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell told the jurors in the courtroom today. “The verdict must represent the verdict of each juror, including the new juror that’s been seated.”

[Bloomberg]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Keeping watch over the 20 or so journalists reporting on Rajaratnam’s trial is Jim McCarthy, who handles the defendant’s media relations. McCarthy, the founder of New York-based CounterPoint Strategies LLC, isn’t shy about his views of the coverage. “Some of the coverage has been” — he paused for five seconds as he considered his words — “distorted and irresponsible,” McCarthy said in an interview yesterday. He’s particularly critical of some reporters and news organizations who he claims “have been slanting their coverage” in hopes of “gaining favor with the government,” he said. [Bloomberg]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

$$$ “Cohan wrote of a partner who summoned a group of i-banking greenhorns to a conference room at 5 p.m. on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. The partner showed up at 10 p.m. and told the group that the waiting had been an exercise in patience and having ‘the right attitude.’ The three rookies who had left early — all armed with MBAs from top schools — were fired on Tuesday.” [FINS]

$$$ Raj Rajaratnam Jury Deliberates [WSJ]

$$$ Is Buffett’s teflon finally wearing off? [Reuters]

$$$ Japan’s Terrifying Day Saw Unprecedented Exposed Fuel Rods [Bloomberg]

$$$ DOJ Seeks Additional Info from Nasdaq on NYSE Bid [CNBC]

$$$ Donald Trump’s Hollywood Enemy List Continues to Grow [Daily Intel]

$$$ Two days before a west Houston bank heist, a 19-year-old bank teller named Estefany Martinez posted a cryptic status update on her Facebook page: “Get $$$.” [Chronicle]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

As previously mentioned, the jury on the Raj Rajaratnam insider trading trial are expected to begin deliberating today. While the Galleon founder is, of course, innocent until prove guilty, much of the evidence brought by the prosecution has made him look not so good, including but not limited to recordings of Raj complimenting Danielle Chiesi on how she “played” a tech exec into giving her material non-public information and one of him telling a friend he knew to buy shares of a company because “one of our guys is on the board,” as well as testimony from former McKinsey exec, Anil Kumar, that Raj paid him $1 million for his tip about AMD’s acquisition of ATI and the previously undisclosed fact that the defense’s big witness, Richard Schutte, was gifted with a $15 million investment in his hedge fund by the Rajaratnam family two weeks prior to speaking glowingly of Raj.

Having said that, Raj’s lead attorney, John Dowd, knows the men and women of the jury will be ‘fair’ (i.e. find his client not guilty), because 1. Every witness brought by the prosecution is a liar, especially that Anil Kumar guy and 2. He wouldn’t have picked them if they weren’t so awesome.

The Crucial Question For The Rajaratnam Jury [Dealbook]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

$$$ Raj Rajaratnam’s attorney John Dowd delivered about an hour of his closing argument on Wednesday, attacking the government’s cooperating witnesses as “liars” and the prosecution’s case as “a fiction.” (He also said that this will be his last trial.) [CNBC]

$$$ Goldman names Rogers, Cooper as executive officers‎ [Reuters]

$$$ CIT Gets Restriction On Bank Lifted [Dealbook]

$$$ ‘Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ cast: Where are they now? [NYDN]

$$$ UK Bank Bonuses: ‘Inappropriate‘ [FINS]

$$$ Dennis Gartman: Shorting Dollar Would Be Bad Decision [CNBC]

$$$ Hedge Fund JAI To Close [FINalternatives]

$$$ Obama Considering Warren Among Candidates for Consumer Bureau [Bloomberg]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

The Galleon founder demonstrated “in his own words” why he’s guilty of insider trading, Assistant US Attorney Reed Brodsky said in the government’s closing statement this morning.

Brodsky, of course, was referring to the various wiretaps played over the last several weeks that included conversations wherein Rajaratnam complimented Danielle Chiesi on how she “played” a tech exec into giving her material non-public information, told a friend he knew to buy shares of a company because “one of our guys is on the board,” and complained about a well-paid tipster slacking off on giving him the good stuff. In related news, don’t forget to vote in the Will He Or Won’t He (Go To Jail) poll, where so far 15% of people think Raj will get off.

[WSJ]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Founder Stays Mum As Defense Rests (WSJ)
People close to the 53-year-old Galleon Group founder said he told them after his arrest that he intended to testify on his behalf. But putting the main defendant on the stand is a relatively rare strategy in white-collar criminal cases, because of the risk of a blunder during cross-examination by prosecutors. “I think on ‘cross’ he would be forced to explain difficult tape recordings,” said Charles A. Ross, a criminal defense attorney in New York. “There’s almost a burden-shifting that occurs when you put a client on the witness stand. I think that burden is a particularly difficult one for the defense to bear.”

