Sprint Raises Clearwire Bid

SPRINT RAISES CLEARWIRE BID  |  With a new bid for Clearwire, Sprint Nextel is hoping to end a battle that has lasted weeks for the wireless network operator. Sprint raised its bid on Thursday to $5 a share, 47 percent higher than its last proposal and also higher than rival offer from Dish Network of $4.40 a share, DealBook’s Michael J. de la Merced writes. Sprint’s new bid values Clearwire at about $14 billion.

Both Sprint and Dish view Clearwire as the key to transforming their wireless empires. In addition, Clearwire has seemed at times to be part of Dish’s bigger plans to buy control of Sprint itself from an existing suitor, SoftBank of Japan. But on Friday, Dish confirmed it was ending its pursuit of Sprint, saying in a securities filing that it had “dcided to abandon its efforts to acquire Sprint.” That followed an announcement on Tuesday that Dish would not submit a new takeover bid for Sprint.

“The tables have turned,” Softbank’s chief executive, Masayoshi Son, said Friday morning at a shareholders’ conference in Tokyo. “Of course, we cannot let down our guard. But we have taken a big step forward,” he continued. “If all goes as planned, our acquisition should be complete by early next month.”

THE FED’S GLOBAL REACH  |  European markets are bouncing back on Friday after a day of heavy losses on markets around the world. Still, the recent sharp declines in global stock, bond and commodity prices “are demonstrating just how reliant the global economy has become on the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve,” Nathaniel Popper writes in The New York Times. “In the weeks since the Fed’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, first indicated that the central bank might start to pare back its support for the economy, markets in Asia, Europe and Latin America have fallen even more sharply than those in the United States, threatening economic growth in many countries.”

While market measures in the United States have declined 4 percent over the last month, a global stock index has fallen more than 6 percent, Mr. Popper notes. “The Fed isn’t just the U.S.’s central bank. It’s the world’s central bank,” said Mark Frey, the chief strategist at the Cambridge Mercantile Group. The selling on Thursday came a day after Mr. Bernanke’s latest comments on the Fed’s plan to wind down its stimulus, a shift that investors fear may come before the global economy is ready.

Mr. Bernanke’s primary audience, the investors who spread the central bank’s decisions through the economy, âœresponded as if the news had been grim,” Binyamin Appelbaum writes in The New York Times. “The call-and-response underscores the complexity of the Fed’s task as it seeks to do more to help the economy, but not too much.”

NEW YORK REGULATOR SETS TOUGH BANK FINE  |  Benjamin M. Lawsky, the top financial authority in New York State, imposed a $250 million fine on Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, nearly 30 times what the federal government extracted last year, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Ben Protess write in DealBook. “The bank, which agreed to settle the New York case, was accused of routing 28,000 payments worth about $100 billion on behalf of Iran and other cou! ntries bl! acklisted from doing business in the United States. In contrast, federal authorities at the Treasury Department cited the bank for processing 97 fund transfers, worth about $6 million.” Though the disparity stemmed in part from a legal technicality, the action on Thursday “underscored the gulf between the two regulators.”

ON THE AGENDA  |  Jeffrey Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron, is set to appear in court to hear if his prison sentence will be reduced. Alan Blinder, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman, is on CNBC at 11 a.m. Laszlo Birinyi of Birinyi Associates is on Bloomberg TV at 3 p.m.

ICAHN TAKES TO TWITTER  |  Carl C. Icahn, an outspoken investor in the old-school Wall Street style, has a new, and decidedly high-tech, megaphone. Mr. Icahn is on Twitter, his assistant confimed on Thursday. With the handle @Carl_C_Icahn, the investor, who is 77, posted his first tweet Thursday morning, with a reference to his investment in Dell. The message â€" “Twitter is great. I like it almost as much as I like Dell” â€" prompted its own filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mergers & Acquisitions »

Senators Urge Additional Review of Smithfield’s Sale to Shuanghui  |  The group of 15 senators wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, who oversees the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, to add the Agriculture Departme! nt and th! e Food and Drug Administration to the agencies reviewing the deal.
DealBook »

Tribune Burned by Its Own Tax Strategy  |  The clever tax strategy devised by the Tribune Company has backfired, Floyd Norris, a columnist for The New York Times, writes. “The company seems likely to have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes that it would never have owed had it not tried to be so clever.”
NEW YORK TIMES

A.D.M. Looks to Sell Cocoa Unit  |  Archer Daniels Midland is seeking a buyer for its $2 billion cocoa nd chocolate business, The Financial Times reports.
FINANCIAL TIMES

