“Best Buy Co. (BBY) said Chief Executive Officer Brian Dunn resigned and board member G. Mike Mikan is taking the position on an interim basis as the company focuses on smaller stores and Internet sales.
The change was a “mutual agreement” that new leadership was needed, the Richfield, Minnesota-based company said today in a statement. A committee of directors has been created to search for a new CEO, the company said.”
Comments »“Following the tragic suicide in Athens last week, it really does appear that the Greek troubles are entering a new, potentially dangerous stage.
The Daily Mail reports that a firebomb blast took out a government building last night — and appears to have specifically targeted the Public Sector Reform Ministry, responsible for laying off 150,000 public sector workers.
Thankfully, despite the fact there was no warning given, no one was hurt in the blast.
The bombing comes just days after a similar attack on the home of Costas Simitis, the former Greek prime minister who led the country into the euro…”
Comments »[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V6l2-AHAqA&feature=related 450 300]
Comments »An interesting exploration into the self. How fitting for this weekend’s holiday.
Cheers on your weekend!
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZep-oqz9sM 450 300]Anima from Dominoes Falling Productions, is a feature length documentary using a collaboration of various material.
The film examines our relationships with ourselves, others and the environment around us.
Other themes include our creativity and our power as individuals and as a collective to manifest our own reality.
an·i·ma – The Latin translation of the Greek word psyche.
1. The inner self of an individual (soul); a relationship with that which is greater than self.
2. Expressions of the unconscious or true inner self of an individual (Carl Jung’s school of analytical psychology).
Comments »“In recent weeks, hedge funds and other investors have been puzzled by unusual movements in some credit markets, and have been buzzing about the identity of a deep-pocketed trader dubbed “the London whale.”
That trader, according to people familiar with the matter, is a low-profile, French-born J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. employee named Bruno Michel Iksil.
Mr. Iksil has taken large positions for the bank in insurance-like products called credit-default swaps. Lately, partly in reaction to market movements possibly resulting from Mr. Iksil’s trades, some hedge funds and others have made heavy opposing bets, according to people close to the matter.
![[JPMTRADER]](http://ibankcoin.com/news/wp-content/imagescaler/503328b8a40a922893af418740dafa55.jpg)
Those investors have been buying default protection on a basket of companies’ bonds using an index of the credit-default swaps, or CDS. Mr. Iksil has been selling the protection, placing his own bet that the companies won’t default.
Mr. Iksil, who works primarily out of London, has earned around $100 million a year for the bank’s Chief Investment Office, or CIO, in recent years, according to people familiar with the matter.
There is no suggestion the bank or the trader acted improperly.
Mr. Iksil didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comment.
J.P. Morgan said the CIO unit is “focused on managing the long-term structural assets and liabilities of the firm and is not focused on short-term profits.”
The bank added, “Our CIO activities hedge structural risks and invest to bring the company’s asset and liabilities into better alignment.”
Kavi Gupta, a trader at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote a message to investors Thursday about the mystery trader, saying hedge funds are accelerating wagers against “the large long,” or bullish investor. “Fast money has smelt blood,” he wrote. Bank of America declined to comment.
The hedge funds are wagering that the cost of default protection using the index will increase, potentially putting Mr. Iksil in a money-losing position and forcing him to reduce some of his holdings.
Buying protection on the index is currently cheaper than what it costs to protect the index’s component companies individually.
Associated PressJ.P. Morgan Chase building in New York.
Any reduction in Mr. Iksil’s position could result in profits for the hedge funds and losses for the bank, according to a person familiar with the matter. There is no indication that any such reduction is planned.
J.P. Morgan Chase has emerged from the financial crisis as one of the strongest global banks, and Chief Executive James Dimon often boasts of the company’s “fortress balance sheet.”
Mr. Iksil’s trades are partially hedged, or protected by some offsetting trades, according to people close to the matter. Mr. Dimon is regularly briefed on details of some of the group’s positions, these people added.
One person familiar with the matter said the bank has run tests that show Mr. Iksil’s positions likely will be profitable in any economic or market downturn.
Some analysts who follow J.P. Morgan Chase, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, said they weren’t aware of the group’s trading. “They’ve talked about their investment strategies and procedures and risk controls but haven’t highlighted this division,” said Gerard Cassidy, a banking analyst at RBC Capital Market.
J.P. Morgan said the CIO unit’s “results are disclosed in our quarterly earnings reports and are fully transparent to our regulators.”
Mr. Iksil, who has worked at J.P. Morgan since January 2007, commutes to London each week from his home in Paris, and works from home most Fridays. He sometimes wears black jeans in the office and rarely a tie, according to someone who worked with him.
Mr. Iksil works with two junior traders and focuses on complex trades in credit markets, developing most of his investment ideas and then getting approval from senior bank executives, according to someone close to the matter.
In the past, he often has been bearish on markets and placed trades to express that downbeat perspective, sometimes criticizing colleagues as too optimistic on markets. Some of his best performances have come during market downturns, though he has also made trading mistakes in volatile times.
