Influencing Dodd-Frank

Influencing Dodd-Frank  |  Two years after passing a spate of financial rules, lawmakers are still tinkering behind the scenes with Dodd-Frank. In a show of partisan haggling, more than 100 lawmakers have lobbied the Federal Reserve and other authorities over the Volcker Rule, writes Ben Protess of DealBook. A top aide to Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, has been reaching out to the Treasury Department and the Fed in an effort to limit the impact on local financial firms. While the Fed encouraged the aide to air his views publicly, internal government documents indicate some of the discussions took place in private. In a draft of the Volcker Rule, regulators adopted Mr. Brown's approach.

On Thursday evening, Mr. Brown faced off in a debate with his challenger for the Senate, the Harvard professor and consumer advocate Elizab eth Warren. Ms. Warren, a Democrat, has been a fierce supporter of regulations like the Volcker Rule. But the debate on Thursday focused on other issues, like Ms. Warren's ethnic heritage.

It's not just lawmakers trying to temper Wall Street regulation. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is “now controlled by judicial activists who seem quite willing to negate, on technical grounds, any regulations they do not like,” writes Floyd Norris of The New York Times. Mr. Norris says the court “may yet be the institution that dooms many or even most of the Dodd-Frank financial reforms.”

Three states, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Michigan, announced on Thursday that they had joined a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the regulatory overhaul, bringing more visibility to a legal effort that began in June.

Crunch Time for Glencore and Xstrata  |  The mining giant has until Monday to decide whether to accept Glencore's sweetened merger offer. According to The Financial Times, the two companies were in last-minute meetings on Thursday to review the details of the deal.

Once Xstrata weighs in, Qatar Holding is likely to give its view. The sovereign wealth fund has been a vocal opponent of the deal, pushing for a higher price.

Mortgage Fraud Busters Get Ready  |  New York's attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, who runs a new task force on mortgage abuses, told Reuters: “We'll see actions being taken sooner rather than later.”

The group, which includes representatives of the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Internal Revenue Service, is looking at mortgage deals that contributed to the financial crisis.

On the Agenda  |  A Democratic member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Bart Chilton, is on CNBC at 11:20 a.m. Dennis Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, is speaking at 12:40 p.m. to the Atlanta Institute of Internal Auditors. Rajiv Goel, the witness whose testimony helped convict Raj Rajaratnam of insider trading, is scheduled to be sentenced at 12:30 p.m. The latest iPhone hits stores on Friday, with Apple stock trading just below $700 a share.

Friday is also a quadruple witching day, the quarterly expiration of options and futures contracts, which can cause an unusually high trading volume. Judging by history, the expiration could be positive for stocks, CNBC notes.

The Barclays Center, the new home of the Nets in Brooklyn, has its ribbon-cutting on Friday. The British bank, for which the center is named, already seems to have fallen victim to the stadium-naming curse.

Speed Before Safety?  |  Computers are ruling the market - and as we've been told, that may not be a good thing. A new report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, commissioned after market misses like the Facebook I.P.O. and the Knight Capital trading debacle, found that “out-of-control algorithms were more common than anticipated prior to the study and that there were no clear patterns as to their cause.”

Such market disruptions have come into focus this week. At a Senate hearing on Thursday, David Lauer, a former high-speed trader who now works for the advocacy group Better Markets, said the process these firms used to see prices a split second faster than other participants “reeks of non-public information,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Two experts at the hearing, Andy Brooks of T. Rowe Price and Larry Tabb of the res earch firm TabbGroup, disagreed over specific policy prescriptions but both said that something should be done to change the market, reports Nathaniel Popper in DealBook.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is hosting a roundtable on Oct. 2 to address these issues.

Mergers & Acquisitions '

Universal-EMI Merger Approved in Europe  |  The European Commission signed off on the $1.9 billion merger but said Universal would have to sell many of EMI's prized assets.
WALL STREET JOURNAL  |  NEW YORK TIMES

How Will the Universal Deal Affect Music?  |  The Huffington Post takes a look at some of the implications of the Universal-EMI tie-up , which could “make the company the gatekeeper for all sonic innovation, from Silicon Valley to Sweden.”
HUFFINGTON POST

Valuing What Anschutz Entertainment Might Be Worth  |  News that the Anschutz Entertainment Group is being put up for sale sent the sports and entertainment worlds buzzing. But what would any prospective buyer get?
DealBook '

Leaders of Germany and France to Discuss Aerospace Merger  |  But Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande “will not make any decisions” on the proposed merger between EADS and BAE, Reuters reports.
REUTERS

French Carmaker May Sell Logistics Arm  |  P SA Peugeot Citroën said that it was negotiating to sell its Gefco logistics business to J.S.C. Russian Railways as the company struggles to stay afloat in a faltering market.
DealBook '

