BIG RUSH FOR I.P.O.S Â |Â Since 1999, the stock market has waxed and waned, but the business of initial public offerings is bustling once again, Michael J. de la Merced writes in DealBook. GrubHub, an online food-ordering company, and IMS Health, a big provider of prescription data, are just two of the latest companies hoping to seize upon investor demand for new stock offerings. At the same time, they are hoping to avoid the stumbles that have plagued a few high-profile issuers in recent weeks, including King Digital Entertainment, the maker of Candy Crush Saga.
GrubHub priced its offering on Thursday night at $26 a share, surpassing an already increased price range and raising $192.4 million for itself and investors who plan to sell. The IMS offering was priced at $20 a share, raising $1.3 billion. Companies worldwide have raised $47.2 billion in new stock sales during the first quarter, up 98 percent compared with those in the same period a year earlier. In the United States, 64 companies raised $10.6 billion in the most active first quarter since 2000.
Not all companies looking to go public â€" including the high-speed trading firm Virtu Financial â€" are feeling bold about their prospects, but investment firms nevertheless continue to see I.P.O.s as a potentially lucrative way to cash out their investments. Private equity firms in particular are choosing to take their portfolio companies public, betting that they will ultimately reap more by selling shares over time than by selling the companies outright.
OVERSEER AT SAC SELECTED  | Bart M. Schwartz, a former federal prosecutor who has served as an independent monitor in a number of government investigations, will be Steven A. Cohen’s minder, if a federal judge approves, Matthew Goldstein writes in DealBook. Federal prosecutors and lawyers for Mr. Cohen have agreed on the selection of Mr. Schwartz to serve as the outside compliance consultant to oversee activities at Mr. Cohen’s investment firm as a condition of SAC Capital Advisors guilty plea to insider trading charges.
Prosecutors disclosed the choice of Mr. Schwartz in a sentencing memorandum filed on Thursday in support of the plea deal that authorities reached with SAC last November. On Monday, Mr. Cohen is to formally rename his firm as a family office that will manage mainly his personal fortune and will operate under the name Point72 Asset Management. As a compliance monitor, Mr. Schwartz will be expected to file a series of reports to federal prosecutors to ensure that Mr. Cohen’s new firm is correcting any deficiencies he finds with its procedures to prevent insider trading.
CITI’S S.O.S.  | Eugene M. McQuade, one of Citigroup’s stalwarts who last month had announced plans to retire as chief executive of Citibank, will lead the bank’s preparations for the stress test over the next year, Michael Corkery writes in DealBook. The move is meant to help the bank regain the confidence of the Federal Reserve, which last week rejected Citigroup’s capital plan, embarrassing the bank and raising questions about the reliability of its financial projections.
The Fed’s rebuke was “a call to action for our firm,†Michael L. Corbat, Citigroup’s chief executive, wrote in a memo to employees. “Gene is fully empowered to do whatever is necessary, and I will devote any resource required, to ensure our next capital plan is not objected to,†he said in the memo.
HAPPY JOBS DAY Â |Â After weak readings for December and January, and then a slightly better report for February, experts expect to see a more robust picture for March in the employment data, which is set to be released by the Labor Department at 8:30 a.m. on Friday. The consensus among economists polled by Bloomberg calls for an addition of 200,000 jobs to payrolls in March, up from a gain of 175,000 in February, with the unemployment rate falling by 0.1 percentage point to 6.6 percent.
ON THE AGENDA  | In addition to the jobs report, Thomas E. Perez, the labor secretary, is on Bloomberg TV at 9:30 a.m. Mike Judge, the creator of the new HBO show “Silicon Valley,†is on Bloomberg TV at 1 p.m. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is on Bloomberg TV at 2 p.m. Matt Maloney, the chief executive of GrubHub, is on CNBC at 9 a.m.
MOZILLA CHIEF STEPS DOWN  | Just two weeks after taking the job, Brendan Eich, who has developed some of the web’s most important technologies, resigned on Thursday as the chief executive of Mozilla following an intense debate over his belief that gays should not be allowed to marry, Nick Bilton and Noam Cohen write in the Bits blog. Mr. Eich came under heavy fire from employees and the public for making a $1,000 contribution in 2008 to support a ban on gay marriage in California under Proposition 8.
