Wall St. Shock: Take a Day Off, Even a Sunday

For the ambitious college graduates who flock to Wall Street, working into the wee hours or even pulling all-nighters is an unwritten expectation of the job. Spending both Saturdays and Sundays at the office is the norm.

But on Friday, Bank of America Merrill Lynch issued a small reprieve for those with grueling schedules: Take four days off a month, on the weekends.

Such an offer from an employer would sound like punishment for the average worker. But for junior employees of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, that recommendation was intended as a bit of relief.

Merrill Lynch, the investment bank unit, said in an internal memo on Friday that its analysts and associates â€" the two lowest-ranking employee levels â€" should try to spend four weekend days away from the office each month, part of a broader effort to improve working conditions.

“We are committed to making the work experience better for junior bankers and believe these enhancements will help ensure they have the resources and support needed to succeed,” Christian Meissner, the head of global corporate and investment banking at the bank, said in the memo, which was reviewed by The New York Times. A spokesman confirmed the memo’s contents.

The effort, coming after a review of several months, is the latest sign that Wall Street banks are taking a critical look at the hard-charging culture of these jobs, which are often seen as steppingstones to higher-ranking positions with better salaries (and, eventually, weekends off).

Last year, Goldman Sachs created a “junior banker task force,” composed of senior employees from different units, which recommended that analysts should be able to take weekends off whenever possible.

JPMorgan Chase plans this year to increase its staff of junior bankers 10 percent to help spread out the workload, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. The bank also plans to ensure that its young employees have one “protected weekend” set aside for rest each month.

For Bank of America, the issue sharpened after a 21-year-old intern died last summer in the company’s London office. Unconfirmed reports on social network forums suggested that the intern, Moritz Erhardt, had worked through three consecutive nights as part of the internship. Though his death was ultimately determined to have been caused by epilepsy, it nevertheless opened a discussion on Wall Street and in the news media about the grueling work hours expected of junior employees.

Bank of America’s review, which included hundreds of interviews with employees at all levels, led to a number of changes that are to start this quarter, the memo said. While the bank does not encourage weekend work, the memo said, “we recommend that analysts and associates take a minimum of four weekend days off per month.”

Exceptions to that guideline must be approved by a senior manager, according to the memo, which added that analysts and associates were required to use their allocated vacation time.

The changes come at a time when banks across Wall Street are trying to remain attractive employers for the country’s brightest young minds. Though the prospect of a large salary and experience in finance still draws many college graduates to the industry, some ambitious students are considering other career paths, including those in the technology industry, famous for its employee perks like free oil changes or staff masseuses.

“It’s a generational shift,” said Russell W. Ladson Jr., 24, a former analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “Does it really make sense for me to do something I really don’t love and don’t really care about, working 90 hours a week? It really doesn’t make sense. Banks are starting to realize that.”

Mr. Ladson, a graduate of Morehouse College who worked in the public finance group of the sales and trading section of Merrill Lynch, which would not be covered by the new rules, said he took the job in 2011 “because I wanted to make some quick money.” His starting salary was $70,000.

But he soon discovered a lack of passion for the work, made worse by the long hours. He would arrive at the office around 8:15 a.m., often staying until 1 the next morning, he said.

Another former analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Alex J. Cook, said that on a bad night, he “wouldn’t go home at all.” Mr. Cook, a 27-year-old graduate of Dartmouth, now works at Ralph Lauren in a strategy and operations role.

Mr. Ladson, after a stint at another financial firm, is now working at a technology start-up firm he helped found â€" which he views as more in line with his passions. The start-up, Drop, is developing an app to make reservations, to order and to pay at restaurants.

Many young workers are similarly looking for personal fulfillment in their jobs, said Adam Zoia, the chief executive of Glocap, an executive search firm focused on the investment management industry.

“It used to be the case that financial services were such attractive jobs that they were magnets for young talent,” said Mr. Zoia, who was once a junior employee at the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. “They didn’t have to worry as much about what the actual work experience was like.”

