At H.P., Activist Steps Up

AT H.P., ACTIVIST STEPS UP  |  The board of Hewlett-Packard, under criticism for overseeing the disastrous acquisition of the British software maker Autonomy, is being shaken up. The chairman, Raymond J. Lane, gave up that post on Thursday and was succeeded on an interim basis by Ralph V. Whitworth, the activist hedge fund manager who joined the board in 2011. Two other directors left the board altogether.

Shareholders had registered their displeasure with H.P.’s directors at the annual meeting in late March. The two directors who are leaving, John H. Hammergren and G. Kennedy Thompson, got 54 percent and 55 percent of shareholder votes respectively, while Mr. Lane got 59 percent of votes. “After reflecting on the stockholder vote last month, I’ve decided to step down as executive chairman to reduce any distraction from H.P.’s ongoing turnaround,” Mr. Lane said in a statement issued by H.P. Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst with Bernstein Research, said: “Having under 60 percent is not a vote of confidence.”

Mr. Whitworth, the only H.P. director not on the board at the time of the Autonomy acquisition, was tasked with leading an independent investigation into the deal, which led to a writedown of $8.8 billion. He had joined the board after building up a sizable stake in the company.

MEDIATION TALKS FOR CORZINE  |  Jon S. Corzine is avoiding, for now, a lawsuit from a bankruptcy trustee overseeing the collapsed brokerage firm MF Global. The trustee, Louis J. Freeh, who accused Mr. Corzine and other former MF Global executives of “negligent conduct,” agreed to postpone a lawsuit and enter mediation talks with Mr. Corzine’s lawyers, people briefed on the talks tell DealBook’s Ben Protess.

“The development is an encouraging sign for Mr. Corzine,” Mr. Protess writes, yet “some lawyers involved are skeptical that the talks will yield a settlement. And while the mediation offers promise for Mr. Corzine, he remains caught in a thicket of litigation.” Mr. Freeh hinted at a lawsuit in a report filed on Thursday, which blamed MF Global executives in the firm’s demise. “The findings, according to the people who were briefed, laid the groundwork for the potential lawsuit to claim that executives had breached their fiduciary duty to the firm.”

ENRON’S SKILLING MAY LEAVE PRISON EARLY  |  “Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former Enron chief executive serving a 24-year sentence for his role in the fraud that led to the energy giant’s collapse, could be released early from prison under a possible agreement with the government, according to a notice posted late Wednesday on the Justice Department’s Web site,” DealBook reports. “Lawyers for Mr. Skilling are in talks with prosecutors to reduce the term he was sentenced to for his role in helping to bring down Enron, which before its collapse in 2001 was the world’s largest energy trader and one of America’s most heralded companies.” Victims of Mr. Skilling’s crimes, who are due restitution of about $50 million, now have two weeks to object to a possible new sentence.

ON THE AGENDA  |  The unemployment report for March is out at 8:30 a.m. A report on the trade deficit for February is out at 8:30 a.m., and data on consumer credit in February is released at 3 p.m. Jan Hatzius, Goldman Sachs’s chief economist, is on CNBC at 10:30 a.m. Lawrence H. Summers is on Bloomberg TV at 9 p.m.

FINDING A BETTER BENCHMARK  |  British and American authorities cooperated admirably when bringing fines against banks for manipulating Libor. But when it comes to finding a replacement for the benchmark rate, “that cooperation is breaking down,” Floyd Norris, a columnist for The New York Times, writes. “In the United States, Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the man whose determination to do something helped to expose criminal behavior that evidently did not seem all that outrageous to some others, is pushing to get rid of Libor entirely. He argues that it no longer really exists, assuming it ever did, and wants to find a new benchmark for floating interest rate contracts.”

“But Britain and the European Commission appear to be determined to save Libor.”

Mergers & Acquisitions »

Deutsche Telekom Walks Back Prior Statement on Sweetening MetroPCS Bid  |  It appears Deutsche Telekom has finally settled on its response to queries about whether it will raise a bid by its T-Mobile USA subsidiary for MetroPCS. And that answer is, “No comment.”
DealBook »

HMV Stores to Be Sold to Private Equity Firm  |  The private equity firm Hilco Consumer Capital agreed on Friday to buy more than 140 stores of the British music retailer HMV as part of a rescue deal after the company went into bankruptcy earlier this year.
DealBook »

A Feast of Fees in Dell Deal  |  Taken together, the fees for banks involved in the fight for Dell “could top $400 million,” according to The Wall Street Journal, which says “the sum would be the biggest payday for a takeover in at least three years.”
WALL STREET JOURNAL

UBS Identified as Lender in Chinese Insurance Deal  |  UBS was the bank that financed the $9.4 billion purchase of a stake in Ping An Insurance by a Thai billionaire, according to Reuters.
REUTERS

Versace Ponders Outside Investment in Bid for Growth  |  “We are asking ourselves how fast we could go if instead of a Mercedes we owned a Ferrari,” Gian Giacomo Ferraris, the chief executive of Versace, told Reuters.
REUTERS

Unlocking Vodafone’s Value  |  With Vodafone valued at nearly $50 billion below the breakup value of its assets, the potential for a huge payoff for its shareholders in the form of an acquisition is mouth-watering, Quentin Webb and Robert Cyran of Reuters Breakingviews write.
REUTERS BREAKINGVIEWS

