“SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Shin Cheol-soo no longer sees his future in the United States.

The South Korean businessman supplied components to American automakers for a decade. But this year, he uprooted his family from Detroit and moved home to focus on selling to the new economic superpower: China.

In just five years, China has surpassed the United States as a trading partner for much of the world, including U.S. allies such as South Korea and Australia, according to an Associated Press analysis of trade data. As recently as 2006, the U.S. was the larger trading partner for 127 countries, versus just 70 for China. By last year the two had clearly traded places: 124 countries for China, 76 for the U.S.”

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“SAC Capital Advisors LP said that securities regulators have warned the hedge-fund firm it may face civil charges over the alleged insider-trading scheme that led to last week’s arrest of a former portfolio manager.

Tom Conheeney, president of SAC, told investors during a Wednesday conference call that the Securities and Exchange Commission sent the firm a so-called Wells notice last week, according to people who listened or were briefed on the call. A person familiar with the investigation said SAC has been told it is vulnerable to civil charges of securities fraud and responsibility as a “control person” for the alleged illegal trading.

People familiar with the matter said the SEC’s Wells notice didn’t include any proposed charges against the firm’s billionaire founder, Steven A. Cohen. The regulator is still investigating him and probably will defer a decision on whether to seek enforcement action against him until federal prosecutors complete their criminal probe, one person familiar with the inquiry said.”

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$IBM’s call

“NEW YORK – Americans clicked away on their computers and smartphones for deals on Cyber Monday, which was expected to be the biggest online shopping day in history.

Shoppers were expected to spend $1.5 billion on Cyber Monday, up 20 percent from last year, according to research firm comScore. That would not only make it the biggest online shopping day of the year, but the biggest since comScore started tracking shoppers’ online buying habits in 2001.

Online shopping was up 26.6 percent on Cyber Monday compared with the same time period a year ago, according to figures released Monday evening by IBM Benchmark, which tracks online sales. Sales from mobile devices, which include tablets, rose 10.2 percent. The group does not track dollar amount sales.

The strong start to Cyber Monday, a term coined in 2005 by a shopping trade group that noticed people were doing a lot of shopping on their work computers on the Monday following Thanksgiving, comes after overall online sales rose significantly during the four-day holiday shopping weekend that began on Thanksgiving.”

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“(Reuters) – Two privacy advocacy groups urgedFacebook Inc on Monday to withdraw proposed changes to its terms of service that would allow the company to share user data with recently acquired photo-application Instagram, eliminate a user voting system and loosen email restrictions within the social network.

The changes, which Facebook unveiled on Wednesday, raise privacy risks for users and violate the company’s previous commitments to its roughly 1 billion members, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.

“Facebook’s proposed changes implicate the user privacy and terms of a recent settlement with the Federal Trade Commission,” the groups said in a letter to Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg that was published on their websites on Monday.”

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“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Schapiro, will step down in December after a tumultuous four years in which she tried to rehabilitate the agency’s battered reputation.

In a statement issued on Monday, Schapiro said she would leave the agency on December 14.

SEC Commissioner Elisse Walter will serve as chairman-designate on a temporary basis, the White House said. A White House official said President Barack Obama plans to nominate a full-term replacement in the near future.

Candidates rumored to be on the shortlist include Walter, Treasury official Mary Miller and SECenforcement director Robert Khuzami.

When Schapiro took over the agency in 2009, it was lambasted for lax oversight that critics said helped lead to the financial crisis and for its failure to catch now-convicted Ponzi schemers Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford.”

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“WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday it’s suing a hedge-fund manager and a doctor over what it says may be the largest insider-trading scheme ever charged.

The SEC alleged that $276 million in illegal profits or avoided losses were made by investment advisers and their hedge funds, by trading ahead of negative news in July 2008 on clinical trial involving an Alzheimer’s drug developed by Elan Corp. ELN -0.10%  and Wyeth, now a Pfizer Inc. PFE +0.02%subsidiary.

Neither company is facing charges. Read related story on Elan-Wyeth trial.

In a suit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the SEC alleged that a professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School tipped off a hedge fund run by CR Intrinsic to liquidate $700 million in positions in Elan and Wyeth as well as establish $960 million in short positions against the companies’ shares.”

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Your tax dollars slowly at work….

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“Seeking to save more than 18,000 jobs, a bankruptcy judge surprised Hostess Brands Inc. and its warring union Monday by delaying the company’s bid to close its 85-year-old bakery business and sell off its factories, brands and other assets.

Instead, Judge Robert Drain asked both sides to join him Tuesday for a mediation session where he will try to broker a new contract. If Tuesday’s long-shot session fails, then the company will be able to return to court Wednesday to try to move ahead with its plans to close down.

Hostess had asked the U.S. bankruptcy judge for permission to liquidate, arguing that the bakers union’s more than week-long strike had left it unable to produce Twinkies, Ho-Hos, Wonder Bread and other longtime supermarket staples. Hostess said it didn’t have the financial wherewithal to continue operating amid the work stoppage.”

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“The European Central Bank was sued over its proposal to buy unlimited bonds from debt-laden countries to regain control of interest rates in nations that make up the monetary union.

A group, which currently includes 5,217 plaintiffs and is led by activist group Zivile Koalition e.V., filed the lawsuit on Nov. 12 with the European Union General Court, the 27-nation EU’s second-highest tribunal. The Luxembourg-based court’s press office confirmed the lawsuit, which seeks to block the ECB’s Outright Monetary Transactions program announced on Sept. 6.

“The ECB’s policy violates its own statutes and has an immediate influence on monetary stability in the euro area,” Beatrix von Storch, the group’s spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement today.

