Welcome back. Let’s get into the fall swing of things.
Vanguard’s not well known for making waves, but the $4.5 trillion mutual-fund manager has quietly increased its corporate engagement activity over the past year—discussing governance, pay, and other issues with nearly a thousand companies and supporting almost half of outside shareholder-proposed board proposals – NYTimes and Reuters
With P&G grinding through competing visions of how to “reinvigorate” the company, the board appears to be split between former finance chief Clayton Daley [and his activist-investor backer Nelson Peltz] and his successor, Jon Moeller, P&G’s current CFO and a believer in a less radical course of action for the consumer products giant – WSJ
Good news for the Carlyle Group, which was exonerated yesterday by the Royal Court of Guernsey over charges that Carlyle was negligent (at minimum) in mismanaging a leveraged mortgage-bond fund formed in 2006 and didn’t do enough to save the fund from insolvency in 2008 when the real estate bubble burst. Plaintiffs had sought more than $1 billion in damages – Bloomberg and WSJ
Castle World Ltd. is suing Goldman Sachs in London’s High Court for the bank’s alleged failure to cancel derivative contracts when instructed, a move that Castle says cost it $2.1 million after the US was hit with a credit ratings downgrade in August 2011 – Law360
Juicero—the $700 Wi-Fi enabled juicer that quickly became a symbol of “Silicon Valley’s insular excess” and raised $120 million in funding—is no more – NYTimes
Still, when there are angry birds and flying cars still out there, it’s hard to call the failure a sign of things to come in SV – NYTimes
A nasty side effect of Wells Fargo’s recent revelation of 1.4 million more sham accounts is the potential giant wrench thrown in the $142 million class settlement with customers preliminary reached in July to address the issue – Bloomberg
China has banned fundraising via initial coin offerings, a largely unsurprising move that still managed to send bitcoin and ethereum prices tumbling after the announcement – WSJ and Bloomberg
Here’s some pre-trial analysis courtesy of Law360 of a dispute involving a $2 billion payday loan operation involving race car driver Scott Tucker, the DOJ, and issues of tribal sovereignty. This one, as #PurdonNation would agree, will be one to watch – Law360
Google goes all in for Mr. Trololo’s b-day – Mashable [Though it’s awfully tough to beat this Kimmel/Waltz effort – YouTube]