Rajaratnam Jurors Hear Chiesi’s AMD Discussion as Testimony Ends (Bloomberg)
Prosecutors’ brief rebuttal of Rajaratnam’s weeklong defense included playing a recording of a phone call between Rajaratnam and former New Castle Funds LLC analyst Danielle Chiesi. During the Sept. 30, 2008, call, Chiesi asked Rajaratnam if he had bought 1 million shares of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), calling the purchase “a very bold move unless you know what we know.”

Bernanke May Sustain Stimulus To Avoid ‘Cold Turkey’ End To Aid (Bloomberg)
The Fed chief’s top two lieutenants said this month the economy and inflation are too weak to warrant the start of a monetary-policy reversal. Investors and economists including David Kelly at JPMorgan Funds see that as a signal the Fed will keep its balance sheet at current levels by replacing about $17 billion a month in maturing mortgage debt with Treasuries.

Obama Embarks on Tour to Sell Debt Plan, Not Dwell on S&P Report (Bloomberg)
Obama is scheduled to spend three days traveling through states crucial to his 2012 re-election campaign to publicize his plan to reduce cumulative deficits by $4 trillion over 12 years.

Japan Ministers Confident in US Debt After S&P Move (Reuters)
“The United States is tackling fiscal issues in various ways, so I still think U.S. Treasurys are basically an attractive product for us,” Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

Ukraine’s Richest Man Buys UK’s Most Expensive Flat (FT)
Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man, has bought the UK’s most expensive flat at the One Hyde Park residential development in London’s Knightsbridge, for £136.6 million.

PIMCO is back in the market buying Treasuries (PMM)
Allegedly.

Goldman Sachs Spins Away From Success (Dealbook)
Sorkin: “Having studied Goldman’s statements closely, it appears the firm decided to take a Clintonian approach to parsing its words. Notice that Goldman and Mr. Blankfein always qualify their denials of the firm’s short bets by saying they weren’t “massive” or “large” or “consistent.” Such descriptions may be accurate. What’s large, or even massive, may be in the eye of the beholder.”

Credit-Focused Hedge Fund Shrinks As Returns Fall (FT)
GLG Partners is preparing to close one of its largest funds to new investors, amid growing concerns about the ability of supersize hedge fund portfolios to deliver strong returns. The London hedge fund’s market neutral fund will shut when it grows beyond $1 billion, expected to be in the next few weeks. At such a size the credit-focused fund would still be only a third as large as its pre-crisis peak, when it ran more than $3 billion in investor capital.

BNY Mellon Profit Climbs 12% as Market Rally Increases Assets (Bloomberg)
The bank reported a 12 percent increase in first-quarter earnings as a rising stock market lifted assets and the fees for overseeing them. Net income climbed to $625 million, or 50 cents a share, from $559 million, or 46 cents, a year earlier. Analysts had expected the New York-based company to earn 56 cents a share, according to the average of 13 estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

Citi Struggles To Return To Growth (WSJ)
Having recovered from a near-collapse that forced it into the arms of the U.S. government, the New York banking giant has yet to show its overseas growth strategy can produce consistent profit. The challenge now before the bank: Pare its legacy holdings of toxic debt and expand its business abroad, while avoiding market blow-ups that can happen in fast-growing, emerging economies.

Citigroup Settling With JR (NYP)
The bank had been ordered in October to pay almost $12 million in damages to Hagman and charities chosen by him after losing a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration ruling. A Los Angeles judge dismissed that decision on Feb. 9, leading to Hagman’s appeal.
“Mr. Hagman is very pleased that the matter is settled,” Aidikoff said.

FAA Suspends Controller For Watching Movie On Duty (AP)
The controller was watching a movie on a DVD player early Sunday morning while on duty at a regional radar center in Oberlin, Ohio, near Cleveland that handles high-altitude air traffic, the FAA said in a statement. The controller’s microphone was inadvertently activated, transmitting the audio of the movie – the 2007 crime thriller “Cleaner,” starring Samuel L. Jackson – for more than three minutes to all the planes in the airspace that the controller was supposed to be monitoring, the agency said.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Brother In Alleged Galleon Coverup (WSJ)
In the hours after the 2009 arrest of the Galleon Group founder, Rengan Rajaratnam participated in an alleged coverup by removing notebooks with handwritten notes about stocks from Raj Rajaratnam’s office, according to filings in a Manhattan federal court.

