Sony Rebuffs New Call to Sell Entertainment Unit

TOKYO-Sony’s chief executive, Kazuo Hirai, reiterated Thursday that the company’s music and movie businesses are not for sale, rebuffing a renewed push by the American activist investor Daniel S. Loeb to break up Sony’s sprawling empire, though the company’s board would continue to study the matter.

Speaking to shareholders at the electronics and entertainment giant’s annual general meeting in Tokyo, Mr. Hirai said that movies and music were an indispensable part of Sony’s growth strategy. Mr. Loeb’s firm, Third Point, which claims to be one of Sony’s biggest shareholders, has proposed that Sony partially spin off its entertainment arms and invest the proceeds into its struggling electronics business.

‘‘The entertainment business plays an important role in Sony’s future growth,’’ Mr. Hirai told investos, saying it added critical value to the company and should not be let go. ‘‘This proposal strikes at the heart of what kind of company Sony ultimately will become in the future,’’ he said. ‘‘We intend to take our time in discussing it.’’

Mr. Hirai’s remarks came after Mr. Loeb upped the ante in what is a rare bid to shake up one of Japan’s most storied companies. In a letter to Sony’s board sent on Tuesday morning, Mr. Loeb disclosed that Third Point had raised its stake to about 7 percent, or about 70 million shares, up from 6.5 percent last month, and urged that Mr. Hirai take his proposal seriously.

On top of raising capital to help bolster Sony’s electronics strategy, Mr. Loeb argues that giving the entertainment business its own board would provide stronger oversight of revival efforts and spending plans.

But some analysts! have questioned the wisdom of spinning off some of Sony’s profitable content businesses â€" which could cut off much of the company’s access to their lucrative cash profits â€" while keeping its loss-making electronics divisions. Over the past ten years, Sony had made most of its operating profit from is content and insurance arms, while electronics lost money.

Sony’s cumulative operating profit over the past decade would have been almost twice as high if not for its ailing electronics business, according to Atul Goyal, technology analyst at Jefferies.

‘‘Sony should spin off electronics instead of content,’’ Mr. Goyal wrote in a report released ahead of the shareholders meeting.

The funds raised, he added, could be used to fund growth of Sony’s already- lucrative content business. Such a move, he said, would ‘‘add significantly more value for investors.’’

Equity Firm Tied to New York Pension Scandal Raises $7.7 Billion From Investors

Four years ago this month, the private equity firm Riverstone Holdings agreed to pay $30 million to resolve its role in a “pay-to-play” pension fund investigation by Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general at the time. Several months later, Riverstone’s founder, David M. Leuschen, paid an additional $20 million to settle his role in the case.

“It is important that both firms and individuals be held accountable for conduct that jeopardized the integrity” of New York’s state pension fund, Mr. Cuomo, now New York’s governor, said at the time.

Mr. Cuomo’s stern words, and the $50 million in payments, were a reputational blow to Riverston.. It seems, though, that the embarrassing episode and the penalties assessed against the firm and Mr. Leuschen have not affected its ability to raise money.

Riverstone announced on Wednesday that it had raised its largest fund ever, a $7.7 billion vehicle that exceeded its $6 billion goal. The domestic oil-and-gas boom has created a sharp demand for energy investments, and Riverstone, one of the country’s leading private equity firms focused on energy and power, has posted some of the sector’s strongest returns.

The fund is Riverstone’s first that it has raised independently from the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant that it worked with on its first six funds, which were co-branded Carlyle/Riverstone or Riverstone/Carlyle.

Carlyle backed two former Goldman Sachs investment bankers, Mr. Leuschen and Pierre F. Lapeyre Jr., when they started Riverstone in 2000.

The joint venture had terrific success, but over time the relationship between the two firms cooled and then was exacerbated by the pay-to-play pension fund scandal.

In 2007, Mr. Cuomo began investigating the millions of dollars and other favors that friends and aides of Alan G. Hevesi, the state comptroller and sole trustee of New York’s pension fund, had received from several private equity firms.

The inquiry focused on whether these favors were in exchange for helping the firms secure large investments from the pension fund, which had $160 billion in assets as of March 31.

As for Riverstone, the fund was accued of making several questionable payments, including $5 million in fees to Hank Morris, an influential middleman, or placement agent, who helped arrange the New York pension fund’s investment in three Riverstone/Carlyle funds totaling $530 million. Mr. Morris was a close friend and former political adviser to Mr. Hevesi.