Bank of America said it intended to “make certain that junior bankers work on a wide variety of different assignments, where possible, and ensure that the development of core skills is an important factor in making staffing assignments.”

Changes in “technology, graphics and production and printing services” could also enhance efficiency and work-life balance, and the bank is reviewing these areas as well, the memo said.

Goldman Sachs, after its review last year, also said it would introduce new technology to make work more efficient.

But while some analysts complain about long hours, others say they enjoy the intensity of their work and the camaraderie that it can foster.

Mr. Cook, the former analyst at Bank of America, said he spent Super Bowl Sundays at the office in 2010 and 2011. His group took breaks to try to watch as much of the game as they could, he said.

“We would always order a bunch of Super Bowl food,” he said. “It was one of those classic investment banking bonding experiences.”

SAC Trader ‘Corrupted’ Doctors, Prosecutor Says

Mathew Martoma, a former SAC Capital Advisors hedge fund manager, “corrupted” doctors to get an “illegal edge” that helped him perpetrate the most lucrative insider trading scheme in history, a federal prosecutor said on Friday.

“The case is about cheating,” Arlo Devlin-Brown, an assistant United States attorney, told jurors during the opening of Mr. Martoma’s trial in Lower Manhattan. That cheating resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars for SAC and a $9.3 million bonus for Mr. Martoma.

Mr. Martoma’s lawyer countered that the government’s case was “riddled with inconsistencies and filled with reasonable doubt” and reminded the jury that Mr. Martoma’s future was on the line.

“The stakes here could not be higher,” Richard Strassberg, the lead defense lawyer said, citing “The Exonerated,” a play about six people who are wrongfully convicted of murder and other offenses.

The opening arguments were delivered to a jury of five men and seven women that includes a chief executive and a New York City bus driver, in a courtroom packed with friends and family of Mr. Martoma and spectators.

Mr. Martoma, 39, is the second SAC employee to stand trial in the Justice Department’s decade-long investigation into insider trading at SAC, which is run by the billionaire Steven A. Cohen.

The trial is at the heart of an investigation into what authorities have called a “systematic insider trading scheme.” Eight former SAC employees have been criminally charged with insider trading; six pleaded guilty. Last month, in the same courthouse, Michael S. Steinberg, another SAC trader, was found guilty of insider trading, a month after SAC agreed to pay $1.2 billion and plead guilty to insider trading.

On Friday, the lead prosecutors in Mr. Steinberg’s trial, Antonia M. Apps and Harry Chernoff, were among the spectators.

Mr. Martoma has been accused of seeking confidential information about the clinical trial of an Alzheimer’s drug and making trades in shares of the two companies developing it, Wyeth and Elan, based on that information. The trades helped the firm to avoid losses and generate profits totaling $276 million.

On Friday, the government promised to show jurors emails, phone calls and trading charts surrounding SAC’s trades of Elan and Wyeth shares, including evidence of the hedge fund’s $700 million position in Elan and Wyeth stock just two weeks before the companies announced negative results of the trial and before SAC sold all of its stock.

The government plans to bring to the witness stand Dr. Sidney Gilman, an 81-year-old retired University of Michigan professor who was also a paid consultant for Elan. During the period that Dr. Gilman worked for Elan, Mr. Martoma cultivated a business and personal relationship with Dr. Gilman and sought his “expert services” to obtain illegal tips, Mr. Devlin-Brown said.

The prosecution’s case turns on the testimony of Dr. Gilman, chairman of the safety committee for the trial of the Alzheimer’s drug, Mr. Strassberg said.

But his testimony has been a “moving target,” he added. Mr. Strassberg sought to discredit Dr. Gilman, who has reached a nonprosecution agreement with the government.

Mr. Strassberg told the jury that the government made Dr. Gilman an offer he couldn’t refuse: immunity in exchange for his cooperation. The deal was “a free pass as long as he agreed to say that he had tipped off Mathew Martoma,” he said.

While Dr. Gilman and Mr. Martoma exchanged emails and their meetings together were documented, there is no evidence to show exactly what they discussed, Mr. Strassberg said.

Mr. Strassberg also raised questions about Dr. Gilman’s memory. When he was meeting with Mr. Martoma, Mr. Strassberg said, Dr. Gilman was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer and was taking prednisone, a drug that can cause side effects of “confusion.”

“The prosecution’s case does not add up,” he told the jury.

On Friday afternoon, the jury also heard testimony from the government’s first witness, Timothy W. Jandovitz, a former trader at SAC who worked with Mr. Martoma. Mr. Jandovitz, who was responsible for executing the trades for Mr. Martoma and two other portfolio managers, told the jury that he did not know that Mr. Martoma had sold his entire position in Elan.

On July 29, 2008, the day that Elan announced its failed trial, Mr. Jandovitz’s computer system still said Mr. Martoma had a significant position in Elan. When he returned to the office the next day, the hedge fund had no position in the stock.

Mr. Jandovitz said he was later told that, “Steve Cohen directed Mathew Martoma not to inform me of our decision to sell the stock.”

Over the course of the week, which included three days of jury selection, the presiding judge, Paul G. Gardephe, made several rulings that could alter proceedings of the trial, which is expected to last up to four weeks.

These included a ruling that prevents prosecutors from using evidence that Mr. Martoma fainted when first confronted by F.B.I. agents on the front lawn of his million-dollar home in Boca Raton, Fla., in November 2011.

He also ruled to exclude a May 2012 deposition by Mr. Cohen, SAC’s founder, in which he told Securities and Exchange Commission investigators that he sold shares of Wyeth after discussing the company with another analyst at SAC. The defense argued the evidence would help exonerate Mr. Martoma.

Moelis Said to Prepare for a Potential I.P.O.

Moelis & Company, the boutique investment bank founded by Kenneth D. Moelis, has begun working with advisers on a potential initial public offering, people briefed on the matter said on Friday.

The firm is working with Goldman Sachs and is expected to add other counselors as well. Executives at the firm have entertained pitches from potential underwriters in recent months.

It isn’t clear whether the investment bank will go forward with an I.P.O. or pursue another transaction.

Should Moelis go public, it would be joining a handful of independent investment banks that already reside on the stock markets and fulfill an ambition of its founder. And it would come at a time when these firms â€" smaller than the likes of Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase â€" have nonetheless been collecting more and more deal fees.

Shares of Moelis’ publicly traded competitors rose last year, in particular those of Evercore Partners (which more than doubled) and Lazard Ltd. (up about 52 percent).

Since its founding in 2007, Moelis has become one of the biggest of the independent banks, dispensing advice on mergers, bankruptcies and other corporate transactions across the globe. Among its biggest assignments last year was the merger of the advertising giants Omnicom and Publicis.

The firm has also advised governments as well, including that of Dubai on the reorganization of Dubai World.

Moelis ranked 15th in worldwide announced deals last year and fourth in announced restructurings, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

While Moelis counts Sumitomo Mitsui, one of Japan’s biggest banks, as one of its investors, much of its privately held stock lies in the hands of the deal makers it has hired over the years. Many of these bankers, especially recent recruits, have counted on an I.P.O. or a sale of the firm to provide them with their big payout.

A spokeswoman for the firm declined to comment.

News of Moelis’ preparations was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

In Insider Case, Six Degrees or Less of Harvard Law School

In May 1999, on the stately campus of Harvard Law School, Mathew Martoma was facing expulsion for doctoring his grades in the hopes of securing a coveted judicial clerkship.

That same month, Arlo Devlin-Brown was preparing to graduate from the school on his way to one such clerkship.

Fifteen years later, the classmates are having something of a reunion in Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan, though there is not much to celebrate.

Mr. Devlin-Brown is prosecuting Mr. Martoma, his onetime law school peer who went on to become a trader at SAC Capital Advisors, on criminal insider trading charges. Mr. Martoma, who at Harvard went by the name Ajai Mathew Thomas, is accused of using secret drug trial information to help SAC avoid losses and gain profits of $276 million.

The case, which prosecutors at the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan called “the most lucrative insider trading scheme ever charged,” took a bizarre turn on Thursday when the judge presiding over the trial unsealed court records detailing Mr. Martoma’s expulsion from Harvard. Mr. Devlin-Brown, as an assistant United States attorney and the lead prosecutor in the case, had pressed the judge to release the records.

Mr. Martoma, the records show, used a computer program to change grades from B’s to A’s, including criminal law and civil procedure. He then sent the fabricated transcript to 23 judges when he applied for clerkships.

In his defense, Mr. Martoma told Harvard that he falsified his transcript mainly to impress his parents. Harvard’s disciplinary board concluded that Mr. Martoma “was apparently under extreme parental pressure to excel academically.”

Lou Colasuonno, a spokesman for Mr. Martoma, said on Thursday: “This event of 15 years ago is entirely unrelated to, and has no bearing on, this case.” He added that the prosecution, in raising the issue, was trying to “unduly influence the ongoing court proceedings.” On Friday, he had no additional comment.

It is unclear whether Mr. Devlin-Brown was aware of the expulsion at the time. Authorities discovered the expulsion in the course of investigating Mr. Martoma, one person briefed on the case said, and the tip did not come from Mr. Devlin-Brown. In fact, Mr. Martoma and Mr. Devlin-Brown may have not even known each other from their Boston days, given the class size of Harvard Law School. The class of 2016, according to Harvard, has 564 students.

The disclosure of Mr. Martoma’s expulsion from Harvard coincided with the final day of jury selection in his trial. On Friday, Mr. Devlin-Brown and Mr. Martoma’s lawyer delivered opening arguments in the case.

The trial, which is expected to last up to a month, comes after SAC itself pleaded guilty to criminal insider trading charges. The hedge fund, run by the billionaire investor Steven A. Cohen, declined on Thursday to comment on whether it was aware of Mr. Martoma’s infraction at Harvard.

In an interview on Friday, a classmate recalled that rumors spread widely on campus about a law student being expelled for changing grades. That person, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said he did not connect the dots between the law school whispers and Mr. Martoma until the disclosures on Thursday.

Mr. Martoma and Mr. Devlin-Brown followed somewhat similar paths at Harvard, both participating in the famous Ames Moot Court Competition. Mr. Devlin-Brown won the prize for best oralist, while his group won for best team. Mr. Martoma, likely in a different year, was awarded the best brief in the competition for first-year students.

After school, their paths diverged, with Mr. Martoma, after being expelled, landing at Stanford Business School. He eventually found his way to Wall Street, obtaining a job at SAC in 2006.

Mr. Devlin-Brown stuck to the law. After a clerkship on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, he became an associate at Wilmer Hale. He became a prosecutor in 2005.

Mr. Devlin-Brown and Mr. Martoma are not the only Harvard Law links to the trial. Mr. Martoma’s lawyer at Goodwin Procter, Richard Strassberg, graduated from Harvard Law a decade earlier.

Lorin Reisner, the head of the criminal division at the United States attorney’s office, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1986. Mr. Reisner graduated a year ahead of Richard Zabel, the deputy United States attorney in Manhattan.

Money Flows to the Biggest Buyout Funds

In the world of private equity, it may help to be big.

Half of all capital raised for private equity buyouts in 2013 went to the biggest funds, according to data released on Friday by Preqin, a research firm based in London. It was the first time since 2008 that megafunds â€" defined as having more than $4.5 billion in assets â€" have commanded half the market.

Of the $169 billion raised by 145 buyout funds last year, $85 billion went to megafunds, Preqin said. In 2012, when $95 billion was raised, the biggest funds received $30 billion, about 32 percent of the total.

This shift came during a resurgence in overall fund-raising last year after several years of muted activity. Buyout funds in 2013 attracted the most money since 2008, a year when they raised $230 billion, according to Preqin.

That big haul in 2008 came at the end of a private equity boom and just as the financial crisis was gathering. Megafunds raised $114 billion that year, about half of the total amount raised, Preqin said.

Now, with investors once again willing to commit large amounts of money to buyout specialists, the biggest funds are enjoying an enthusiastic reception. The average private equity fund was $1.2 billion last year, compared with $740 million in 2012 and $1.1 billion in 2008, Preqin said.

“The mega buyout funds are back in town,” said Nick Jelfs, a Preqin spokesman. “Many of those big managers are displaying really good performance in their previous funds, which started investing around the time of the crisis.”

Apollo Global Management, for example, raised an $18.4 billion fund by the end of the year, including $17.5 billion from outside investors. Amid strong demand, Apollo received approval from investors to raise the limit on the fund’s size from an earlier cap of $15 billion, ultimately gathering the largest private equity fund in its history.

Among all private equity funds ever raised, the new Apollo fund ranks fourth, Preqin said on Friday. The No. 1 spot is held by a Blackstone Group fund that closed in 2006.

Size may not be the chief reason for the capital-raising success of the biggest funds, said Antoine Dréan, the founder and chairman of the placement agent Triago.

“It’s really a question of performance and story,” Mr. Dréan said. “It’s a question of being able to demonstrate” to investors “that the money will be well managed.”

In addition, investors may perceive that the biggest funds are more reliable, Mr. Jelfs said.

“Whereas large managers may not be able to produce the highest returns, they are often a little more consistent,” he said. “I think that’s what investors are looking for.”

Sandy Weill Named Chairman of Hamilton Insurance

Sandy Weill, the former head of Citigroup, is preparing for his third act in the insurance industry.

The Hamilton Insurance Group, the privately held firm that bought the reinsurance business of SAC Capital Advisors last month, announced on Thursday that it had hired Mr. Weill as chairman.

“Sandy Weill is an icon in the financial services sector, someone who has been at the forefront of change throughout his career,” Brian Duperreault, Hamilton’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. “Under his leadership, and with our forward-thinking management team, I have no doubt that our goal of establishing a leading insurance and reinsurance business will be realized.”

A longtime Wall Street deal maker whose financial career spanned five decades, Mr. Weill could be a boon to Hamilton if it decides to pursue other acquisitions. As of last month, the company, led by Mr. Duperreault and Two Sigma Investments, had about $800 million in capitalization, according to the company’s statement.

Mr. Weill, who departed Citigroup in 2006, helped build the company into what was at one point the world’s largest bank. He was an architect of the 1998 merger between Citibank and the Travelers Group, the insurance company, and fought to repeal regulation that impeded Citigroup’s growth.

The financial crisis would later unravel much of Mr. Weill’s work, however, as the bank struggled to regain its footing in the aftermath of 2008.

SAC Capital, the hedge fund founded by the billionaire Steven A. Cohen, pleaded guilty to insider trading charges in November. In its plea deal, SAC agreed to pay a $1.2 billion penalty to federal authorities and said it would stop managing money for outside investors. Weeks later, it sold its reinsurance business, now known as Hamilton Re, for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition represented a return to the insurance business for Mr. Duperreault as well. He was most recently the chief executive of the Marsh & McLennan Companies after serving as chief executive of Ace Ltd.

“I think it is rare to have an opportunity to be involved with people who have an exemplary record in what is necessary to run a successful insurance company,” Mr. Weill said in the statement.