However, Mr. Iksil has turned more upbeat recently. He has been selling protection on an index of 125 companies in the form of credit-default swaps. That essentially means he is betting on the improving credit of those companies, which he does through the index—CDX IG 9—tracking these companies.
Mr. Iksil has done so much bullish trading that he has helped move the index, traders say. Now, even as Mr. Iksil is selling credit protection on the company index, a number of hedge funds and other investors are buying protection on it.
Some investors say they are betting that Mr. Iksil could have to exit some of his bullish trades, perhaps because the pending Volcker rule limiting bank risk-taking would push up the cost of credit protection. J.P. Morgan has said the Volcker rule doesn’t prohibit its CIO unit from investing or hedging activities.
A sign of how hot the trade is: The net “notional” volume in the index ballooned to $144.6 billion on March 30 from $92.6 billion at the start of the year, according to Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. data.”
Comments »“More than half a million Apple computers have been infected with the Flashback Trojan, according to a Russian anti-virus firm.
A Russian anti-virus suggests that about 600,000 Macs have installed the malware – potentially allowing them to be hijacked and used as a “botnet”.
The firm, Dr Web, says that more than half that number are based in the US.
Apple has released a security update, but users who have not installed the patch remain exposed.
Flashback was first detected last September when anti-virus researchers flagged up software masquerading itself as a Flash Player update. Once downloaded it deactivated some of the computer’s security software.
Later versions of the malware exploited weaknesses in the Java programming language to allow the code to be installed from bogus sites without the user’s permission.
Remote control
Dr Web said that once the Trojan was installed it sent a message to the intruder’s control server with a unique ID to identify the infected machine.
“By introducing the code criminals are potentially able to control the machine,” the firm’s chief executive Boris Sharov told the BBC.
“We stress the word potential as we have never seen any malicious activity since we hijacked the botnet to take it out of criminals’ hands. However, we know people create viruses to get money.
“The largest amounts of bots – based on the IP addresses we identified – are in the US, Canada, UK and Australia, so it appears to have targeted English-speaking people.”
Dr Web also notes that 274 of the infected computers it detected appeared to be located in Cupertino, California – home to Apple’s headquarters.
Update wait
Java’s developer, Oracle, issued a fix to the vulnerability on 14 February, but this did not work on Macintoshes as Apple manages Java updates to its computers…”
Comments »[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOKi3nAj45k 450 300]
Comments »“AT&T Inc. T +0.05% faces the possibility of a walkout by 40,000 wireline employees Sunday morning if the union can’t reach an agreement with the telecommunications giant on a new contract.
Members of the Communications Workers of America voted over the weekend to authorize CWA President Larry Cohen to call a strike after the contract expires on April 7. CWA members staged a two-week strike against Verizon Communications Inc. in August and have yet to reach an accord with that company.
AT&T is seeking increases in workers’ health-care premiums and co-payments, pension cuts and other benefits changes, according to the union.
“Everything leads me to believe that we’re in the same position today with AT&T that we were with Verizon last year,” said Chuck Simpson, president of CWA Local 2204 in Salem, Va. “Like so many companies, they want to shift more costs to the employees.”
On its website, AT&T said employees’ medical costs rose 54% from 2004 to 2010 and 8% in 2010 alone. “AT&T seeks to reach fair agreements with our union partners that enable a competitive cost structure reflecting current market realities,” the company said on the site…”
Comments »“Royal Bank of Canada was accused by U.S. regulators of hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal futures trades with itself in order to reap tax benefits.
In a federal-court lawsuit filed Monday in New York, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission alleged a “wash trading scheme of massive proportion” by Canada’s largest bank. From 2007 to 2010, officials at RBC coordinated with two subsidiaries on the purchase and sale of futures contracts that gave the right to sell stock later at certain prices, the CFTC alleged….”
Comments »“Four former executives at Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug company. — Henry McKinnell, John LaMattina, Karen Katen, Joseph Feczko — as well as Gail Cawkwell, Pfizer’s current Vice President of Medical Affairs, will all face trial for allegedly concealing the unfavorable results of drug trials involving Celebrex and Bextra.Courthouse News Service(CNS) reports that U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain has denied requests made by defendants to dismiss the case, which means all five individuals will be held to account for their actions.
The securities class-action lawsuit, which was filed by theTeachers Retirement System of Louisiana(TRSL) on behalf of Pfizer stockholders, alleges that the five defendants violated federal securities laws by concealing the results of studies involving Celebrex, a COX-2 inhibiting anti-inflammatory drug, and Bextra, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that was pulled from the market in 2005.
According to the suit, the five defendants made misleading statements in their public filings about the drug trials, and also omitted important information that exposed both Celebrex and Bextra as being dangerous. And despite numerous attempts by Pfizer and the defendants to have the case dismissed or reconsidered, the case will now proceed as intended following Judge Swain’s ruling that the plaintiffs provide sufficient evidence to show that Celebrex and Bextra are “linked to adverse cardiovascular events to a statistically significant degree, and that these results were known to Defendants.”
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