Mr. Leuschen also made a personal investment of $100,000 in “Chooch,” a low-budget movie that was produced by the brother of David Loglisci, the former chief investment officer of the New York pension fund.

Mr. Hevesi, Mr. Morris and Mr. Loglisci were all indicted on corruption-related fraud charges, and Mr. Hevesi and Mr. Morris served prison time. Mr. Loglisci pleaded guilty, but did not go to prison.

Riverstone and Mr. Leuschen neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing as part of their $50! million ! settlement, which was the largest amount paid to Mr. Cuomo’s office by a single firm and its executives in the pension fund scandal.

The settlement with Mr. Cuomo has not slowed Riverstone down. Last year, the firm and Apollo Global Management led a $7.15 billion acquisition of the exploration and production unit of the El Paso Corporation and also paid $825 million for UTEX Industries, a maker of sealing products for oil-and-gas drilling. Those prominent deals and other profitable investments helped attract public pensions and other deep-pocketed clients to Riverstone’s latest fund.

“Investors are the lifeblood of our business,” said Elizabeth K. Weymouth, the Riverstone partner responsible for fund-raising, in announcing its record-setting fund. “By providing global and diversified exposure to the energy industry while maximizing risk-adjusted returns, Riverstone strives to help our limited partners meet their investment objectives.”

One investor not returning to Riverstone i New York’s pension fund. A fund spokesman confirmed that it had declined to invest this time around.

Larger Rival to Acquire 3-D Printing Start-Up MakerBot

MakerBot, the Brooklyn-based start-up that makes 3-D printers, has agreed to sell itself to its larger rival Stratasys, the companies announced on Wednesday.

The all-stock deal is valued at $403 million based on the closing price of Stratasys stock on Wednesday. It also includes earn-outs based on performance, which, if paid, would be worth up to $201 million based on Wednesday’s stock price.

The transaction, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to be completed in the third quarter. Under the terms of the deal, MarkerBot will operate as a separate subsidiary of Stratasys with its existing board and management in place.

“The last couple of years have been incredibly inspiring and exciting for us,” Bre Pettis, the chief executive and co-founder of MakerBot, said in a statement. “Partnering with Stratasys will allow us to supercharge our mission to empower individuals to make things using a MakerBot, and allow us to bring 3-D technology to more people.”

Makerot, which was founded in 2009, is credited with helping to popularize 3-D printing with machines that “print” plastic objects. The company’s printers are used by engineers and designers as well as hobbyists.

MakerBot generated $11.5 million in revenue in the first quarter of this year. Its revenue for all of last year was $15.7 million.

Stratasys, itself the result of a merger of two 3-D printing companies, caters to manufacturers, with printers used for prototyping. By merging with MarkerBot, Stratasys is hoping to offer “more accessible” desktop printers.

MakerBot raised $10 million in 2011 in a financing round led by the venture capital firm Foundry Group. The company’s investors include Bezos Expeditions, the investment firm of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com chief executive.

Britain to Start Sale of Lloyds Stake Soon

LONDON â€" Britain is preparing to sell part of its holding in the Lloyds Banking Group to institutional investors, the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said on Wednesday, but he declined to set out a timetable for the sale.

While Lloyds was in a ‘‘good position’’ and investor appetite was increasing, a sale of the government’s larger holding in the Royal Bank of Scotland was still ‘‘some way off,’’ Mr. Osborne said in a copy of his remarks released before his speech at the annual Mansion House dinner attended by senior financial professionals.

With the shares of the Royal Bank of Scotland still trading wel below the level at which the government bailed out the bank in 2008, Mr. Osborne said he would start a review into whether to split off the bank’s troubled assets into a separate entity.

In his remarks, Mr. Osborne said that with hindsight, ‘‘splitting R.B.S. into a good bank and a bad bank was probably what should have happened in 2008.’’

The government holds 82 percent of R.B.S. and 39 percent of Lloyds.

Some lawmakers and analysts had urged Mr. Osborne to use the Mansion House speech to dispel some of the uncertainty surrounding the two banks and present a clear timetable for when the government would start selling the stakes. Pressure on the government to do so is building ahead of the next general election, expected in 2015.

But for Mr. Osborne, the stake sales are just part of a longer list of banking issues he has to resolve before that election. He is expected to back proposals in a report by a parliamentary banking committee earlier in the day to introduce! criminal sanctions against banking executives.