“Mr. Eich’s departure from the small but influential Mountain View, Calif., company, which makes the popular Firefox web browser, highlights the growing potency of gay-rights advocates in an area that, just a decade ago, seemed all but walled off to their influence: the boardrooms of major corporations,†Mr. Bilton and Mr. Cohen write, adding, “But it is likely to intensify a debate about the role of personal beliefs in the business world and raise questions about the tolerance for conservative views inside a technology industry long dominated by progressive and libertarian voices.â€
Liberty Media Will Sell Most of Its Investment In Barnes & Noble  | The loss of a major shareholder is the latest setback for Barnes & Noble, which has closed dozens of stores and has trouble fulfilling its digital ambitions. After Liberty’s announcement, Barnes & Noble’s stock dropped sharply, and by the end of the day was down 13.5 percent.
DealBook »
Mylan Considers Bid for Swedish Pharmaceuticals Rival  | The companies have had early discussions about a possible transaction, according to people familiar with the matter.
DealBook »
Bidding War for Mobile Carrier Tests France’s Free Market  | Two billionaires are vying to acquire SFR, the country’s second-largest cellphone player, in a battle that exemplifies France’s struggle to decide how much market competition it wants.
DealBook »
Nest Labs Stops Selling Its Smoke Detector  | Nest Labs, the home automation company recently acquired by Google for $3.2 billion, said on Thursday that it was halting sales of its smoke and carbon monoxide detector over safety concerns, The New York Times writes.
NEW YORK TIMES
Boeing Said to Be Exploring Purchase of Mercury Systems  | Boeing is said to be considering buying Mercury Systems, a supplier of digital signal and image processing systems to the aerospace and defense industry, Reuters reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. Mercury has a market value of about $440 million.
REUTERS
Pimco’s Gross, Facing Skeptical Investors, Discusses His Dead Cat  | William H. Gross, the founder of the giant asset manager Pimco, devoted considerable space in his investment outlook letter on Thursday to a eulogy for his cat of 14 years.
DealBook »
R.B.S. Names Credit Suisse Banker as Finance Chief  | Ewen Stevenson, who advised the British government when it bailed out R.B.S. and Lloyds Banking Group during the financial crisis, will join the Scottish bank on May 19.
DealBook »
A Vacant Chair for Blythe Masters  | The JPMorgan executive’s exit from the bank could solve a longstanding search for a chairman of Glencore, the giant Swiss trading house, Christopher Hughes writes in Reuters Breakingviews.
Reuters Breakingviews »
JPMorgan Restructures Investment Unit  | JPMorgan Chase has restructured its chief investment office, the former home of the “London whale,†The Financial Times writes, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation.
FINANCIAL TIMES
A New Look at Big-Bank Subsidies  | A new report shows that the huge implicit government subsides to big banks encourage dangerous risk-taking on a scale that can damage the macroeconomy, Simon Johnson, an economist, writes in the Economix blog.
NEW YORK TIMES ECONOMIX
Ares Management Gains Control of Guitar Center  | Ares Management took a controlling stake in the musical instrument retailer Guitar Center, The Wall Street Journal reports. Bain Capital, Guitar Center’s former owner, retained partial ownership of the company, along with representation on the board.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Foreign Funds Said to Bid for Spanish Olive Oil Firm Deoleo  | A number of foreign firms, including the American private equity firms Carlyle Group and Rhone Capital, are said to have submitted takeover offers for Spain’s Deoleo, the worlds’ top olive oil bottler, Reuters reports, citing an unidentified person familiar with the situation.
REUTERS
Schneider in Talks with Carlyle and PAI Partners to Sell Sensors Unit  | The French electrical gear maker Schneider Electric said it was in exclusive talks with the private equity firms Carlyle Group and PAI Partners to sell its sensors business in a deal based on an enterprise value of $900 million, Reuters writes.
