Morning Agenda: No Consensus on JPMorgan’s Chief

As JPMorgan Chase’s legal woes have mounted, some in the pundit class have called for Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive and chairman, to pay with his job. “Yet there is an almost bizarre disconnect between the headlines and what the people who matter â€" the investors, analysts, board members and, yes, even regulators â€" are seeking. None of them want him fired,” Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in the DealBook column.

Marvin C. Schwartz, a managing director at Neuberger Berman and a longtime investor in JPMorgan, said: “Jamie Dimon is one of the best C.E.O.’s of any company in the world.” He continued, “It doesn’t mean you can’t have an accident. It’s totally unfair to say he inflicted this upon himself.” Daniel S. Loeb, the activist investor who has made a career out of targeting troubled companies and ousting their chief executives, also sided with Mr. Dimon, saying he was “being used as a scapegoat and piñata to satisfy some kind of bloodlust.” Laban P. Jackson, the head of the audit committee of JPMorgan’s board, said at a conference last week, “He’s the best manager I’ve ever seen.”

“JPMorgan’s legal troubles stem from a series of problems,” Mr. Sorkin writes. “But many problems stemmed not from bad behavior at JPMorgan but at Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, two firms that the government encouraged JPMorgan to acquire in 2008 to help avert a market panic.”

SENATORS NEAR FISCAL DEAL  | 
With the possibility of an American default looming this week, Senate leaders on Monday neared the completion of a bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown, Michael D. Shear and Jeremy W. Peters report in The New York Times. Yet it was clear that the most conservative members of the House were not going to go along quietly with a plan that does not dismantle the president’s health care law.

“Negotiators talked into the evening as senators from both parties coalesced around a plan that would lift the debt limit through Feb. 7, pass a resolution to finance the government through Jan. 15 and conclude formal discussions on a long-term tax and spending plan no later than Dec. 13, according to one Senate aide briefed on the plan,” The Times reports.

Wall Street and the Obama administration have long thought that the prospect of hitting the debt ceiling and going into default would be so horrifying that it would lead to a resolution of the budget impasse, Bruce Bartlett writes on the Economix blog of The Times. “What I don’t think they understand is that there has been a movement under way for some years among right-wing economists and activists not merely to default on the debt, but even to repudiate it.”

BUYOUT FIRMS HUNTING FOR CASH  | “Across the country, nearly 2,000 private-equity firms are making pitches to state retirement systems, corporate pension funds and wealthy investors in the hope of raising nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars for their next, new funds â€" more than what was raised over the last two years combined,” Julie Creswell reports in DealBook.

“The push is part of the life cycle of the private-equity industry, which raises investment pools from large institutions and others that typically last about 10 years,” Ms. Creswell writes. “For some, raising new, even bigger funds will prove extremely easy. Others, however, will walk away empty-handed or with a much smaller amount than they wanted.”

ON THE AGENDA  | 
Citigroup reports third-quarter results at 8 a.m., with a conference call at 11 a.m. Yahoo and Intel report earnings after the market closes. Joseph J. Lhota, the Republican nominee for mayor of New York, is on Bloomberg TV at 11:30 a.m.

CHASTENING THE BIG BANKS  | From the 1980s until the mortgage mess in 2007-8, finance came to dominate the world economy. But now, five years after the crisis, some participants and close observers see a generational humbling of the big banks under way, Peter Eavis writes in The International New York Times. Finance may be starting to look more like a normal industry.

“The future’s going to be different,” said Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a former Wall Street banker and hedge fund manager. Though he contends some financial institutions are still too large, he says important progress has been made since the crisis. “The big, complex banks have been chastened,” he said. “There will be more hitting of singles and less swinging for the fences.”

