Hollingsworth Daily Post

• Citi Sold Phibro to Shed Risk-Taking Tag on CEO Hall's $100 Million Plan Citigroup Inc.’s decision to sell its Phibro LLC energy-trading unit to Occidental Petroleum Corp. came after the Obama administration’s special master for compensation cautioned that a potential $100 million payout to the unit’s chief executive officer, Andrew J. Hall encouraged excessive risk-taking, people familiar with the matter said.


• CVS, Walgreen Have Spot Shortages of Seasonal-Flu Vaccine on Demand Surge CVS Caremark Corp. and Walgreen Co., the two largest U.S. drugstore chains, are experiencing spot shortages of seasonal-flu vaccines because of increased demand.


• Stanford University May Sell Sequoia, Kleiner Stakes as Fund Prices Rise Stanford University is seeking to sell $1 billion in private investments, including stakes in venture capital funds run by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as prices rise in the secondary market, according to three people familiar with the matter.


• Wall Street Derivatives Lobby Links With New Democrats to Blunt Obama Plan As President Barack Obama vowed in a Sept. 14 speech in New York’s Federal Hall to correct “reckless behavior and unchecked excess” on Wall Street, Mike McMahon and Barney Frank sat in the audience discussing how to ease proposed rules for the $592 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market.


• Worst BRIC China Becomes Best Buy for Fisher, Schiff on Consumer Rebound China’s stocks, the worst performers among the largest emerging markets in the third quarter, are poised to rebound as investors say shares are too cheap to pass up with economic growth accelerating.


• Fed Said to Consider Clearing Banks, Facility to Drain Reserves With Repos The Federal Reserve is considering accessing money market funds through clearing banks or creating a facility to drain the record amount of cash added to the financial system, according to people familiar with the plans.


• Cameron's Debt Fix Called `Bizarre,' `Wrong' by Ex-Central Bank Officials Conservative leader David Cameron’s suggestion that the Bank of England end its asset purchases soon was criticized by two former central bank officials, a setback to the opposition’s effort to build credibility on the economy.


• Thomson Default-Swaps Settlement May Snarl Debt Restructurings in Europe Debt restructurings in Europe may get tougher to complete after creditors that agreed to take part in the reorganization of Thomson SA were hampered in how they can settle credit-default swaps on the debt.


• Jamie Oliver Seeks $22 Million From Investors for Restaurants Across Asia Jamie Oliver and his venture partner are seeking $22 million from private investors to help fund 30 of the U.K. celebrity chef’s Italian restaurants across Asia.

Bloomberg Daily News 12th October 2009

Hollingsworth Daily Post

• Cocaine Survivors Find Losing London Bonus Brings Ending to Bubble's Binge Neill Junor remembers the exact moment he decided to quit snorting cocaine. On a chilly December afternoon in 2005, the former equities analyst took a stroll in London’s deer-filled Richmond Park to select the tree from which he would hang himself.


• I-Believe-in-a-Strong-Dollar Refrain Becomes Relic as China Begs Stability More than a decade after former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin made the “strong dollar” national policy, currency traders say the same words coming from the Obama administration have little meaning.


• BlackBerry's U2 Love Comes With Budget No Label Can Match as Artists Flee Irish rockers U2 will step on stage tomorrow in Tampa, Florida, helped by BlackBerry’s sponsorship of their world tour in a deal no record company could offer.


• Harvard Losing Money With External Managers Helps Mendillo Return to Roots Losing money with 86 percent of its fund managers last year is giving Jane Mendillo, chief executive officer of Harvard Management Co., a big excuse to return to the university’s investing roots by making more of its own decisions on what to buy and sell.


• Italian Makers of $100 Million Yachts Resist Rivals' `Suicide' Price Cuts Italy’s largest yacht makers are resisting the price cuts started by overseas rivals and will target wealthy consumers by offering more services and eco- friendlier vessels.


• Canada's Banks Rebound From Financial Crisis Before Rivals: Chart of Day For Canada’s banks, it’s almost as if the financial crisis never happened.


• Vivendi May Prefer to Concede Price Battle for Brazil's GVT to Telefonica Vivendi SA, whose planned acquisition of Brazilian phone operator GVT (Holding) SA was derailed by a counter-bid from Telefonica SA yesterday, may walk away from a fight that analysts say the company is bound to lose.