REUTERS
Citrone’s Hedge Funds Struggled in March  | The billionaire Robert Citrone’s two main hedge funds fell by about 10 percent in March, a swift reversal for Mr. Citrone, who was one of the top-performing hedge fund managers last year, Forbes reports.
FORBES
Discovery Capital Management Flagship Fund Said to Have Lost 9.3% in March  | The hedge fund Discovery Capital Management is said to have lost 9.3 percent in its flagship fund in March, The Wall Street Journal writes, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. The March figures drove the $15 billion firm’s 7.1 percent loss in the first quarter.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Energy-Saving Company Set for Public Offering  | The company, Opower, hopes to raise more than $100 million through a stock sale that could leave it with a value close to $1 billion, The New York Times writes.
NEW YORK TIMES
Chinese I.P.O. Drought in New York Ends With Rally  | Tarena International, the first Chinese company to debut in New York this year, rallied as investors bet the provider of education services would benefit from economic growth that was the fastest in Asia, Bloomberg News writes. Tarena’s initial public offering was the first of eight Chinese offerings planned for this year.
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Dropbox Promotes Insider to Financial Chief Ahead of I.P.O.  | The online storage company Dropbox promoted Sujay Jaswa to chief financial officer, a key role ahead of the company’s planned initial public offering, The Wall Street Journal writes.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Image-Sharing Site Imgur Raises $40 Million From Andreessen Horowitz  | In business since 2009, Imgur had not accepted any venture capital money and had become profitable by employing a small team and working with advertisers. It decided to change its strategy so it could move faster, the Bits blog writes.
NEW YORK TIMES BITS
Alibaba’s Jack Ma Invests $532 Million in Financial Software Firm  | Jack Ma, the founder of the Alibaba Group, China’s Internet giant, will pay $532 million to take a controlling share of the financial software firm Hundsun Technologies, Reuters writes.
REUTERS
‘Silicon Valley’ to Debut on HBO  | In Mike Judge’s wry study of start-up culture, “Silicon Valley,†the process of discovering the next big thing is authentically dull, Farhad Manjoo writes in The New York Times.
NEW YORK TIMES
Tech Start-Ups Are Targets of Ransom Cyberattacks  | Several web companies have recently been hit with attacks that can knock them offline using a flood of traffic unless the pay ransoms in Bitcoins, the Bits blog reports.
NEW YORK TIMES BITS
U.S. Ordered to Return Assets Seized in Crackdown of Luxury Cars Exported to China  | A ruling by an Ohio judge was a blow to a federal investigation of the business of buying luxury cars for a quick resale in China at a high markup.
DealBook »
Jeremy Stein to Resign From Fed Board to Return to Harvard  | Jeremy Stein, a member of the Federal Reserve’s board who has raised concerns about its stimulus campaign, will resign at the end of May and return to his previous role at Harvard, The New York Times writes.
NEW YORK TIMES
MF Global Customers to Be Paid Back in Full  | More than two years after the collapse of the brokerage firm, James W. Giddens, the court-appointed trustee overseeing the return of customer money, announced that he was sending a final round of checks to make MF Global’s customers whole.
DealBook »
Brookstone Files for Bankruptcy and Plans to Sell Itself  | The company hopes that a $147 million combination with Spencer Spirit Holdings will provide a path toward profitability. The company would continue to operate its stores, catalog and website under the Brookstone brand.
DealBook »
Anadarko Pays Billions in Settling Toxins Case  | Anadarko Petroleum, a giant Texas oil company, has agreed to pay $5.1 billion for a vast environmental cleanup, a sum the Justice Department said was the largest it had ever won in such a case, The New York Times reports.
NEW YORK TIMES
European Central Bank Hints at Bond-Buying Program  | The bank left its benchmark rate at 0.25 percent, but its president, Mario Draghi, said the policy council had discussed quantitative easing, The New York Times writes.
NEW YORK TIMES
Switching Names to Save on Taxes  | Caterpillar ducked billions of dollars in United States income taxes with a simple strategy. Whether it was legal is open to debate, Floyd Norris writes in the High & Low Finance column.
NEW YORK TIMES
