Elsewhere on Friday,

- Choose your own Greece adventure, a wise lesson in bailouts. Read more

Comment, analysis and other offerings from Friday’s FT,

Philip Stephens: The Sun sinks Murdoch
Now you know what it’s like, writes the FT’s Philip Stephens. So a politician friend chuckled the other day after police roused several journalists from their beds for questioning about the alleged bribery of public officials. Not so long ago Britain’s parliamentarians were excoriated for fiddling their expenses. Now the nation’s press is in the dock. At Westminster you can cut the Schadenfreude with a knife. The expenses scandal shredded the reputation of Britain’s political class. Some went to jail and others were shamed into retirement. Politicians had never been held high in public esteem but billing taxpayers for the cost of cleaning out the moat at the family estate was a claim too far. Read more

Asian markets
Nikkei 225 up +160.23 (+1.73%) at 9,398
Topix up +12.03 (+1.50%) at 812.28
Hang Seng up +155.32 (+0.73%) at 21,433

US markets
S&P 500 up +14.81 (+1.10%) at 1,358
DJIA up +123.13 (+0.96%) at 12,904
Nasdaq up +44.02 (+1.51%) at 2,960 Read more

A report this week showing rampant foreclosure abuse in San Francisco reflects similar levels of lender fraud and faulty documentation across the United States, say experts and officials who have done studies in other parts of the country, says Reuters.  The audit of almost 400 foreclosures in San Francisco found that 84 percent of them appeared to be illegal, according to the study released by the California city on Wednesday. “The audit in San Francisco is the most detailed and comprehensive that has been done – but it’s likely those numbers are comparable nationally,” Diane Thompson, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, told the news agency. Across the country from California, Jeff Thingpen, register of deeds in Guildford County, North Carolina, examined 6,100 mortgage documents last year, from loan notes to foreclosure paperwork. Of those documents, created between January 2008 and December 2010, 4,500 showed signature irregularities, a telltale sign of the illegal practice of “robosigning” documents. Read more

Volkswagen and PSA Peugeot Citroën are looking at tapping the ECB’s loan programme designed to aid eurozone banks, reports the FT. VW on Thursday said that it was considering accessing the second phase of the ECB’s longer-term refinancing operations (LTRO), a three-year loan programme launched in December that has helped ease funding pressures on banks hit by the eurozone sovereign debt crisis. Peugeot-Citroen, Europe’s second-largest carmaker by sales, has also said that its Banque PSA lending arm is in talks with the ECB about borrowing money and would potentially offer about €1bn as collateral. While the LTRO is not open to companies, VW and Peugeot would be able tap the facility through their banking arms, which they use to offer consumer credit to car buyers. Read more

The director at the centre of a recent bonus row at RBS says pay decisions should not be swayed by the public mood, even though the bank is 83 per cent owned by taxpayers. In her first interview since joining the RBS board two years ago, Penny Hughes repeatedly defended the decision to award Stephen Hester, chief executive, a bonus worth £963,000. Mr Hester later waived the award under intense political and media pressure. Ms Hughes, who earns £130,000 a year as a non-executive director and chair of RBS’s remuneration committee, insists pay at the bank must be aligned with the market and should not be influenced by broader social and economic factors. Ms Hughes seems unruffled over the uproar triggered by the decision – on her recommendation – to award Mr Hester a bonus for 2011, according to the FT, to whom she gave her first interview since joining the bank’s board.

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US regulators are poised to increase 20-fold the amount of derivatives a company can sell before it is subject to strict new rules for the biggest traders, softening a significant plank of financial market reform, reports the FT, citing three people familiar with the matter. The potential shift comes ahead of a vote at the CFTC, the US regulator, set for February 23 on how to define dealers and other leading participants in swaps, the previously unregulated derivatives whose size and lack of transparency exacerbated the financial crisis.  The rule has drawn criticism from energy and commodities companies seeking to avoid the burdens of compliance. The CFTC which has proposed the definition along with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is set to approve $2bn as the maximum gross notional value of swaps a company may sell in a year before it is designated a dealer, three people familiar with the matter said. This is 20 times higher than the $100m threshold included when the rule was proposed. Read more

A 44-year-old man employed at Legal & General Investment Management, one of the UK’s largest investment firms, has been arrested by the FSA, says the FT. It is the regulator’s ninth arrest in two years in connection with its largest operation against alleged insider trading. The regulator, along with Serious Organised Crime Agency, launched a pre-breakfast raid on a City firm and two domestic premises, one in London and one in Kent, as part of its continuing investigation codenamed “Tabernula”, which is probing a group of individuals and alleged trades of up to £22m. The latest arrest, of a City individual, is part of the FSA’s probe into deals spanning three years to 2010 in shares in companies such as Paragon, Barclays, Scottish & Newcastle, National Express, Petrofac, Wolseley and Collins Stewart. Read more

The FSA has handed down a £350,000 fine to one of London’s top corporate brokers following a multi-year probe into improper trading in the shares of pub company Punch Taverns by Greenlight Capital, reports the FT. To support its decision, the regulator took the unusual step of releasing a transcript of telephone call involving the broker Andrew Osborne and David Einhorn, the chief executive of Greenlight and one of the most prominent US hedge fund managers. Neil Collins writes on AV that the 55-page document is a model for how the City really works. Read more

A €130bn bail-out of Greece will contain unprecedented controls on Athens’ ability to spend funds, the FT says, citing people briefed on the talks. The agreement, which officials hope to finalise on Monday, is likely to include an escrow account that must always contain enough cash to pay Greece’s debt for nine to 12 months. If the account falls below that level, money will be taken from funds earmarked to run the Greek government, according to the newspaper’s sources, and in addition, the bail-out will include a permanent and beefed-up presence of international monitors who will attempt to keep real-time tabs on the Greek government’s spending decisions. If the deal is finalised by Monday, it will still include a list of 24 “prior actions” that Greece must complete by the end of the month, before aid is released. Meanwhile Bloomberg, citing three German officials, says coalition lawmakers were told by German government officials in a briefing that Germany wants euro-area finance chiefs to avoid splitting consideration of the bail-out and the bond swap to cut the nation’s debt load at next week’s meeting. As long as Greece meets conditions for the aid, the finance chiefs will probably approve the package along with the debt exchange, the sources said. Finance Ministry spokesman declined to comment. Read more