Rosneft to Send $60 Billion of Oil to China  |  The New York Times reports: “The Russian state oil company, Rosneft, intends to sign a major contract to supply China with more than $60 billion of crude oil, a deal that could signal a small shift away from Western Europe toward Asia.”
NEW YORK TIMES

Gazprom of Russia Agrees to Buy Power Plant in Belgium  | 
WALL STREET JOURNAL

INVESTMENT BANKING »

Apple Bondholders Take a Beating  |  After a fall in bond prices, Apple’s sale of $17 billion of debt looks well-timed from the company’s perspective, Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider writes.
BUSINESS INSIDER

Oracle to Leave Nasdaq for the Big Board  |  Oracle, one of the most prominent technology companies listed on the Nasdaq, is defecting to the New York Stock Exchange.
DealBook »

Mercurial Mortgage Rates Expected to Stabilize Soon  |  “It looks like the great American mortgage sale is finally coming to an end,” Nelson D. Schwartz writes in The New York Times.
NEW YORK TIMES

Japanese Trading Firms to Invest $1.5 Billion in Australian Mine  | 
REUTERS

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Rockwood Holdings Said to Cancel Sale of Assets  |  Rockwood Holdings had been in talks with private equity firms to sell its titanium dioxide and performance additives units for between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, but ended the auction after failing to get the offers it wanted, Reuters reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
REUTERS

Home Depot Outflips Private Equity  |  A buyout consortium looks set to recoup its investment in HD Supply and then some in an upcoming initial public offering. But Home Depot fared even better, Robert Cyran of Reuters Breakingviews writes.
REUTERS BREAKINGVIEWS

HEDGE FUNDS »

Hedge Fund Manager Bets on Stock Crash in China  |  Reuters reports: “Former chess grandmaster-turned hedge fund manager Patrick Wolff is betting on a stock market crash in China, where he says corruption and bad debts have spiraled to dangerous levels.”
REUTERS

Investors Ask to Withdraw More Money From Hedge Funds  | 
! REUTERS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

With Video Sharing, Facebook Moves to Match Its Rivals  |  “On Thursday, Facebook introduced its own short-video service, built into Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app that Facebook bought last year,” The New York Times writes. “The move underscores how video has increasingly become critical to companies like Facebook, which is seeking ways to keep its 1.1 billion users entertained and engaged â€" particularly on their mobile devices.”
NEW YORK TIMES

Macau Legend Considers Reducing and Delaying I.P.O.  |  The casino operator Macau Legend Development is considering cutting the size of its planned fund-raising by more than half, amid poor market conditions, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

VENTURE CAPITAL »

Twitter Executive Joins White House  |  Nicole Wong, Twitter’s legal director of products, is joining the Obama administration as deputy United States chief technology officer, The Washington Post reports.
WASHINGTON POST

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

Senator Criticizes Lack of Supervision for Banks’ Consultants  |  A warning from Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio that there was a risk to the economy in the lax oversight of firms that banks hire to help them comply with federal rules.
DealBook »

Perelman Company Reaches Another ettlement  |  MacAndrews & Forbes, the holding company of the billionaire financier Ronald O. Perelman, agreed to pay a $720,000 civil penalty to resolve accusations that it violated reporting requirements related to its acquisition of stock in the Scientific Games Corporation.
DealBook »

Regulators Said to Consider Doubling Capital Requirement for Big Banks  |  Bloomberg News reports: “U.S. regulators are considering doubling a minimum capital requirement for the largest banks, which could force some of them to halt dividend payments.”
BLOOMBERG NEWS

! China Central Bank Takes Hard Line as Credit Tightens  |  The New York Times reports: “China’s financial system is in the throes of a cash squeeze as the government tries to restructure the economy and punish speculators, with interbank lending rates spiking on Thursday and bank-to-bank borrowing nearly stalled.”
NEW YORK TIMES

Europe’s Finance Ministers Start Negotiating Rules for Failing Banks  | 
NEW YORK TIMES

Apple Lawyer Says Outcom of E-Book Case Could Hurt Competition  |  The New York Times writes: “In battling the government’s charges that it engaged in e-book price fixing, Apple has warned a judge that what is at stake is not just healthy competition in the book industry, but the way business is conducted between retailers and providers of everything from music to books to movies.”
NEW YORK TIMES

Trustee for Madoff Victims Can’t Sue Big Banks, Court Rules  | 
ASSOCIATED PRESS