The case is the sixth to reach the EU’s two top courts challenging the Frankfurt-based ECB on euro-area-related decisions. Earlier this year, a group of more than 200 Italian retail investorsfiled a lawsuit to overturn an ECB decision they claim meant the bank avoided losses on Greek debt that private bondholders had to endure in a restructuring.”

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“Alcatel-Lucent SA (ALU), the French phone- equipment maker considering asset sales to bolster its finances, is weighing a disposal of some secondary patents as the company seeks ways out of a streak of quarterly losses and a shrinking cash pile, its chief financial officer said.

“We can look to monetize that portfolio through licensing, through limited sales if those patents aren’t part of our core and a few other things,” Paul Tufano said yesterday in an interview at a conference organized by Morgan Stanley in Barcelona. “We look at all of the above.”

Alcatel-Lucent, based in Paris, has almost 30,000 patents and 15,000 patent applications pending, Tufano said.

“It’s a broad variety of technologies that we cover,” he said. “It will be hard to find a company with as broad a patent portfolio as ours, so I think it’s very attractive and there’s a lot of interest and there could be a lot of interest from a lot of different sources.” ”

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“WASHINGTON—U.S. energy-market regulators Wednesday handed J.P. Morgan Chase JPM -1.91% & Co.’s energy-trading unit a six-month suspension from some of its activities in electricity markets, the latest in a string of clashes with Wall Street.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission cited false information it has said the company submitted as part of a probe into alleged market manipulation.

It was a rare move for the commission and another signal that it is trying to assert itself as a regulatory heavy hitter. The agency, which oversees transmission lines and natural-gas pipelines, also recently proposed a record penalty of nearly $470 million against Barclays BARC.LN +1.24% PLC for alleged market manipulation. Barclays denies the charges.

The last time the commission took away a company’s market privileges broadly, rather than in limited geographic areas, was when it revoked the privileges of Enron Corp., a FERC official said.”

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DUH!

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“Investors yanked a record volume of cash from BlackRock Inc.’s exchange-traded fund that buys junk bonds as the notes lose value for the first month since May.

The $16.3 billion fund reported an outflow of 2.4 million shares yesterday, equal to about $218.9 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the biggest daily withdrawal in the five-year history of the iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond Fund, the largest of its kind.”

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“(Reuters) – General Motors said it is recalling 15,575 Cadillac, Buick and Chevrolet cars to correct potential safety flaws.

The recalls, posted Wednesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, involve 2,949 2012-model Buick Verano, Chevrolet Cruze and Chevrolet Sonic compacts with driver-side air bags that might not deploy in a crash, and 12,626 2013-model Cadillac XTS sedans with rear-seat head restraints that might not lock in position.

The problems could increase the risk of injury to occupants, NHTSA said.”

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“The Securities and Exchange Commission has deepened its probe into whetherKnight Capital Group Inc. KCG -2.01% did enough to police its trading systems before computer errors nearly destroyed the brokerage.

The inquiry, which began after Knight’s errant Aug. 1 trades saddled it with more than $450 million in losses, initially focused more narrowly on what caused the errors. The probe has broadened to look further at the company’s risk-control procedures and Knight’s compliance with a rule implemented last year—called the market-access rule—that requires brokerages to guard against these sorts of problems, say people familiar with the investigation.”

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“PLYMOUTH, Minn. (AP) — The Mosaic Co. says weak international demand for its crop nutrients has hurt sales volumes, which may not pick up until 2013.

The Plymouth, Minn.-based company, which sells phosphate and potash, lowered its second-quarter production guidance and tightened its price forecast as a result.

Shares of the company fell more than 4 percent in after-hours trading on the news.

Mosaic said international crop nutrient market demand has fallen as distributors are holding off on purchases to avoid price risk. The company believes this demand is simply delayed, but said sales volumes may not pick up until 2013.

The company had previously forecast second-quarter potash volumes of 1.6 million to 1.9 million metric tons, which already excluded shipments to India and China. Mosaic now forecasts shipments in the range of 1.3 million to 1.4 million metric tons, as other international buyers have followed suit and held off on purchases.

The company expects its phosphate volume to be in the range of 2.9 million to 3.1 million metric tons, down from its prior forecast of 3 million to 3.4 million metric tons.”

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“TOKYO (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> said it will recall 2.77 million vehicles worldwide, including some of its popular Prius hybrid cars, for steering and water pump problems in the carmaker’s second multimillion-vehicle recall in a little over a month.

The defects, which Toyota said had caused no accidents and could each be fixed in an hour or so, could cost hundreds of millions of dollars to repair, according Deutsche Securities autos analyst Kurt Sanger.”

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“(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc would have $728 billion in risk-weighted assets under yet-to-be-implemented Basel III capital rules, 67 percent more than the investment bank has under current regulations, Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said on Tuesday.

Goldman aims to reduce risk-weighted assets to $700 billion by the end of 2013, with $18 billion of that coming from a decrease in credit risk, and another $11 billion coming from a decline in market risk.

Much of the reduction will come from an expiration of existing trades, like mortgage securitization, derivative portfolios and some investments that will be repaid, Blankfein said at a conference in New York hosted by Bank of America Corp .”

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(CNN) — The outward signs of recovery were everywhere Monday across the Northeast nearly two weeks after Superstorm Sandy struck: Power restored to tens of thousands, bridges and tunnels reopened, and limited train and ferry service up and running.

“After two weeks of the recovery phase, we’ve achieved a new normal for life in post-Hurricane Sandy New Jersey,” Gov. Chris Christie said of his state.

Nearly everyone in the state has power back, nearly all schools are reopening, and gasoline rationing can end in the state, he said.

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