- Doubts Slow Financial Regulation Overhaul on Capitol Hill
- Budget Agreement Deepens California’s Pain
- GE Capital Approved for Plan to Exit FDIC-Backed Debt
- CIT Said to Have Spurned $2 Billion Secured GE Loan
- Microsoft Terminates Its Financing Relationship With CIT Group
- Credit-Rating Firm Overhaul Is Unveiled
- JPMorgan’s Dimon makes $2.3 million from options
- Treasury Attacked for Lack of Transparency on Bank Rescue
- Nardelli Gets Cerberus Post
- Yahoo outlook misses, shares slip
- Advanced Micro Posts Loss as Sales Drop; Shares Fall
- Starbucks Swings to Profit, Aided by Cost Cuts
Doubts Slow Financial Regulation Overhaul on Capitol Hill – Wall Street Journal
The Obama administration’s effort to swiftly overhaul supervision of financial markets is running into trouble on Capitol Hill, with some Democrats balking at key elements of the plan.
Democrats are unsure they can muster enough votes to support the administration’s plan to create a new consumer-products regulator, and expand the powers of the Federal Reserve. On Tuesday, Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, who chairs the House Financial Service Committee, delayed until September a vote on a regulator to oversee consumer products, such as mortgages and credit cards…..
Budget Agreement Deepens California’s Pain – Wall Street Journal
The budget deal struck by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and statehouse leaders is expected to hurt a broad band of state residents and crimp the state’s recovery from the current, deep recession.
Fiscal experts said the negative effects of the budget plan, crafted in an attempt to keep the state solvent, will offset much of the intended beneficial effects of President Barack Obama’s federal stimulus package…..
GE Capital Approved for Plan to Exit FDIC-Backed Debt – Bloomberg
General Electric Co. said its finance unit received approval for a strategy to exit the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s debt-insurance plan.
GE Capital will no longer issue government-guaranteed commercial paper with maturities up to 270 days, the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company said in a statement today. GE Capital will have about $14 billion in long-term debt capacity remaining under the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program…..
CIT Said to Have Spurned $2 Billion Secured GE Loan – Bloomberg
CIT Group Inc., the commercial lender seeking to avoid bankruptcy, rejected a General Electric Co. offer of at least $2 billion in senior secured loans backed by aircraft, four people familiar with the matter said.
CIT spurned the loans from GE’s finance arm, a rival in some lending businesses, over the weekend in favor of $3 billion in loans from a group of bondholders, two of the people said. GE’s offer, while less costly and requiring fewer assets as collateral, wouldn’t have provided cash until July 31 because of a delay in structuring the deal, said two of the people, who didn’t want to be identified because the offer wasn’t public….
Credit-Rating Firm Overhaul Is Unveiled – Wall Street Journal
The Treasury Department unveiled details of an Obama administration plan to overhaul regulation of credit-ratings firms by requiring increased disclosure and stronger oversight.
The proposed legislation, sent to Congress on Tuesday, would ban ratings firms from providing consulting services to companies they rate and require the ratings firms to disclose fees that issuers pay to obtain ratings. Ratings reports would have to include a history of issuers’ fee payments dating back two years…..
Microsoft Terminates Its Financing Relationship With CIT Group – Bloomberg
Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, canceled a five-year financing agreement with CIT Group Inc., the commercial lender threatened with bankruptcy.
Customers that have existing agreements with CIT can continue to get financing from the lender, Stacie Sloane, a spokeswoman for Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, said yesterday in a statement…..
JPMorgan’s Dimon makes $2.3 million from options – Reuters
JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon made a $2.29 million pretax profit by exercising stock options and then selling most of the resulting shares of the second-largest U.S. bank.
According to a regulatory filing, Dimon on July 17 exercised 660,000 options under a pre-existing trading plan at $29.96 per share, at a cost of $19.77 million. He then sold 601,279 of the resulting shares at $36.69 per share, for gross proceeds of $22.06 million, the filing shows…..
Treasury Attacked for Lack of Transparency on Bank Rescue – Washington Post
The Treasury Department took a bipartisan beating Tuesday from lawmakers who claim the agency has failed to live up to its promises of transparency in handling the federal rescue of the financial system.
“The taxpayers now have a $700 billion spending program that’s being run under the philosophy of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ ” Rep. Edolphus Towns, (D-N.Y.) said during a hearing on the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) added that lawmakers’ “patience is running out for the transparency promised by the administration.”…
Yahoo outlook misses, shares slip – Reuters
Yahoo Inc’s third-quarter forecasts fell short of Wall Street expectations, sending shares 3.2 percent lower, as the Internet company announced plans to step up spending despite persistent weakness in the advertising market.
Chief Executive Carol Bartz said Yahoo was hiring more engineers and sales and marketing staff as it invests in new products and branding — a reversal from the cost cuts the company embarked upon in past months….
Nardelli Gets Cerberus Post – Wall Street Journal
Robert Nardelli is returning to Cerberus Capital Management LP to oversee the operation of companies in the private-equity giant’s portfolio.
Mr. Nardelli was chief executive of Chrysler LLC, backed by Cerberus, until the auto maker’s emergence from bankruptcy protection in May…
Advanced Micro Posts Loss as Sales Drop; Shares Fall – Bloomberg
Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the second-largest maker of personal-computer processors, reported a loss of $330 million after sales fell for a third straight quarter. The shares lost as much as 14 percent in late trading.
The second-quarter loss attributable to AMD common shareholders was 49 cents a share, compared with $1.2 billion, or $1.97, a year earlier, Sunnyvale, California-based AMD said today in a statement. Sales dropped 13 percent to $1.18 billion….
Starbucks Swings to Profit, Aided by Cost Cuts – Reuters
Cost-cutting helped Starbucks Corp. post better-than-expected profit in its fiscal third quarter, despite declines in customer traffic and average sales receipt.
The Seattle-based coffee retailer has been looking at ways to boost sales and cut costs since Howard Schultz returned to the company as chief executive in January 2008. Since then, he has been closing stores, renegotiating rents, reducing the number of bakery suppliers and working to make stores run more efficiently……
Tags: California, Cerberus, CIT, Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Politics, Yahoo