Bloomberg Daily News 9th October 2009

Hollingsworth Daily Post

• Hamas Finds Gazan Tunnel Investors' Losing $500 Million Worse Than Madoff Investment opportunities are rare in the Gaza Strip. So when Nabila Ghabin saw one last year, she pawned her car and jewelry and put $12,000 into a network of tunnels that brought in supplies smuggled from Egypt.


• Winters Shows JPMorgan Bankers a Path to Safety, Dimon Shows Him the Door William Winters told a former colleague in London six months ago that JPMorgan Chase & Co. shunned the structured products and off-balance sheet vehicles that crippled global markets because they didn’t make financial sense.


• Britain Risked `Bank Runs, Riots' as RBS, HBOS Neared Collapse Last Year A year ago today, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and HBOS Plc were close to collapse, causing a chain reaction that could have ended with riots in U.K. cities, security analysts and economists said.


• RBS Faced Risk of Full Seizure by Brown at 2008 Crisis Climax, Gieve Says Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc posed such a threat to the British and global financial systems at the height of the crisis last year that Prime Minister Gordon Brown could have ended up fully seizing the bank, former Bank of England official John Gieve said.


• Jen Exits Morgan Stanley With Dollar Smile Giving BlueGold Capital Insight As a currency strategist and economist at Morgan Stanley for 13 years, Stephen Jen made market calls and forecasts. It was up to clients to decide whether to buy or sell based on his recommendations.


• EBay's Monthly Sales Increase for First Time in a Year: Chart of the Day Retailers on EBay.com Inc.’s site had sales gains in August and September, the first increases since at least July 2008, according to ChannelAdvisor Corp., which helps merchants sell on EBay, Amazon.com and other sites.


• Parisians Waiting in Rain for Uniqlo Sweaters to Spur `Astounding' Growth While celebrities watched models strut down catwalks during fashion week in Paris, dozens of people queued in the rain to buy 40-euro cashmere sweaters at the newly opened Uniqlo store in the city’s Opera district.


• Pickens Power Play Makes Al Gore Convenient Truth for No-Import Oil Policy Trim and tanned at 81, T. Boone Pickens leans forward in his swivel chair to better hear Al Gore exhort solar and wind power. It’s a scorching August day at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas. Pickens, who has made and lost billions betting on energy in his boom-and-bust career, waits with Democratic Party bigwigs for his turn to speak. His topic: why the U.S. must wean itself from foreign oil.

Hollingsworth Daily Post

• Ballmer Turns to 14-Year-Old Son to Be Sure Windows 7 Isn't the Next Vista Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer says the company got the wrong impression from early positive feedback on Vista and won’t make the same mistake with the software’s successor, Windows 7.


• Buffett Calls Purchase of Hog-Products Firm CTB `Lucky Day' for Berkshire Warren Buffett, who as chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has overseen more than $50 billion in acquisitions, said the 2002 purchase of farm-products provider CTB Inc. was “a lucky day.”


• Wall Street Cedes to Toronto's Bay Street as Canadian Banks `Play Offense' Henry Michaels spent 25 years as an investment banker with New York-based firms such as Merrill Lynch & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Citigroup Inc.


• Harding Pleads Guilty to Taking $800,000 in New York State Pension Scheme Raymond Harding, the former chairman of New York’s Liberal Party charged with participating in a kickback scheme at the state pension fund, pleaded guilty to fraud in state court in Manhattan.


• Burned Bondholders Demand Movie, Bowling Alley Claims for Junk Financing Companies are selling more bonds secured by assets than ever, showing that even in a record year for corporate debt, investors are becoming more demanding.


• California Tries to Save Municipal Bond Market by Itself: Chart of the Day For one day, it was like old times in the municipal market. Can lightning strike twice?


• Russian Steel Writedowns Loom After Price Collapse Wrecks Global Ambitions Russian steelmakers’ plans for world domination are in tatters. A spending spree on U.S. mills meant to lift their billionaire owners into the industry’s top rank is instead forcing them to renegotiate debt and write down assets.


• China Minsheng Said to Seek Controlling Stake in California Lender UCBH China Minsheng Banking Corp. is weighing a plan to increase its stake in UCBH Holdings Inc. in what may be the first U.S. bank acquisition by a mainland Chinese firm, according to two people briefed on the matter.