The 600-page review, which was commissioned by the Treasury, probably made uncomfortable reading for many in the room Wednesday evening, since one of the recommendations was to threaten banking executives with prison should they behave recklessly in their jobs.

Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament on Wednesday that he was in favor of ‘‘penalizing, including criminal penalties against bankers who behave irresponsibly.’’

Also scheduled to speak at the Mansion House dinner was Mervyn A. King, who is retiring as governor of the Bank of England at the end of this month. Oneof the jobs he has to pass on to his successor, Mark J. Carney, the former governor of the Canadian central bank, is to improve the stability of British banks.

‘‘All our major banks remain highly leveraged,’’ Mr. King said in his remarks. ‘‘And of course the two biggest lenders to the domestic economy remain largely in state ownership. It is difficult to imagine a banking sector like that making a real contribution to any economic recovery.’’

Mr. King reiterated that there were clear signs of a modest economic recovery but that ‘‘growth is not yet strong enough.’’ Support for the recovery was still needed, he said, adding that ‘‘it will inevitably be a bumpy ride.’’

Krawcheck Guides 85 Broads Into Investments

Sallie L. Krawcheck, a former big bank executive, has emerged as a prominent advocate for Wall Street women in recent weeks, after buying the women’s network 85 Broads in May. And yet, it has remained unclear what exactly Ms. Krawcheck is planning to do with the organization.

The answer to that question came into focus on Wednesday, when 85 Broads announced the appointment of a new president, Allyson McDonald, a consultant on investing and philanthropy. The announcement seemed to suggest that 85 Broads would develop a way to invest capital in enterprises owned or led by women.

“I am thrilled to help move the worldwide conversation around investing in women from dialogue to real action!” Ms. McDonald said in a statement.

Ms. Krawcheck, in a statement, noted Ms. McDonald’s “great energy and a passion for women-owned and women-led businesses.”

After buying 85 Broads from its founder, Janet Hanson, Ms. Krawcheck has had a busy schedule, appearing at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan and at a cocktail party for 85 Broads last week. Next week, she is scheduled to be in London for a “power circle dinner,” according to the Web site of 85 Broads, which is named after Goldman Sachs‘s former address on Broad Street.

Ms. Krawcheck is embracing the limelight after initially k! eeping a relatively low profile since leaving her job as head of Bank of America’s wealth management division during a management shake-up in 2011. She has become involved in the online broker Motif Investing and built followings on Twitter and LinkedIn.

In conversations with the members of 85 Broads, Ms. Krawcheck has been considering the possibility of establishing an investment fund, she said in an interview last week after the 92nd Street Y event. She explained her thinking during the panel discussion.

“When women tart businesses, they are successful more often than men’s businesses are,” Ms. Krawcheck said on stage at the 92nd Street Y event. “And yet, the venture capital funding goes to women much less than it goes to men.”

“What is keeping the capital from finding its way to where those returns are?” she asked.

Ms. McDonald, the newly appointed president of 85 Broads, has experience at Goldman Sachs, Fidelity Investments and New York Life, according to Wednesday’s announcement. She has held senior roles at Fidelity Charitable and the Clinton Foundation, and she currently runs her own consultancy.

In Wake of Pay-to-Play Scandal, Riverstone Raises Its Largest Fund

Four years ago this month, the private equity firm Riverstone Holdings agreed to pay $30 million to resolve its role in a “pay-to-play” pension fund investigation by the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo. Several months later, Riverstone’s founder, David Leuschen, paid an additional $20 million to settle his individual role in the case.

“It is important that both firms and individuals be held accountable for conduct that jeopardized the integrity of the New York State Common Retirement Fund,” Mr. Cuomo said at the time.

Mr. Cuomo’s stern words, and the $50 million in payments, were a reputational blow to Riverstone. It seems, though, that the embarrassing episode, and the penalties assessed against Riverstone and Mr. Leuschen, has not affected their ability to raise money.

Riverstone announced Wednesday that it had raised its largest fund ever, a $7.7 billion vehicle that exceeds its $6 billion target. The domestic oil-and-gas boom has created a sharp demand for enery investments, and Riverstone, one of the country’s leading private equity firms focused on energy and power, has posted some of the sector’s strongest returns.

