We learned yesterday of the effect that broken mergers are having on some hedge funds. Now comes news that, like many other institutional investors, large US insurance companies are yanking huge sums of money out of their hedge fund portfolios as a result of the brutal 2015 most funds faced – NYTimes
Rumors of an Apple car are still buzzing around the web. But for now, its big auto news is a $1 billion investment in Didi Chuxing—Uber’s Chinese rival – Bloomberg and NYTimes
Swift—the messaging system used by banks and companies to “move money around the world”—is reporting another major cyberattack, even as details about the $81 million theft via the same network from the central bank of Bangladesh are still slowly emerging – NYTimes and WSJ
New York Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla has signed off on a deal releasing $8 billion from the Countrywide settlement fund to investors in 512 failed MBS – Law360
More on how Nissan capitalized on Mitsubishi’s fuel economy fraud and subsequent apology to snag a 34% stake in its rival – Bloomberg
Some positive merger news for the week—or at least, news of deals potentially going through. The California Public Utilities Commission has blessed the Charter/Time Warner cable deal [NYTimes], and Bayer and Monsanto are reportedly considering joining forces – NYTimes and Bloomberg
In the battle of market caps, Alphabet has officially inched past Apple (by a mere 140 million) again on a day when Apple’s cap dipped below $500 billion for the first time in 2 years – WSJ
The SEC has confirmed that it’s not done with private equity and the industry’s opaque fees. Not even close – Law360
On that next South American jaunt to Chile, you’d do well to triple-check your alarm before heading out for the day. Turns out that government meddling with daylight savings has turned time into a matter of debate there – WSJ
So it’s actually pretty well established that the home team has a distinct advantage when it comes to the Olympic games—statistically taking home about 3x as many medals as usual. It also seems pretty clear that at the Sochi games Russia wasn’t content relying on just stats – NYTimes
Have a great weekend.