• Japan Banks May Avoid Bad Loans Under Debt Moratorium as Kamei Eases Rules Japanese banks’ bad loans won’t be driven higher by a proposed moratorium on debt payments by struggling small companies, said Financial Services Minister Shizuka Kamei.


• Fed Should Be Forced to Release Names of Banks, Bloomberg Says in Lawsuit The Federal Reserve should be forced to identify companies that received loans from the central bank because it can’t demonstrate that borrowers would be harmed by the disclosure, according to lawyers who won a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.


• Merrill Bringing Down Lewis Gives Bank of America 30% Profits as `a Steal' Merrill Lynch & Co., which helped bring down Kenneth D. Lewis, may end up saving his bank.


• Unemployment Rising to 9.8% Means More Economic Pain as Consumption Falls Mohamed El-Erian says economists are wrong to dismiss unemployment as merely a lagging indicator, a sign of where the economy has been. For the chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., the 26-year high jobless rate is also an omen of things to come.The climb in the September rate to 9.8 percent, double the level at the start of last year, leaves the U.S. saddled with about 15 million people out of work and with limited prospects. That will further hurt the housing.

Bloomberg Daily News 7th October 2009

Hollingsworth Daily Post

• Pellegrini 80% Return Proves Paulson Protege No Fluke at Macro Hedge Fund Paolo Pellegrini has a nose for trouble. He saw it in rising housing prices in early 2006, when he cranked through decades of home price data and concluded the bubble was poised to burst. Pellegrini then helped engineer a massive bet against subprime mortgages that catapulted Paulson & Co. hedge funds to 2007 gains of as much as 590 percent -- and firmwide profits of more than $3.5 billion.


• Vets Loving Socialized Medicine Show Government Health Care Offers Savings Rick Tanner is one American who loves his government-run health care.


• Stiglitz Deflation Threat Pushes Bernanke to Keep Rates at Zero Next Year The U.S. faces the possibility of deflation for the first time since the Eisenhower administration, a threat that may prompt the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates near zero through next year.


• CMA CGM Said to Seek Investment From Investors Including French State Fun CMA CGM SA, the third-biggest container-shipping operator, is courting equity investors, including France’s FSI sovereign-wealth fund, as it seeks to reduce $5.6 billion of debt, according to three people briefed on the company’s plan.


• Mortgage REIT Reception Shows Skepticism for Business Model of Buying Debt Real estate investors trying to leverage initial public offerings to buy distressed commercial property debt are using a flawed strategy, said James Corl, a managing director at New York-based Siguler Guff & Co.


• Pain in Spain May Linger as Banks Prop Up Property Prices to Avoid Losses Maria Jose Lozano, a civil servant from Madrid, left a recent property fair empty-handed after discovering that home prices were still out of reach in a market where sales have dropped 50 percent from their 2006 peak.


• Unemployment in U.S. Now Lasts Longer Than State Benefits: Chart of Day For the first time, the average amount of time it takes fired employees to find a new job exceeds the length of their standard unemployment benefits.


• Texas Instruments CEO Templeton Says Analog Chips Unit Can Grow 20% a Year Texas Instruments Inc. is sticking to a prediction that demand for chips used in products such as electric saws and disposable hearing aids can more than make up for revenue lost from mobile phones.

Bloomberg News 5th October 2009

Hollingsworth Daily Post

• Pellegrini 80% Return Proves Paulson Protege No Fluke at Macro Hedge Fund Paolo Pellegrini has a nose for trouble. He saw it in rising housing prices in early 2006, when he cranked through decades of home price data and concluded the bubble was poised to burst. Pellegrini then helped engineer a massive bet against subprime mortgages that catapulted Paulson & Co. hedge funds to 2007 gains of as much as 590 percent -- and firmwide profits of more than $3.5 billion.


• Pain in Spain May Linger as Banks Prop Up Property Prices to Avoid Losses Maria Jose Lozano, a civil servant from Madrid, left a recent property fair empty-handed after discovering that home prices were still out of reach in a market where sales have dropped 50 percent from their 2006 peak.