The fund is Riverstone’s first that it has raised indepedently from the Carlyle Group, the private-equity giant that it teamed up with on its first six funds, which were co-branded Carlyle/Riverstone or Riverstone/Carlyle. In 2000, Carlyle backed two former Goldman Sachs bankers, Mr. Leuschen and Pierre Lapeyre, when they started Riverstone.

The relationship between the two firms cooled over time and was exacerbated by the “pay-to-play” pension fund scandal. Mr. Cuomo conducted an investigation into the millions of dollars and other favors that friends and aides of Alan G. Hevesi, the state comptroller and sole trustee of New York’s pension fund, received from several private equity firms in helping secure large investments from the pension fund.

As for Riverstone, the fund was accused of making several question! able payments, including $10 million in fees to an influential middleman, or placement agent, Hank Morris, who helped arrange the New York pension fund’s investment in the Riverstone/Carlyle fund. Mr. Leuschen made a personal investment of $100,000 in “Chooch,” a low-budget film that was produced by the brother of David Loglisci, the former chief investment officer of the New York pension fund.

Mr. Hevesi, Mr. Morris and Mr. Loglisci were all indicted on corruption-related fraud charges, and Mr. Hevesi and Mr. Morris served prison time.

Riverstone and Mr. Leuschen neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement with Mr. Cuomo’s office and agreed to broad changes that barred them from using placement agents to win public pension fund business. Carlyle also paid a $20 million settlement to resolve its role in the case. The Securities and Exchange Commission also investigated Riverstone and Mr. Leuschen but did not take any action.

The scuffle with Mr. Cuomo has not sowed Riverstone down. Last year, it led a $7.15 billion acquisition of the exploration and production unit of the El Paso Corporation and also paid $825 million for UTEX Industries, a maker of sealing products for oil-and-gas drilling. Those prominent deals and other profitable investments helped attract public pensions and other deep-pocketed clients to Riverstone’s latest fund.

“Investors are the lifeblood of our business,” said Elizabeth K. Weymouth, the Riverstone partner responsible for fund-raising, in announcing its record-sized fund. “By providing global and diversified exposure to the energy industry while maximizing risk-adjusted returns, Riverstone strives to help our limited partners meet their investment objectives.”

Google’s Shareholder Bulwark for the Future

Google shareholders are getting some modest future-proofing. A novel deal protects owners of the company’s non-voting stock against a discount - and from the day when founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin no longer wield full control. The convoluted legal settlement, however, only goes to show it’s better to avoid a shareholder caste system in the first place.

Shareholders opposed the $300 billion web search giant’s plan to issue non-voting stock. They argued that Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, who already hold super-voing class B stock, would become even more entrenched if Google started issuing non-voting C shares rather than standard voting A shares.

Facebook, Zynga and Groupon are among the other technology companies boasting classes of shares with different voting rights. There’s a case for protecting the autonomy of founders up to a point, but a misalignment of economic and voting interests can cause trouble. Big valuation gaps sometimes open up. Non-voting stock in both Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Sumner Redstone’s Viacom has on occasion traded at least 20 percent below the price of voting shares.

The Google solution, agreed just before the case went to trial, involves a five-step sliding scale. Starting at a 1 percent discount, class C holders will be compensated in cash or stock for part or all of the gap, up to a 5 percent discount. That turns out to be coincidentally on a par with the longterm discount at Telus, a Canadian telecommunications company where an ultimately successful plan to merge voting and non-voting shares met resistance last year from hedge fund Mason Capital Management.

Moreover, if Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, who control well over half Google’s voting power, sell down to below 15 percent of the votes, there’s a provision in the deal encouraging the board to convert C shares into voting A shares. That makes sense looking ahead to a time when the founders hold less sway and the votes of ordinary shareholders really count.

With a behemoth like Google involved, other companies with different voting classes might follow a similar template, assuming the settlement is approved by the Delaware court. But the fact is, it’s a messy solution for a problem that needn’t exist in the first place. As they establish! their ca! pital structures, companies should just stick to one share, one vote.

Richard Beales is assistant editor for Reuters Breakingviews. For more independent commentary and analysis, visit breakingviews.com.

Wesley Clark, Retired General, Joins Blackstone as an Adviser

Wesley K. Clark, the retired Army general and onetime supreme allied commander in Europe for NATO, has joined the Blackstone Group as an adviser for the its deals in the energy sector.