BP Managers Said to Face U.S. Manslaughter Charges Review (Bloomberg)
Federal prosecutors are considering whether to pursue manslaughter charges against BP Plc managers for decisions made before the Gulf of Mexico oil well explosion last year that killed 11 workers and caused the biggest offshore spill in U.S. history, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Warren Faces Dimon, Hostile Chamber Agency (NYP)
Warren says regulation will bring clarity to financial services. Although she won’t be speaking at the same time as Bachus or Dimon, the US Chamber of Commerce’s fifth annual summit, entitled “Ensuring Competitiveness in a Post-Regulatory Reform Environment,” will give Warren a chance to make her strongest case yet in support of the new agency that she helped birth.

Not ‘joking’ with Rajaratnam says Rajiv Goel, former Intel exec (ET)
Former Intel executive and key government witness Rajiv Goel has said that he was not joking with Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam when telling him about the dealings of his company. The defence previously asked Goel whether he thought Rajaratnam was kidding about giving BMW cars to two women in Intel’s sales department who leaked information to him. The prosecution today went over several parts of secretly recorded phone. “Were you joking… was this idle chit chat?” asked Reed Brodsky, citing the line, “But yesterday, our board approved this deal.” “No”, said Goel, who has already pleaded guilty to telling Rajaratnam that Intel was planning to make a USD 1 billion investment in a new joint venture with Clearwire and Sprint to develop an ultra-fast wireless Internet service.

Cash-Paying Vultures Feast on U.S. Housing as Mortgages Dry Up (Bloomberg)
Delavaco Properties LP plans to spend as much as $30 million this year and $40 million in 2012 to buy bank-owned houses and condominiums in foreclosure-ridden South Florida. The private-equity fund will pay cash. “If there weren’t vultures out there, you’d have a city of dead carcasses,” Robert Theocles, an independent consultant for Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Delavaco, said in a telephone interview. “It’s like the circle of life.”

Private Exchange Wants To Challenge NYSE, Nasdaq (Reuters)
BATS Global Markets plans to list U.S. public stocks by year end, opening the door for companies to float shares somewhere other than the Big Board or Nasdaq for the first time in years.

Man Group Doubles Managed Funds (WSJ)
The firm said it continued to refocus itself as a more-diversified business following its acquisition of GLG Partners and the sale of its stake in BlueCrest as it reported that funds under management of $69 billion, almost double the level last year. Man Group also announced Tuesday the acquisition of the remaining 50% stake in Ore Hill that it didn’t already own, which it would integrate into GLG. Ore Hill manages a series of hedge funds with total assets under management of $800 million and focused on U.S. credit markets.

Time for a Sequel to AOL-Time Warner? (WSJ)
This isn’t a joke.

‘Spiderman’ Alain Robert scales Burj Khalifa in Dubai (BBC)
It took him six hours to ascend the 828-m (2,717-ft) tower in the United Arab Emirates city, including the tapered spire above the top floors. Unusually, he used a rope and harness, to comply with safety requirements.

GE: Pay Anything (CC)

Japan Finds Plutonium at Stricken Nuclear Plant (Reuters)
TEPCO said the radioactive material — a by-product of atomic reactions and also used in nuclear bombs — had been found in soil in five places at the plant, hit by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

Worries Grow Over Supplies Of Japanese Cars (WSJ)
The deep impact of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami on the supply of made-in-Japan vehicles is just starting to become clear on the lots of Main Street car dealers and on Wall Street earnings outlooks for the big auto makers. Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. all have U.S. plants still churning out vehicles, but rely on Japanese production for about a quarter to a third of the new cars they sell in America. On Monday, Deutsche Bank cut its estimate of Toyota’s profit in the fiscal year beginning April 1 by 84%. It also cut its forecast for Honda’s fiscal 2012 profit by 50%, and Nissan’s by 79%.

Dying Banks Kept Alive Among Secrets Fed Data Will Reveal (Bloomberg)
U.S. regulators closed Chicago- based Park National Bank in October 2009 when it owed $345 million to one of the lowest-cost lenders in town: the Federal Reserve’s discount window. Park National had been a constant customer at the window for more than 18 months before it failed, records show. Without identifying them as of yet, Fed officials say all the discount window loans made during the worst financial crisis since the 1930s have been repaid with interest.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker