The Alibaba Group, China’s online commerce giant, says it plans to begin the process of going public in New York, Michael J. de la Merced writes in DealBook. The long-awaited initial public offering could be one of the biggest ever and could eventually raise more than the $16 billion that Facebook secured nearly two years ago. Analysts estimate that Alibaba could reach a valuation upward of $130 billion.
In a post on its corporate blog, the company said on Sunday that it planned to list on an American stock market, rather than the Hong Kong stock exchange, to become “a more global company.†According to a person briefed on the matter, the company plans to work with at least five major banks on its planned offering: Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. Citigroup might also play a role.
In related news, Weibo, a major Chinese microblogging company seen as that country’s answer to Twitter, filed on Friday for its own New York public offering, Mr. de la Merced writes in DealBook. At year end, Weibo had claimed 129.1 million monthly active users compared with Twitter’s 241 million. And to tie things all together, Alibaba invested in the company last year, valuing it at about $3.3 billion. Weibo’s prospectus listed a fund-raising target of $500 million, but the company might seek to raise significantly more.
VODAFONE AGREES TO BUY ONO  | Amid a flurry of asset sales and consolidation among European telecommunications companies in the last year, add one more deal: Vodafone of Britain agreed on Monday to purchase the Spanish cable company Ono for about $10 billion, Chad Bray and David Gelles write in DealBook. The deal values Ono at about 7.2 billion euros, including the assumption of debt. In 2013, Ono’s earnings before taxes, depreciation and amortization declined 8.8 percent, to €686 million, from the previous year.
Vodafone submitted a tentative offer last week ahead of Ono’s annual meeting. At the meeting, Ono shareholders approved an initial public offering, but the company’s board decided to also continue discussions with Vodafone. This would be Vodafone’s first big deal since it sold its stake in Verizon Wireless to Verizon.
MARKETS SHRUG OFF CRIMEA VOTE Â |Â Markets seem to be recovering after an initial shock driven by investor concern about the economic impact of western sanctions on Russia after Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine on Sunday.
The MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 45 countries, is largely steady, and yields on the German 10-year Bund, the benchmark for euro zone borrowing costs, are relatively flat, near Friday’s eight-month lows. The major European indexes, including the DAX in Germany and FTSE 100 in Britain, were up on Monday afternoon. The futures for the Dow Jones industrial average, Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and Nasdaq all indicate that they will open higher. Russian stocks rallied, as local investors shrugged off Western sanctions as being mostly symbolic.
Â
ON THE AGENDA  | The Federal Reserve’s industrial production index for January is released at 9:15 a.m. The National Association of Home Builders housing market index for March is out at 10 a.m. Laurence H. Meyer, a former Fed governor, is on CNBC at 8:30 a.m. Henry Blodget, the chief executive and editor in chief of Business Insider, is on CNBC at 11 a.m.
TODAY IS ST. PATRICK’S DAY  | Remember to wear something green (having green eyes does not count). For those in New York City, the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade begins at 11 a.m. on Fifth Avenue. But don’t expect to see Mayor Bill de Blasio there â€" he is boycotting the parade because of its policy prohibiting gay groups from marching openly. Guinness USA, the brewer known for its stout, has also joined the protests of the ban on public expression of gay pride, dropping its sponsorship of the event.
A FRAUD WAR SHORT ON COMBAT  | Since the financial crisis of 2008, the Justice Department has answered questions about a lack of criminal prosecutions related to mortgage fraud by insisting that they were working overtime. And if there had been cases to make, they would have made them, the department said. But last week, a report from the inspector general of the Justice Department, Michael E. Horowitz, “set the record straight,†Gretchen Morgenson writes in the Fair Game column. “Sure enough,†she adds, “the report told us how hard the nation’s law enforcement officials had been investigating these cases. That is, hardly at all.â€
Among other things, the report indicates that the Justice Department is unequipped â€" or unwilling â€" to combat complex financial frauds, which had the lowest priority for the F.B.I.’s criminal investigative division. And while a Justice Department spokeswoman contended that the report actually showed the mortgage fraud task force to have been a success, she declined to comment on the report’s description of how the department hyped claims of success in October 2012. In fact, the report found that much of what the department trumpeted as success was significantly exaggerated.
Ms. Morgenson writes: “The American people probably don’t need an inspector general’s audit to tell them how ineffectual the Justice Department was when it came to criminal prosecutions of the large, complex financial crimes that led to the crisis.â€
IT’S TIME TO FILL OUT YOUR N.C.A.A. BRACKET  | Selection Sunday has passed, and the seeds are set for the 2014 N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. If your bracket is perfect, you could win a billion dollars.