General Clark will also serve as a director of Fisterra, a company formed by Blackstone and a management team led by Pedro Barriuso, a former executive chairman of Element Power. Fisterra focuses on developing and running power projects in Latin America, Europe nd the Middle East.

Lars Thunell, a former head of the World Bank‘s financing arm, will also join Blackstone as an adviser and Fisterra as a director.

General Clark is the second former Army general to join a private equity firm in as many months. Last month, David H. Petraeus, a retired four-star general and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was hired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts to lead its KKR Global Institute.

Since retiring from the Army and briefly running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, General Clark has turned to business matters. He founded a consulting firm, Wesley K. Clark & Associates, that advises clients in a number of areas, including energy.

He is also a co-chairman of Growth Energy, a lobbyist group representing the American ethanol industry, and a director of BNK Petroleum, an independent oil exploration company.

“Helping countries overcometheir energy challenges and develop energy security is critical to economic growth and sustainable development,” General Clark said in a statement. “I am pleased to join Fisterra’s board of directors and look forward to supporting the team as they work to accomplish their goals.”

Dish Backs Away From Sprint

Dish Network said on Tuesday that it would not submit a new takeover bid for Sprint Nextel ahead of the 11:59 p.m. deadline and would instead focus on its bid for a stake in Clearwire. That apparently leaves Sprint free to complete the sale of a majority stake to SoftBank of Japan for $21.6 billion, DealBook’s Michael J. de la Merced writes.

Dish said in a statement that it still saw merit in a merger with Sprint, but said that conditions imposed by Sprint’s revised arrangement with SoftBank made it “impracticable” to put together a fresh bid in time. Those requirements included a shareholder rights plan limiting outside investors other than SoftBank and a demand that any rival bid have fully committed financing. “We will consider our options with respect to Sprint, and focus our efforts and resources o completing the Clearwire tender offer,” Dish said in a statement.

Dish now “has a stronger path to victory by pursuing its bid for Clearwire,” Mr. de la Merced says. “While Dish cannot buy all of Clearwire â€" Sprint already owns about 50 percent, and is set to raise that stake to about 65 percent through agreements with other big shareholders â€" it stands to gain a significant say in the governance of the company. And it will have additional leverage with Sprint.”

REGULATORS DIVIDED OVER CONSULTANTS  |  Federal and state regulators are united in a concern that consulting firms have produced shoddy work for banks, but they took divergent stances toward the consulting industry on Tuesday. “While federal authorities seemed to reinforce the industry’s power, a state agency tried to undercut it,” Ben Protess and Jessica Silver-Greenberg write in DealBook. The Federal Reserve ordered a large regional bank to hire a consulting firm to comb through high-risk customer accounts, reinforcing the impression that the consulting industry had become a shadow regulator for Wall Street. At the same time, New York State’s top financial regulator, Benjamin M. Lawsky, imposed a $10 million fine and a one-year ban on Deloitte, a prominent consultant that he accused of “misconduct.”

“It is unclear whether actions by state regulators like Mr. Lawsky â€" who has a history of irking his federal counterparts by running ahead of them â€" portend an overhaul of the consulting industry or a coming clash of state and federal banking regulators,” DealBook writes. “Some federal authorities who spoke on the condition of anonymity argued that while they depended on consultants, they were quietly rethinking the reliance on the outside firms. The federal regulators further note that they could punish banks that failed to improve and could instruct a bank to replace any consulting firm that had erred.”

GOOGLE PUSHES REGULATORY BOUNDARIES  |  In acquiring Waze, a social maps company, Google is aggressively pushing the boundaries of the law, Steven M. Davidoff writes in the Deal Professor column. Typically, buyers of companies are required to supply regulators with a Hart-Scott-Rodino filing, allowing them time to review the transaction for compliance with antitrust laws. “Yet Google’s only announcement of the deal appears to say that the companies signed and closed the deal that day, leaving Google the proud owner of Waze. According to a person close to Google, the company skipped the Hart-Scott-Rodino filing by relying on an exemption. This filing is not requ! ired if t! he acquisition is of a foreign company that has sales and assets in the United States of less than $60.9 million. Waze is an Israeli company with headquarters in Silicon Valley, so it comes under this test,” Mr. Davidoff writes.

“Google may be playing hardball with the government here. Psychologically, it may be harder for the government to undo something that is done. And once Google acquires this company, it will become harder to force it to undo any integration it may have done with its own services.”

