Sorry, they just dangled that one out there, like low hanging fruit.

Gay and lesbian consumers prefer fuel-efficient cars, account for 5% of new car purchases and have average household income in the six figures — more than that of heterosexual households, according to a recent marketing survey.

So it’s little surprise that General Motors ran a gay-themed advertisement last month for the Chevrolet Volt, the type of car studies show gay and lesbian consumers tend to like.

GM didn’t count on the ad drawing national attention.

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* NY lawsuit says funds overpriced, underperforming

* Says brokers got incentives to sell JPM funds

* Case seeks class action status, damages

The case is Alan H. Tralins v. JPMorgan Chase & Co, New York state Supreme Court, No. 652448/2012, New York County.

Read the article here.

“Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) has spoken to financial and communications advisers to help manage an activist investor as demands grow to jettison executives or assets, said people familiar with the matter.”

Full article

“DETROIT (AP) — Ford Motor Co. is recalling more than 10,000 redesigned 2013 Escape SUVs to fix carpet padding that could get in the way of braking.

Ford says that wrongly positioned carpet padding could reduce space around the pedals and cause drivers to hit the side of the brake pedal when switching from the accelerator.”

Full article

“(Reuters) – Just hours after General Motors (GM.N) abruptly fired Karl-Friedrich Stracke as chief executive of Opel last week, industry observers were already beginning to ask whether it was time to start writing the troubled European unit’s epitaph.

Since GM emerged from bankruptcy three years ago, Opel has racked up $3.5 billion in underlying losses thanks to an ever shrinking European car market, a bloated fixed cost base and an image that GM has helped bring low.”

Full article

“Earlier this year, Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE: LVS) was denied land rights to an expansion project on Macau. The land, called Parcels 7 and 8, was part of a larger project on which the company had already spent more than $100 million. Today, the Sands China unit said that the company received an extension to its expansion on the “Parcel 3″ part of the project.”

Full article

Gapping up 

HGSI +3.5%, V +3.0%, C +2.4%, PRX +14.8%, DSS +5.4%,  V +3%, MA +2.9%

BAC +2.1% , MHP +0.3%,  LVS +0.5%, VOD +0.7%,

Gapping down

BCS -3.9%, NOK -2.2%, TTM -2.0%, DB -1.2%, SAP -1.2%, CS -1.1%, TOT -1.0%, RIO -1.0%

Full report

$NOK has cut the price of their smartphone in half in order to stem losses elsewhere.

Full article

“SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft is pulling out of the joint venture that owned MSNBC.com, freeing the world’s largest software maker to build its own online news service.

The breakup announced late Sunday dissolves the final shreds of a 16-year marriage between Microsoft Corp. and NBC News, which is now owned by Comcast Corp. The relationship began to unwind in 2005 when Microsoft sold its stake in MSNBC’s cable TV channel to NBC.”

Full article

Ex-traders and directors of operation claim that trades were not mis marked, but rather marked aggressively in the London unit where the whale debacle loss occurred.

Full article 

“Visa, MasterCard and major banks agreed to pay retailers at least $6 billion to settle a long-running lawsuit that alleged the card issuers conspired to fix the fees that stores pay to accept credit cards. As part of the settlement, announced late Friday, stores from Rite Aid to Kroger will be allowed to charge customers more if they pay using a credit card.”

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It appears that $JPM’s earnings were not all that rosy.

Full article

“The head of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. admitted to defrauding clients out of more than $100 million over nearly 20 years by personally doctoring bank statements and duping auditors with the help of a post-office box, federal prosecutors said Friday.”

Yet another blow for RIM….

Full article

“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department is building criminal cases against severalfinancial institutions and their employees related to the manipulation of interest rates, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

Citing government officials close to the case who spoke on condition of anonymity, the Times said traders at Barclays Plc were among the individuals against whom Justice was building cases. Authorities expect to file charges against at least one bank later this year, the newspaper reported.”

Full article

NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan Chase said Friday that a bad trade had cost the bank $5.8 billion this year, almost triple its original estimate, and raised the prospect that traders had improperly tried to conceal the blunder.

“This has shaken our company to the core,” CEO Jamie Dimon said.

The bank said managers tied to the bad trade had been dismissed without severance pay and that it planned to revoke two years’ worth of pay from each of those executives.

JPMorgan said it had lost $4.4 billion because of the trade from April through June, and its chief financial officer said the bank had lost an additional $1.4 billion in the first three months of the year.

Dimon’s original estimate of the loss from the bad trade, disclosed in a surprise conference call with Wall Street analysts on May 10, was $2 billion.

The bank said an internal investigation, including emails and voice messages, had called into question the values that traders placed on certain bets, and that the traders may have been seeking to mask losses.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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“The investigation into the collapse of Iowa brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group is notable for one name that has not yet turned up: JPMorgan Chase.

JPMorgan, the country’s biggest bank, held customer accounts for Peregrine, doing business as PFGBest. But in alleging that Peregrine took customer money, the National Futures Association and Commodity Futures Trading Commission have claimed that customer money is missing not from a JPMorgan account, but from a U.S. Bank account.”

Full article

“Facebook is apparently working on a job postings board that will launch later this summer, according to a report by the WSJ. “Facebook Jobs” will be an aggregator that pulls in job postings by third party providers and makes them available in one place and creates a searchable database of jobs for users to browse.”

Full article

“Wells Fargo is reporting higher earnings for the second quarter thanks to a pickup in lending and a decline in the amount of bad loans.

The San Francisco-based bank’s net income rose 18 percent to $4.4 billion, compared to $3.7 billion in the same period a year ago.

On a per-share basis, the bank earned 82 cents, in line with estimates of analysts polled by FactSet. Revenue of $21.3 billion was also in line with analysts’ expectations.”

Full report