• Berlusconi Sex Scandals Mean Legal Fights for Italian Newspaper Readership Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s alleged romps with prostitutes may have staunched the decline in readership at the nation’s newspapers. They’ve also landed the publications in court.


• Recession Rising Like Phoenix With Property Delinquencies Surging Fivefold Drive up to the Peaks Corporate Park in north Scottsdale, Arizona, and the only person you’ll encounter at the luxury office complex is a security guard.


• PepsiCo's Nooyi to Boost Ad Spending, Push Gatorade Products for Athletes PepsiCo Inc., the world’s largest snack-food maker, plans to increase advertising spending next year and is readying new Gatorade products to boost consumption, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi said.


• Donald Guloien, Named Manulife Chief Amid Lehman Collapse, Dials Back Risk Donald Guloien said he had “maybe a week” to enjoy his promotion to chief executive officer at Manulife Financial Corp on Sept. 8 last year. Then the financial world collapsed with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.


• Connecticut Hedge-Fund Capital Gets More Wee Weevils to Fight Killer Weed More help is on the way for the hedges in hedge-fund capital Greenwich, Connecticut: a larger army of wee black weevils.


• China's Rural Migration, Wealth Gap Strain Post-Mao Party: Chart of Day China’s communist regime, marking its 60th anniversary, faces a widening wealth gap between farmers and city dwellers that may threaten stability, even as the economy is poised to pass Japan’s as the world’s second largest.


• London Bankers Rail Against EU Oversight as Lea Invokes Secession Option In a Georgian townhouse four minutes walk from Parliament, bankers, lawyers and economists held an off-the-record evening meeting to plot how to fight European Union financial regulation that they deem a threat to London.

Bloomberg News 2nd October 2009

Hollingsworth Daily Post

• Gucci Snake Bag in China at $4,390 Makes Kebab Griller See Rich as Cheats At China’s newest Gucci store, in Shijiazhuang, snakeskin purses sell for the equivalent of $4,390, about twice the city’s per capita annual income. Next door at Brooks Brothers, button-down shirts go for $190.


• London Bankers Rail Against EU Oversight as Lea Invokes Secession Option In a Georgian townhouse four minutes walk from Parliament, bankers, lawyers and economists held an off-the-record evening meeting to plot how to fight European Union financial regulation that they deem a threat to London.


• Saving $4 Billion in Interest Comes With Fannie-Freddie Void in Borrowing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks are paying down debt at a record pace, creating a supply void in bond markets that may have saved U.S. taxpayers $3.8 billion and corporations $230 million in borrowing costs.


• AIG Said to Dismiss Advisory Firm McKinsey as Benmosche Seeks to Cut Fees American International Group Inc. dismissed McKinsey & Co. as an adviser for the bailed-out insurer’s restructuring as Chief Executive Officer Robert Benmosche seeks to trim consulting fees, said two people familiar with the matter.


• Connecticut Hedge-Fund Capital Gets More Wee Weevils to Fight Killer Weed More help is on the way for the hedges in hedge-fund capital Greenwich, Connecticut: a larger army of wee black weevils.


• Morgan Stanley's Mack Proposes Single Regulator to Oversee Banks Worldwide Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer John Mack, who struggled to return the bank to profitability amid the financial crisis, said a single regulator should oversee financial institutions worldwide.


• FDIC Plan May Cost Biggest Lenders Including Bank of America $10 Billion The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s plan to rebuild its reserves may cost Bank of America Corp. and three of the largest U.S. banks more than $10 billion.


• Sanofi's CEO Viehbacher to Keep Shopping for Biotechs, Vaccines, New Drugs Sanofi-Aventis SA will continue “shopping” for acquisitions to build its vaccine, biotechnology, and nonprescription medicine businesses, as well as expand in emerging markets, Chief Executive Officer Chris Viehbacher said in an interview.


• Ma Sees Want Want in China Bring Prosperity to Taiwan as Shares Return 39% In a wood-paneled boardroom in downtown Shanghai, Everett Chu pauses from his job overseeing the finances of snack food giant Want Want China Holdings Ltd. to marvel at the fickleness of history.


• China Stimulus Winners at Great Wall Motors in Hebei Get Best of Shanghai The biggest winners from China’s $586 billion economic stimulus are emerging more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from Shanghai in the factories and stores of Chengdu and Xi’an.