ON THE AGENDA  |  Wall Street will be closely watching an announcement at 2 p.m. on Federal Reserve policy. While the expectation is that the Fed will leave rates unchanged, the statement will be scrutinized for any hint of the central bank’s plans to reduce its stimulus. Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, holds a news conference after the announcement. FedEx reports earnings before the maket opens. Jan Hatzius, the chief economist of Goldman Sachs, is on Bloomberg TV at 10 a.m. Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine Capital is on CNBC at 12:30 p.m.

A WORRISOME SIGN FROM JEFFERIES  |  The Jefferies Group on Tuesday reported unexpectedly weak bond trading results for its second quarter, amid turbulence in the markets. The question now is whether other investment banks have been similarly hurt, DealBook’s Peter Eavis writes. “Though Jefferies is not as large as Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase, it is an experienced bond-trading firm that weathered the severe storms that have buffeted markets since the financial crisis of 2008. It was no surprise, then, that Wall Street shuddered a little after Jefferies reported second-quarter fixed-income revenue that was down 27 percent fro! m a year ! earlier.”

Mergers & Acquisitions »

Icahn Buys Half of Southeastern’s Stake in Dell  |  Carl C. Icahn and Southeastern remain allied in their bid to defeat the takeover offer by Michael Dell and the investment firm Silver Lake. DealBook »

Dalian Wanda of China to Spend $1.6 Billion on Yacht Maker and London Hotel  |  The property developer Dalian Wanda said on Wednesday that acquiring the yacht maker Sunseeker International and building a luxury hotel in London would help it branch into new markets outside China. DealBook »

Huawei Would Be Open to Buying Nokia  |  Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group, told The Financial Times: “We are considering these sorts of acquisitions; maybe the combination has some synergies but depends on the willingness of Nokia. We are open-minded.” FINANCIAL TIMES

Royalty Pharma Drops Bid for Elan  |  The decision to withdraw the takeover offer for the Irish drug company ends a fierce four-month acquisition battle. DealBook »

Duke Energy Taps Financial Officer to Be Next Chief  | 
REUTERS

Vodafone the Best Bet to Buy German Cable Giant  |  Vodafone has stronger finances than Liberty Global, Quentin Webb of Reuters Breakingviews writes. It can wring bigger savings from Kabel Deutschland, and may also irk regulators less. REUTERS BREAKINGVIEWS

INVESTMENT BANKING »

High-Frequency Firms Said to Be in Merger Talks  |  RGM Advisors and Allston Trading, two of the large high-frequency trading firms in the United States, “have discussed a deal that would combine their respective strengths in automated stock trading and futures markets, according to people close to the talks,” The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

An Investment Hangover, Real Estate Edition  |  Bloomberg News writes: “Mortgage real-estate investment trusts raised $7.4 billion in the first quarter by selling new shares, the most in two years, just before a plunge in the value of the firms.” BLOOMBERG NEWS

A Trader’s Guide to Manipulating Oil Prices  |  One oil trader, Halis Bektas, described to The Wall Street Journal one strategy he has used to manipulate prices. WALL STREET JOURNAL

How High Will Gold Go? Try ‘Infinity’  |  Former Congressman Ron Paul, an outspoken believer in gold, predicted on CNBC that “the dollar will collapse totally” and gold prices “will go to infinity.” CNBC

Glencore Xstrata Secures a Big Loan at Low Rates  |  Th commodities firm Glencore Xstrata “signed $17.3 billion of revolving credit facilities last week, paying a margin of 90 basis points more than benchmark rates for a three-year portion,” Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

PRIVATE EQUITY »

BC Partners to Buy Academic Publisher for $4.4 Billion  |  The European private equity firm has agreed to buy the academic publishing company Springer Science & Business Media from EQT Partners and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. DealBook Â! »

Google Looking to Team Up With Private Equity  |  Google is “for the first time considering forging alliances with private-equity firms to help it structure deals,” Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Terra Firma Real Estate Unit to Raise $1.5 Billion in I.P.O.  |  Terra Firma, the private equity firm run by Guy Hands, plans to raise as much as $1.5 billion through the initial public offering of the German real estate company Deutsche Annington. DEALBOOK

SunGard Said toExplore Sale of Unit  |  SunGard Data Systems, which is owned by a group of private equity firms, “is exploring a sale of its data managing operations that could fetch up to $2 billion, several people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday,” Reuters reports. REUTERS