Metro New York Banks to Merge  |  Provident New York Bancorp said on Thursday that it would acquire Sterling Bancorp for $344 million in stock.
DealBook »

INVESTMENT BANKING »

Stephen Friedman to Retire From Goldman Board  |  Stephen Friedman, a former chief of Goldman Sachs, will retire from the board of the Wall Street firm.
DealBook »

A.I.G.’s Chief Gets a Raise for 2013  |  Robert Benmosche, the chief executive of A.I.G, which paid back its bailout recently, is eligible for $13 million of compensation in 2013, an increase of 24 percent, Bloomberg News reports.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

After Stagnation, a Revival for Mexico’s Financial Sector  |  Mexico’s growth prospects are attracting investment banks and investors hunting for ways to gain greater exposure to international markets.
DealBook »

Twitter Arrives on Wall Street, Via Bloomberg  |  Bloomberg L.P. announced that it was incorporating tweets into its data service, allowing traders and other professionals to monitor social media buzz and important news about companies they follow.
DealBook »

Brazilian Bank Said to Seek Opportunities in Europe  |  The Brazilian bank BTG Pactual “is seeking private equity investments in Portugal and Spain as Europe’s debt crisis forces governments there to sell assets, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said,” Bloomberg News reports.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

PRIVATE EQUITY »

CVC Said to Plan Offering for Belgian Postal Group  |  CVC Capital Partners “plans to float part of its stake in bpost, the Belgian postal group,” a deal that could value the company at 2.5 billion pounds, or about $3.8 billion, according to The Financial Times.
FINANCIAL TIMES

Kenya Private Equity Firm Begins to Make Investments  | 
REUTERS

HEDGE FUNDS »

So Far This Year, Paulson Is in the Black  |  John A. Paulson has had a rough time of it recently. But most of his funds have logged positive gains so far this year, doing particularly well in March, according to The Wall Street Journal.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Confrontation Brewing Over LightSquared  |  Sound Point Capital Management, a hedge fund “with ties to satellite mogul Charlie Ergen,” has acquired a large amount of LightSquared debt, setting it up for a “bankruptcy-court showdown with Wall Street financier Philip Falcone,” The Wall Street Journal writes.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

‘Black Swan’ Funds Lose Some Appeal  |  Reuters writes: “Hedge funds set up to profit from huge market slides are falling out of favour, signalling that investors are increasingly confident leading central banks can avert the kind of meltdown that followed the Lehman Brothers’ collapse.”
REUTERS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

Bangkok SkyTrain Fund Raises $2.1 Billion in I.P.O.  |  The offering, by an infrastructure fund controlled by the rail operator BTS Group, priced at the top of its marketed range, and ranks as the biggest ever new listing by a Thai company.
DealBook »

Facebook’s Ambitious Effort to Crack Mobile  |  The package of mobile software Facebook unveiled on Thursday, known as “Home,” shows the social network “cleverly, perhaps also dangerously” exploiting technology owned by its rival Google, the Bits blog writes.
NEW YORK TIMES BITS

Bertelsmann Confirms Plans to Sell Stock in RTL  |  The German media conglomerate Bertelsmann confirmed plans on Thursday to reduce its stake in RTL, the biggest commercial broadcaster in Europe, by selling shares worth up to $3.3 billion. Bertelsmann said it would reduce its holding in RTL from 92 percent to as little as 75 percent to raise money for acquisitions, Eric Pfanner reports in The New York Times.
DealBook »

Zynga Revises Compensation for Top Executives  | 
ALLTHINGSD

VENTURE CAPITAL »

Tesla’s C.F.O. Reaps Healthy Profit on Stock Options  |  Tesla’s chief financial officer, Deepak Ahuja, pocketed profits of around $573,000 on Tesla stock on Monday, the same day that the company revised its profit forecast for the first quarter.
DealBook »

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

Columbia Professor Is Chosen Dean of N.Y.U.’s Law School  |  Trevor W. Morrison will succeed Richard L. Revesz, who is stepping down on May 31 after 11 years.
DealBook »

Consumer Bureau Says 4 Insurers Made Kickbacks to Mortgage Lenders  |  As part of a settlement, four insurance firms will pay a combined $15 million to settle claims that they paid kickbacks to mortgage lenders for more than 10 years in order to sell mortgage insurance to home buyers.
DealBook »

Martoma, Former SAC Employee, Changes Lawyers in Insider Case  |  Mathew Martoma, the former SAC Capital Advisors portfolio manager facing insider trading charges, has switched lawyers, replacing Charles A. Stillman with Richard M. Strassberg of Goodwin Procter.
DealBook »

Former Bank of Cyprus Executives Named in Inquiry  |  The New York Times reports: “Two of the most senior executives at Bank of Cyprus may have deleted crucial e-mail documents last year related to what proved to be a disastrous decision to invest heavily in Greek government bonds just before Greece’s international bailout in 2010, according to an investigative report commissioned by the central bank of Cyprus.”
NEW YORK TIMES

Fed Ponders Response to a Nascent Recovery  |  The New York Times writes: “Federal Reserve officials are grappling publicly with a better kind of problem than most they’ve confronted in recent years: what if the labor market continues to improve more rapidly than they had expected”
NEW YORK TIMES

Japan Announces Bold Effort to End Falling Prices  |  “This is monetary easing in an entirely new dimension,” said Haruhiko Kuroda, the new governor of the Bank of Japan.
NEW YORK TIMES