Washington, D.C., March 15, 2013 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Stamford, Conn.-based hedge fund advisory firm CR Intrinsic Investors has agreed to pay more than $600 million to settle SEC charges that it participated in an insider trading scheme involving a clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s drug being jointly developed by two pharmaceutical companies…
That’s the largest insider trading settlement ever. And is more than Goldman paid to settle Abacus. Read more
Mario’s presentation to EU leaders from Thursday night. Msg: ‘Mind the gap’…
A hat tip to John Kemp at Reuters for drawing our attention to this from the US Treasury on Friday:
WASHINGTON – The Treasury is calling for Large Position Reports from those entities whose reportable positions in the 0-3/4% Treasury Notes of September 2013 equaled or exceeded $2 billion as of close of business Wednesday, December 8, 2010. This call for Large Position Reports is a test. Entities with reportable positions in this note equal to or exceeding the $2 billion threshold must report these positions to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Live markets commentary from FT.com
It’s going to take awhile to go over the report of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee for Investigations. There are 1,654 footnotes and we wouldn’t want to miss a single one.
This, however, is one of our favourite exhibits thus far. Not that it’s shocking. More that it’s kinda like a famous artifact that we never thought we’d get to see: Read more
Follow the money.
A central bank buys government debt. Prior holders of said debt are forced to invest elsewhere. Some are drawn to the corporate bond market, where a similar process repeats itself: corporate bond yields fall, offering cheap financing to companies, who issue fresh debt and end up holding at least a portion of QE cash. Read more
Tune in today at 9:25am EST (1:25pm in London) for a special edition of US Markets Live as we watch members of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee for Investigations question current and former JPM managers about the Whale trade. We’ll keep going until either someone gets arrested, the hearings end, or we get bored.
The info on the hearings, a witness list, and the Senate’s 300+ page report can be found here. Read more
Live markets commentary from FT.com
FT Alphaville is currently experiencing a sensation of rubbernecking around the recently nationalised Dutch financial group SNS Reaal.
With two separate wrecks on either side of the motorway to gape at, it’s hard to look away. On one side, there is all that went wrong with the financial group, and its ultimate fate. With a turn of the head, there are credit derivatives referencing SNS Bank for which payouts were triggered when the government swooped in.
Here, we digest news of the arrest of another suspect in an investigation into alleged fraud at the Property Finance unit of SNS Bank. This reached us on Wednesday courtesy of Vasco van der Boon reporting for Het Financieele Dagblad (FD). The failure of SNS Bank is in many ways the failure of this unit, so it’s worth a bit of a history lesson before proceeding to the actual allegations. Read more
A new era for gold? || Senate Whale report highlights || Goldman & JPM rebuked by Fed || Kuroda approved as BoJ governor || Japan to join Pacific trade deal talks || Greece & lenders fall out over firings || Samsung launches S4 || US sanctions magnate shipping Iranian oil || Boeing defends Dreamliner || Markets update Read more
Here follows a thoughtful commentary on the changes going on in gold market from BNY Mellon’s Neil Mellor, including the point that central bank purchases are in many ways helping to stabilise what might otherwise be a much more substantial slump.
Our emphasis throughout… Read more
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Washable electrodes.
- Why RSS still matters.
- Though, could Google Scholar be next to go? Read more
Asian markets boosted by US jobless claims || BoJ governors approved || King says pound ‘fairly valued’ || Senate panel harshly critical of JP Morgan || Fed rebukes JP Morgan and Goldman’s capital plans || EU leaders talk of fighting unemployment || EU strikes down harsh Spanish foreclosure rules || Li Keqiang appointed Chinese premier Read more
1Bernanke weighs in on robot wars; brings Keynes for backup
2Pump up, debase
3Collateral crunch-counting gets sophisticated
4Further reading
5The risk of a Japanese VaR shock
Show more6In which the FTSE puts the crisis behind it
7A Kazakh muddle
8Apple Operations International, facts (?) du jour
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