HEDGE FUNDS »

A Sign of Maturation in Hedge Fund Industry  |  According to a Barclays report, the hedge fund industry is growing at a slower pace, with fewer funds being started, MarketWatch reports. MARKETWATCH

Hedge Funds Show a Softer Side  |  At an industry conference in Monaco, hedge fund managers “latched onto the idea that social responsibility and making money could go hand in hand,” Reuters writes. REUTERS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

Brazil Cement Giant Is Said to Cancel Planned I.P.O.  |  Brazil’s largest cement producer, Votorantim Cimentos, was expected to raise as much as $4.7 billion in what would have been one of the largest I.P.O.’s globally in 2013. DealBook »

Online Game Maker Said to Hire Banks for I.P.O.  |  Midasplayer International Holding, which makes the Candy Crush Saga game, has tapped banks to handle a potential I.P.O., The Wall Street Journal reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. WALL STREET JOURNAL

VENTURE CAPITAL »

Instagram Said to Be Unveiling a Video Product  |  AllThingsD reports: “Instagram plans to release a video product this Thursday at a press event at Facebook’s headqua! rters, ac! cording to multiple sources familiar with the matter.” ALLTHINGSD

Fab Design Site Said to Achieve $1 Billion Valuation  | 
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Amazon Builds Grocery Business From Webvan’s Ashes  | 
REUTERS

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

British Commission Calls for New Laws to Prosecute Bankers for Fraud  |  As part of a 600-page report, the British parliamentary commission on banking standards is urging new laws that would make it a criminal offense to recklessly mismanage local financial institutions. DealBook »

Chiasson and Newman to Remain Free During Appeal, Court Rules  |  A federal appeals court ruled that Anthony Chiasson, co-founder of Level Global Investors, and Todd Newman, a former portfolio manager at Diamondback Capital Management, will not have to report to prison while they fight their convictions. DealBook »

A Cleaned-Up Signature for Treasury Secretary Lew  | 
TWITTER

Uncertainty Over the Fed’s Plans  |  The New York Times writes: “The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, faces the increasingly difficult challenge of shaping investor expectations about the future course of Fed policy amid growing signs that the Bernanke era at the central bank is drawing to a close.” NEW YORK TIMES

Tribune Faces Potentally Big Tax Bill for Newsday and Cubs Deals  |  The Tribune Company faces a potential tax bill of more than $500 million over the sales of the Chicago Cubs and Newsday despite efforts to minimize the tax consequences of both deals, the company disclosed on Monday. DealBook »

How the I.R.S. Encourages Oil and Gas Spinoffs  |  A tax loophole has in effect become a subsidy for fossil fuel production, Victor Fleischer writes in the Standard Deduction column. DealBook »

Why More Inflation Might Help  |  “A! heretica! l thought that first surfaced as the economic crisis gripped the world five years ago is again gaining traction among experts: economic policy should be aiming for significantly higher inflation than the 1 to 2 percent annual rate that the United States economy is currently experiencing,” Eduardo Porter writes in the Economic Scene column in The New York Times. NEW YORK TIMES

Terra Firma Real Estate Unit to Raise $1.5 Billion in I.P.O.

Terra Firm, the private equity firm run by Guy Hands, plans to raise as much as 1.1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) through the initial public offering of the German real estate company Deutsche Annington. The company set the indicative price range on Wednesday for the pending I.P.O., which would value Deutsche Annington at up to 4.3 billion euros. The shares are expected to start trading on July 3. Read more »

BC Partners to Buy Academic Publisher for $4.4 Billion

LONDON - The European private equity firm BC Partners agreed on Wednesday to buy the academic publishing company Springer Science & Business Media for 3.3. billion euros ($4.4 billion).

BC Partners is buying Springer Science, based in Berlin, from the rival private equity firm EQT Partners and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation.

Springer Science had been contemplating an initial public offering as late as last week, though Europe’s financial markets have remained jittery because of the ongoing financial crisis.

The German academic publisher produces around 8,000 books each year on topics ranging from science and medicine to transport and business. The company reported revenue of 981 million euros last year and employs around 7,000 people, according to a company statement.

BC Partners said it planned to expand Springer Science’s market share in thse core business areas, and that both EQT Partners and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation would remain minority shareholders in the company.

Credit Suisse, Nomura, Jefferies and the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer advised BC Partners on the deal.