Mergers & Acquisitions »

SoftBank Buys 51% of Finnish Game maker for $1.5 Billion  |  By acquiring a stake in the Finnish company Supercell, SoftBank is positioning itself to take advantage of an increase in mobile game play that has been spurred by rising smartphone use and high-speed data connections. DealBook »

BlackBerry Seeks to Reassure Customers  |  “We have one important message for you: You can continue to count on BlackBerry,” the struggling smartphone maker wrote in an open letter to its customers. ALLTHINGSD

Retaining Executives in a Post-Buffett Berkshire  |  Some investors and analysts are wondering whether the successor to Warren E. Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway will be able to retain the senior executives that Mr. Buffett has attracted over the years, The Wall Street Journal writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Peugeot Shares Fall on Possibility of Deal to Raise Capital  |  Shares of PSA Peugeot Citroën tumbled on Monday as investors anticipated that the struggling French automaker was closing in on a deal to raise fresh capital that would dilute the value of its stock, David Jolly writes in The New York Times. NEW YORK TIMES

A Way Out of the Cooper Tire-Apollo Tyres Mess  |  The Indian tire company’s $35-a-share takeover offer for its American rival is in doubt. Yet there are plenty of avenues for a compromise, Una Galani and Peter Thal Larsen of Reuters Breakingviews write. REUTERS BREAKINGVIEWS

INVESTMENT BANKING »

Prize Highlights Clashing Theories on Financial Markets  |  The economist Eugene F. Fama, one of three recipients of this year’s Nobel in economic science, has developed the theory that asset prices perfectly reflect all available information, while the economist Robert J. Shiller, another recipient of the prize, is perhaps Mr. Fama’s most influential critic, having assembled evidence of irrational, inefficient behavior, Binyamin Appelbaum reports in The New York Times. NEW YORK TIMES

Credit Suisse’s Painful Transformation  |  The strategy of Credit Suisse, which has cut back its fixed-income, currency and commodities trading business in the aftermath of the financial crisis, “could be a template for other European and U.S. banks that are under increasing pressure from regulators to cut risk-taking, bank executives said,” Reuters writes. REUTERS

A Comeback for Commercial Property Lending  |  “From office buildings to shopping centers to warehouses to apartments, lending to developers and owners of such properties is on the rebound because of rising real-estate values and improved credit quality,” The Wall Street Journal writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Creditors Fail to Agree on Reworking Texas Utility  |  Among the issues dividing creditors of Energy Future Holdings, which was taken private in the largest leveraged buyout in history, is the value of a company owned by a subsidiary of the giant utility, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Private Equity Owners Commit More Cash to First Data  |  The private equity firm K.K.R. and its co-investors are making a new $300 million investment in First Data, a big payment processing company, to help it refinance its debt. REUTERS

HEDGE FUNDS »

Hedge Funds See Promise in Puerto Rico Debt  |  The Financial Times reports: “Hedge funds and managers of distressed assets have been buying debt sold by Puerto Rico, as traditional municipal bond investors shun the securities amid worries about the island’s finances.” FINANCIAL TIMES

A Closely Watched Analyst Predicts Doom  |  “The market’s going to have one more rally, then once we get above that high, I think it’s going to be more treacherous,” said the stock market analyst Tom DeMark, who is a special adviser to Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

Moncler Files to Go Public on Milan’s Stock Market  |  The cold-weather apparel maker Moncler said it had applied to go public on the Milan Stock Exchange, becoming the latest fashion company to pursue a stock listing. DealBook »

VENTURE CAPITAL »

Solar Industry Puts Robots to Work  |  A start-up called Alion Energy is among the solar panel companies betting that automating the installation and maintenance of large-scale solar farms will be an effective way to cut costs, The New York Times writes. NEW YORK TIMES

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

Britain Aims to Ease Way for Chinese Banks in London  |  Britain plans to begin talks with China about making it easier for Chinese banks to do business in London as part of an expanded effort to make the city a global center for investing and trading China’s currency. DEALBOOK

Former R.B.S. Trader Under Scrutiny in Britain  |  Bloomberg News reports that Richard Usher, JPMorgan Chase’s chief dealer in London, wrote instant messages while he was at Royal Bank of Scotland that British regulators “are scrutinizing as part of their investigation of alleged currency manipulation, two people with knowledge of the matter said.” BLOOMBERG NEWS

Implications for Banks as Madoff Litigation Grinds On  |  If the Madoff trustee is successful in being able to sue major banks for ignoring warning signs, the potential liability of financial firms could be enormous in future cases, Peter J. Henning writes in the White Collar Watch column. DealBook »

Rival Denounces Rescue Plan for Italian Airline  |  Reuters reports that the International Airlines Group, which owns British Airways and Spain’s Iberia, “urged the European Commission to intervene over the Italian government’s attempts to stitch together a bailout for Alitalia.” REUTERS