Weekly Brief: Will RBS Plead Guilty In LIBOR Scandal?
It’s been a week or so, and we’re running out of ways to say that this is bad. But it certainly is. Your bear market stats for the day: the biggest daily drop by percentage for both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial...more
Bloomberg is reporting that Walgreens Boots is weighing a potential deal “to take the company private in what could become the largest leveraged buyout in history.” PE firms like KKR are apparently in the mix to assist in the...more
Fintech firm Stripe Inc., which “allows internet companies and online marketplaces to accept credit cards for their goods and services and pay out money to the people and firms that sell on their platforms,” just wrapped a...more
Drug giants Pfizer and Mylan have inked a deal that will merge the former’s off-patent drugs with the latter’s generics business, a tie-up that creates a mammoth global seller of lower-priced medicines....more
FCC Chair Ajit Pai gave his agency’s stamp of approval to the pending $26 billion T-Mobile/Sprint merger on Monday, helping move the deal towards completion based on pledges from the companies to develop “a robust 5G network...more
Warner Bros. studio division chief—part of AT&T’s recently acquired media empire—has “stepped down after accusations surfaced that he had pushed for a woman with whom he had a sexual relationship to be considered for roles in...more
GE—still in streamlining mode—agreed yesterday to sell its biopharma business to Danaher (current CEO Larry’s Culp’s former company, btw) for a reported $21.4 billion in the form of $21 billion in cash and $400 million in...more
Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson announced on Monday that it will shift some of its motorcycle production overseas “to avoid retaliatory tariffs imposed by the European Union” in response to the White House’s trade moves....more
In what can only be described as a Lazarus-like return, the Ex-Im Bank is reportedly nearly back on its feet again. The White House has chosen Kimberly Reed to helm the agency after prior nominee Scott Garrett was rejected by...more
Anbang Insurance founder Wu Xiahoui’s fall from grace now includes an 18-year prison sentence for his conviction by a Shanghai court for using Anbang to “cheat investors out of more than $10 billion”....more
Meet ZTE (well, meet them again. We’ve discussed them before), the massive Chinese electronics maker banned last month by the White House from using US-made components that could well be the “first casualty of the high-tech...more
On 2 March 2018, the Court of Appeal handed down its highly-anticipated judgment in Property Alliance Group (“PAG”) v Royal Bank of Scotland (“RBS”), dismissing all of PAG’s grounds of appeal and overturning a finding of...more
The White House’s protectionist plan to impose roughly $60 billion in annual tariffs on Chinese imports went over like a lead balloon on Wall Street, sparking fears of a trade war, increased volatility, and unintended ripple...more
On March 6, 2018, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced that the State of New York has reached a settlement with RBS Financial Products Inc. f/k/a Greenwich Capital Financial Products, Inc. (“RBS“) to...more
The US government’s determination that Broadcom’s hostile takeover bid of Qualcomm “could pose a national security risk” is complicating an already high-stakes (and unwelcomed) overture by Broadcom. The Committee on Foreign...more
A White House announcement about plans for steel and aluminum tariffs left the already-unsettled markets even shakier yesterday....more
In a recent decision, the Chancellor of the High Court in Bilta v RBS confirmed that in certain circumstances litigation privilege may protect from disclosure documents created in the context of an internal investigation. The...more
More trouble for the embattled British PM Theresa May. We learned yesterday that Britain’s second-largest construction firm—Carillion—was forced into liquidation after amassing a staggering $1.35 billion in debt. The downfall...more
Deutsche Borse CEO Carsten Kengeter announced yesterday that he’ll step down in the wake of insider-trading allegations related to the exchange’s now-defunct merger with the London Stock Exchange Group....more
So much for the quiet off-ramping for SoFi’s Mike Cagney. The fintech company’s board announced on Friday that Cagney is out immediately as CEO, not at the end of the year as Cagney had announced earlier in the week....more
Vanguard CEO William McNabb announced plans yesterday to step down, a big announcement for the mutual fund giant that finds itself “in the middle of one of the biggest growth spurts ever experienced by a large asset...more
As anticipated (and hinted-at forcefully by its officials), the Fed raised the benchmark interest rate yesterday to a range nearing 1 percent, a move that signals the slow end to the body’s nine-year stimulus effort....more
RBS has agreed to pay $85 million to the CFTC to resolve allegations that its traders “manipulated the ISDAfix benchmark rate over a period of five years to benefit the bank’s derivatives positions”....more
On November 14, 2016, plaintiff Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston (“FHLBB“) and defendants RBS Securities Inc., RBS Acceptance, Inc., RBS Financial Products, Inc., and RBS Holdings, USA (Inc.) (together, “RBS“) filed a joint...more
On September 27, 2016, the Royal Bank of Scotland (“RBS”) announced a $1.1 billion settlement with the National Credit Union Administration (“NCUA”) in connection with two federal securities litigations concerning RBS’s...more