Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have resigned over the direction of their app, which Facebook acquired in 2012. The pair has reportedly been frustrated of late by the increasing intervention of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, “who has become more reliant on Instagram in planning for Facebook’s future” – Bloomberg and NYTimes and WSJ

Sears CEO (and biggest shareholder and lender) Eddie Lampert warned yesterday that the longtime retailer will need to “drastically restructure its debts” to avoid “alternatives”—an obvious euphemism for bankruptcy. Lampert and his ESL Investments group have proposed a series of deals that amount to a near-total non-Ch. 11 restructuring aiming at dropping Sears’ debt load by more than $4 billion – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and Law360

Sirius XM is buying online music outlet Pandora Media for north of $3 billion in an all-stock deal aimed at creating an audio-entertainment company to rival music-streaming powerhouse Spotify Technology – WSJ and NYTimes and Bloomberg and MarketWatch

Consolidation in the fashion and luxury realm continues, as news emerged that Michael Kors is close to acquiring Italian fashion house Versace. The deal, which would marry high fashion with Kors’ reputation for “affordable luxury,” is expected to come in at just shy of $2.5 billion  – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg

Starbucks is doing some restructuring in its executive ranks that CEO Kevin Johnson hopes will help spur the company’s international growth—especially in China – NYTimes and Bloomberg

A former Deutsche Bank money market trader (with a non-prosecution agreement in hand) testified yesterday in SDNY Federal Court against two former colleagues, detailing how he would regularly make Libor submissions “with the goal of aiding the bank’s derivative traders, a practice he now admits was wrong” – Law360

The Fed is set to raise short-term interest rates when it meets this week, and most economists see the central bank staying on that steady, 25-basis-pt hike course through at least June 2019 (when rates hit 3%) – Bloomberg

A new report out from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy raises questions about the ability of Silicon Valley powerhouses (think Facebook, Google, and Twitter) to effectively police themselves as they amass “ever-larger stores of user data” – WSJ

And then there’s the tech giants’ anti-competition issues . . . – Bloomberg

While we’re talking regulation, Germany’s financial watchdog is tired of waiting for DeutscheBank to get its house in order, and it’s ordered the German lender to improve its AML program as part of a public reprimand on Monday for missed deadlines and other procedural requirements – WSJ and Law360

The results of this wild study of octopuses on MDMA came out last week, and I’m still shaking my head. The relevant details here – NYTimes