INVESTMENT BANKING '

Ex-Barclays Compliance Official Finds a New Job  |  Stephen Morse, a Barclays compliance official who was warned in 2008 about potential rigging of Libor, is now the head of compliance for TD Bank, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Jefferies Shares Fall on Tough 3rd-Quarter Results  |  Shares in the Jefferies Group plunged more than 6 percent on Thursday, as the firm reported earnings bolstered mostly by its new stake in the Knight Capital G roup.
DealBook '

Bankers Pin Hopes on Next Year  |  The market for deals has been lackluster so far this year, with global mergers and acquisitions volumes down 17 percent, Reuters reports.
REUTERS

Nomura Said to Cut Proprietary Traders  |  According to Bloomberg News, Nomura has “cut a team of London proprietary traders focused on stocks as Japan's largest brokerage scales back in Europe, said two people with knowledge of the matter.”
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Morgan Stanley Said to Be Paying Bonuses to Support Staff  |  Thousands of employees at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney who worked extra hours to solve technology problems can expect cash bonuses ranging from $1,500 to $5,000, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Magic of Risk-Weighting  |  Jonathan Weil writes in a column in Bloomberg News that the way banks measure their balance sheets can allow assets “to vanish, making too-big-to-fail financial institutions seem leaner and safer than they are.”
BLOOMBERG NEWS

The Little Bank That Could  |  A bank in Queens called Amerasia had a 2 percent return on its $290 million in assets in the first half of the year, “a number that would be excellent even if times were good,” The Economist writes.
ECONOMIST < /span>

PRIVATE EQUITY '

S.E.C. Said to Examine Private Equity Payouts  |  According to Bloomberg News, the Securities and Exchange Commission is “seeking to determine whether some private-equity firms are taking more profits from investments than they should under agreements with fund clients, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.”
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Leveraged Buyouts Make a Comeback  |  With financing cheap, leveraged buyouts in the United States nearly doubled in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, reaching the highest levels since before the financial crisis, Reuters reports.
REUTERS

Goldman May Scale Back Fund-Raising Ambitions  |  The next buyout fund raised by Goldman Sachs's merchant banking division is likely to have a target of $7 billion to $10 billion, smaller than previous efforts, according to Richard Friedman, the unit's head, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

HEDGE FUNDS '

Former Regulator Joins Hedge Fund Lobby  |  Kathleen Casey, who stepped down last year as a Securities and Exchange Commission official, has been named chairman of the Alternative Investment Management Association, a London-based group representing hedge funds, Bloomberg News reports.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Hedge Fund Clients Request More Money in September  |  Redemption requests in September reached their highest level this year, according to SS&C GlobeOp, Reuters reports.
REUTERS

Will There Be More Deals Between Funds of Funds?  | 
REUTERS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS '

Trulia Jumps 40% in Debut  |  Trulia, the real estate information site, rose 30 percent in its debut to open at roughly $22, defying the recent lackluster performance of newly public stocks.
DealBook '

Talanx Changes Its Mind  |  It's been a busy few weeks for the German insurer, which announced plans to go public earlier this month, and then shelved them, only to announce on Thursday it had revived those plans.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

VENTURE CAPITAL '

Online Community Sold to Its Members  |  The Salon Media Group said it sold the Well, a longtime online gathering place for cyber-thinkers and entrepreneurs, to a private investment group consisting of members of the community, the Bits blog reports.
NEW YORK TIMES BITS

Wind Power Industry Shrinks  |  On the top of weak demand and stiff competition, the industry now faces the Dec. 31 expiration of a federal tax credit, The New York Times reports.
NEW YORK TIMES

LEGAL/REGULATORY '

Pawlenty to Become Wall Street Lobbyist  |  Tim Pawlenty, the former Republican governor of Minnesota, was named chief executive of the Financial Services Roundtable on Thursday, replacing Steve Bartlett.
DealBook '

Cheap Loans Could Spell Long-Term Headaches  |  Low interest rates have led many corporations to load up on debt, but this could lead to a flood of bankruptcies once maturities hit, writes Stephen J. Lubben in the In Debt column.
DealBook '

A Strategy of Tattletales at the I.R.S.  |  Enforcement of tax laws requires finding a fair and ef fective way to overcome the information asymmetry between taxpayers and the I.R.S. But whistle-blowers are only one approach, writes Victor Fleischer in the Standard Deduction column.
DealBook '

Former Broker Accused of Insider Trading on Burger King Deal  | 
REUTERS

Spanish Debt Auction Meets With Strong Demand  | 
NEW YORK TIMES

California's Debt Found to Be Higher Than Thought  | 
NEW YORK TIMES