Â
2 Oligarchs in $7 Billion Deal for a German Oil Company  | RWE said it had reached a preliminary agreement to sell its oil and natural gas subsidiary, RWE Dea, to the Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman and German Khan for 5.1 billion euros. DealBook »
Jaccar Offers to Acquire Ship Supplier Bourbon  | Bourbon of France said on Monday that its largest shareholder, Jaccar, had offered to buy the company in a deal that gives it a value of at least $2.48 billion. DealBook »
Giant Interactive, a Chinese Web Video Game Operator, Agrees to $3 Billion Buyout  | Giant Interactive will be taken private by its chairman and a pair of private equity firms, Baring Private Equity Asia and Hony Capital of China. DealBook »
Rosneft to Take Stake in Pirelli Owner  | The deal will give the Russian state oil company Rosneft a 50 percent stake and allow the Italian private equity firm Clessidra to exit its investment. Marco Tronchetti Provera, Pirelli’s chairman and chief executive, will remain head of the company. DealBook »
Boutique Banks Gaining Advisory Share  | Independent and boutique investment banks are taking a growing share of the merger and acquisition fee pool, as international corporations are rejecting the idea that the size of a bank’s balance sheet is consistent with the quality of its advice, The Financial Times writes. FINANCIAL TIMES
Banks Put Foreign Exchange Bonuses on Hold  | Barclays, Citigroup and the Royal Bank of Scotland have frozen bonuses across their foreign exchange trading teams pending internal investigations into possible manipulation of currency benchmarks, The Financial Times writes. FINANCIAL TIMES
Canada’s Encana in Advanced Talks to Sell Wyoming Asset  | The Encana Corporation, one of Canada’s largest independent oil and natural gas producers, is said to be in advanced talks to sell its Wyoming gas fields to the private equity firms Carlyle Group and NGP Energy Capital Management for about $2 billion, The Wall Street Journal writes, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. WALL STREET JOURNAL
Carlyle’s Rubenstein Sets Sights on Bezos Interview  | David M. Rubenstein, co-founder of the private equity firm Carlyle Group and the president of the Economic Club of Washington, is said to be courting Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and the owner of The Washington Post, to sit for an interview at the club, The Washington Post reports. WASHINGTON POST
Pantera Said to Invest in Top Bitcoin Exchange  | Pantera Capital Management, a hedge fund that manages money for Fortress Investment Group executives, is said to have invested about $10 million in the Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp months before it became the world’s dominant dollar-Bitcoin exchange, Bloomberg Businessweek writes, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK
Hedge Fund Leader Joins Investors in Backing Circassia  | Crispin Odey, who leads the hedge fund Odey Asset Management, took a 12 percent stake in Circassia, a biotechnology firm that went public in London on Thursday, City A.M. reports.
CITY A.M.
ISS Debut Gives Less-Than-Stellar Return for Goldman and EQT  | The successful stock market debut of ISS, a cleaning and catering group based in Denmark, has brought a huge return to the Danish family behind the toy maker Lego but not as much for its other owners, Quentin Webb of Reuters Breakingviews writes. DealBook »
Jimmy Choo Owner Said to Be Considering I.P.O. Â |Â Labelux, the owner of the luxury shoemaker Jimmy Choo, is said to have had preliminary meetings with bankers about selling a stake in Jimmy Choo in an initial public offering, Bloomberg News reports, citing an unidentified person familiar with the situation. BLOOMBERG NEWS
Castlight Health Soars in Stock Market Debut  | Shares of Castlight Health, which provides software to businesses to track health care costs, more than doubled in their trading debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday morning. DealBook »
Start-Ups Aim to Conquer Space Market  | The start-up Planet Labs is challenging the giants of the space industry by producing dozens of small satellites that are cheaper and quicker to build than traditional satellites, The New York Times writes. NEW YORK TIMES
Secret Raises $8.6 Million  | The anonymous social sharing start-up Secret announced on Friday that it had raised $8.6 million in a Series A funding round from investors including Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, ReCode writes. RECODE
Thomas Judge, Who Invested in Start-Ups, Dies at 83 Â |Â Mr. Judge, one of the first institutional investors to try out venture capital as a portfolio manager for the pension fund of the AT&T Corporation, died on March 10 at the age of 83, Bloomberg News writes. BLOOMBERG NEWS
A Dragnet at Dewey & LeBoeuf Snares a Minnow  | Zachary Warren, a low-level employee at the once-giant law firm, was the unwitting target of an increasingly common prosecutorial tactic called parallel construction, James B. Stewart writes in the Common Sense column. NEW YORK TIMES
California Sued Over Diversion of Money From National Mortgage Settlement  | Three nonprofit groups want Gov. Jerry Brown to return $369 million used to reduce state debt, rather than help struggling homeowners, The New York Times writes. NEW YORK TIMES
Fed Challenge: Pull Back Without Pulling the Rug Out  | A central bank policy that helped stocks to surge may have also caused some market distortions, Jeff Sommer writes in the Strategies column. NEW YORK TIMES
Senate Draft Bill Aims to Wind Down Mortgage Financiers  | A draft of a Senate bill, released on Sunday, would wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in five years and would maintain the current arrangement in which the mortgage giants pay all of their profits to the Treasury, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS
Fed Transferred $79.6 Billion in Earnings to the Treasury Last Year  | The Federal Reserve, required by law to put most of its profit in the government’s coffers, has contributed almost $323 billion in the last four years, The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES
