- Obama To Unveil Bank Fee Proposal Thursday – Official
- Wall Street labels levy plan ‘absurd’
- Financial crisis panel seeks bankers’ testimony
- ‘Tipper X’ Hangs Over Galleon
- Galleon founder slams wiretaps
- Citigroup Bonus May Trump Goldman’s
- SEC Vote May Show Scope of High-Frequency Trading Regulations
- Ex-Merrill Chief Thain Discusses Top Job at CIT Group
- Google May Exit China After ‘Sophisticated’ Attack
- Clinton Says Google’s China Allegations Raise Serious Concerns
- Apple CEO Jobs’ Pay Stays $1; Operating Chief Gets 13% Raise
Obama To Unveil Bank Fee Proposal Thursday – Official – Wall Street Journal
President Barack Obama on Thursday will detail his proposal to levy a fee on the U.S.’s biggest financial firms to recoup up to $120 billion in losses from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a senior administration official said late Tuesday.
Obama will announce the plan at an event in the White House, the official said. First reported on Monday, the proposal has been under discussion since August. The official said the amount of money raised by the fee wouldn’t eclipse $120 billion because that is the upper end of a conservative estimate of the cost of TARP.
Treasury officials expect the actual cost to be lower and that taxpayers would be paid back over the course of years by the fee, according to the official…..
Wall Street labels levy plan ‘absurd‘ – Financial Times
Wall Street reacted with disbelief and resignation to the Obama administration’s plans to impose a levy on the industry to pay for the financial bail-out.
With executives such as Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein and JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon due in Washington today to testify before a Congressional commission into the crisis amid a political storm over bonuses, senior bankers said they felt under siege…..
“I cannot believe they are going after the banks that repaid the government in full and with interest. It’s pure political theatre,” an executive said yesterday, arguing that government officials had ruled out slapping the levy on companies such as the insurer AIG and the financial group GMAC that are still in hock to the authorities…..
Financial crisis panel seeks bankers’ testimony – Washington Post
The commission appointed by Congress to examine the causes of the financial crisis is to hear testimony Wednesday from the heads of four of the nation’s largest banks, as the panel begins a year-long investigation that its chairman described as an effort to figure out “what the heck happened.”…..
‘Tipper X’ Hangs Over Galleon – Wall Street Journal
A hedge-fund manager known to prosecutors as “Tipper X” in the Galleon Group insider-trading investigation could lead prosecutors to scrutinize hedge funds not previously implicated in the probe, people familiar with the case say.
The manager was identified as Thomas Hardin by the people familiar with the inquiry. Mr. Hardin was a trader at Lanexa Global Management—one of a number of hedge funds known as “Tiger Seeds” because they received seed money from Julian Robertson, the founder of Tiger Management, a well-known fund that closed in 2000. It isn’t clear how much money Mr. Robertson has invested in Lanexa, which is located in the same Manhattan building as his office…..
Galleon founder slams wiretaps – Reuters via Financial Times
Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam, accused of fraud and conspiracy in a complex insider trading case, attacked the U.S. government’s wiretap evidence on Tuesday, as he won approval to stay free on bail.
Rajaratnam’s lawyer John Dowd told a New York judge that he would file a motion to suppress telephone recordings used to arrest his client last October and more than a dozen other people in what prosecutors have called the biggest hedge fund insider trading case ever in the United States.
”The recordings were cherry picked and mismanaged and someone did not do their homework,” Dowd told U.S. District Court Judge Richard Holwell at a bail hearing, with Rajaratnam by his side…..
Citigroup Bonus May Trump Goldman’s – NY Times
This bonus season, would you rather be a banker at Goldman Sachs or Citigroup? Goldman has famously set aside more money to reward employees for their efforts last year. But the biggest bonuses will come mostly in stock, and Goldman’s shares have surged from the lows of the crisis. Give other banks’ shares a chance to catch up and bankers paid in the laggards’ equity could wind up richer on 2009’s spoils….
SEC Vote May Show Scope of High-Frequency Trading Regulations – Bloomberg
High-frequency traders, whose lightning-fast stock and options tactics have been criticized by senators, are about to learn how far U.S. regulators may go to rein them in.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is poised to ask brokerage firms, traders and exchanges to weigh in on the practice, which describes a range of strategies that depend on high-speed executions, usually less than a millisecond…..
Ex-Merrill Chief Thain Discusses Top Job at CIT Group – Bloomberg
John Thain, the ousted chief of Merrill Lynch & Co., has held talks about leading CIT Group Inc., the commercial lender that emerged from bankruptcy last month, two people familiar with the matter said.
Thain is considering alternatives and hasn’t made a decision, according to one of the people, who declined to be identified because CIT’s search for a new chief executive officer is private. Jeffrey Peek, the former investment banker who has managed New York-based CIT since 2004, is scheduled to step down Jan. 15, CIT said in a statement today……
Google May Exit China After ‘Sophisticated’ Attack – Bloomberg
Google Inc., owner of the most popular Internet search engine, may shut its Chinese Web site and offices after a “highly sophisticated” cyber attack aimed at the e-mail accounts of human-rights activists.
Google also said at least 20 other large companies in industries ranging from finance to technology, media and chemicals had been targeted by hackers. The attacks, combined with attempts in the past year to limit free speech on the Web, has led the company to decide it will stop censoring results on its Google.cn site, it said……
Clinton Says Google’s China Allegations Raise Serious Concerns – Google
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on China to explain Google Inc.’s discovery of a “highly sophisticated” attack on its Chinese web site aimed at e-mail accounts of human rights activists.
“We look to the Chinese government for an explanation,” Clinton said in a statement. The allegations “raise very serious concerns and questions.”
Apple CEO Jobs’ Pay Stays $1; Operating Chief Gets 13% Raise – Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc. (AAPL) Chief Executive Steve Jobs continued to receive $1 a year in compensation in 2009, the same salary he has taken for the past three years.
But Chief Operating Officer Timothy Cook, who filled in for Jobs when the company co-founder took medical leave in the first half of last year, received $1.6 million in total direct compensation, 13% more than a year earlier….
Tags: Apple, Barack Obama, Bonuses, CIT, Compensation, Galleon, Google, Hedge funds, Insider Trading, John Thain, Politics, Raj Rajaratnam, SEC, Steve Jobs, Taxes