Corporate Takeover? In 2013, a Lawsuit Almost Always Followed

These days, you can be sure that when a company announces it is being acquired, it will also be sued by a bevy of plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Merger litigation is a big issue in Delaware and last year, it reached historic rates. According to a new study that I prepared along with Matthew D. Cain, 97.5 percent of takeovers in 2013 with a value over $100 million experienced a shareholder lawsuit. This is even higher than the final figure in 2012 of 91.7 percent of transactions. And it is up from the rate in 2005 when only 39.3 percent of transactions attracted a lawsuit.

It is not just that merger litigation has become ubiquitous. There are more plaintiffs and law firms getting into the business. The average takeover valued greater than $100 million last year had seven lawsuits. Each of these roughly represents a different law firm. This is up from 2012, when the average was five lawsuits and a tripling of the rate in 2005, which was 2.2 suits per transaction.

Despite the aggregate increase in the number of suits, litigation brought in more than one state decreased. In 2013, 41.6 percent of transactions with litigation had litigation in multiple states, down from 51.8 percent in 2012. If the trend continues, it is likely to be seen by some as good because multijurisdictional litigation raises the issue of plaintiffs’ lawyers trying to game the system by going to the court where they will get the best treatment.

So what happened to all of this litigation?

Settlement information is still preliminary because many of these cases are making their way through the courts, but over 70 percent have settled so far. Nearly 85 percent of the settlements â€" about the same rate as the 85.7 percent in 2012 â€" were disclosure-only, which typically result in an amendment to the company’s proxy statement to provide additional disclosure to shareholders. Shareholders are not paid any amount in this settlement but the plaintiffs’ attorneys are paid fees awarded by the court.

Because of this, disclosure-only settlements have been criticized for being “cheap” settlements that benefit only plaintiffs’ attorneys and only further encourage litigation without merit. And given that the vast majority of these settlements are disclosure-only, this reinforces the critics. Defenders of this litigation say it pays for the better cases like the litigation over the Southern Peru buyout, which ended with a $2.3 billion judgment, and most recently, the litigation over Kinder Morgan’s acquisition of the El Paso Corporation, which ended in a settlement for shareholders totaling $110 million. After all, plaintiffs’ attorneys argue, these lawsuits must be brought in a wide variety of cases to conduct discovery and find the bad apples. There is also the unquantifiable benefit that companies are on their best behavior because they know they will be sued if they are not.

While Delaware has been quick to award big fees where there is wrongdoing, the judges are clearly tiring of disclosure-only settlements. Last year, in a number of cases, including the case In re Paetec Holding Corporation, Delaware judges have pushed back by scrutinizing disclosure-only settlements for the real value they provide to shareholders. In the Paetec ruling, Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock III stated that these settlements might be the subject of collusion and that the risk is that defendants and plaintiffs have agreed to “trivial disclosures as the path of least resistance to a desired end.” He recommended that the court scrutinize disclosure-only settlements. Even so, Vice Chancellor Glasscock awarded an attorneys’ fee of $500,000 for the disclosure-only settlement in the case.

In another matter this past year, In re Gen-Probe, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster raised questions about the high attorneys’ fees in disclosure-only settlements and awarded only $100,000. The Vice Chancellor also expressed concern over the growth of this litigation. He stated that there may need to be a “recalibrating” of the idea that the court is going to give out “left and right, 500 grand for” relatively meritless disclosure-only settlements.

Attorneys’ fees awarded in litigation settlements were $485,000 per case in 2013 compared with $500,000 the year before. And in line with the growing sentiment against these cases and disclosure-only settlements, median fees were at the lowest average levels since we began tracking the data in 2005.

So what does this mean for corporate America? Many of these lawsuits have no merit, but there are a number of suits that do address real wrongdoing and should be encouraged. But any change may be a long way off. The current system benefits plaintiffs’ lawyers but also defense lawyers who earn quite a bit defending these cases. It is also a boon to buyers, who are no longer liable for future claims from shareholders. This is not a bad insurance policy for $500,000 or so.

Ultimately, it still remains to be determined whether the vast majority of this litigation and, in particular, disclosure-only settlements, benefit shareholders. The debate continues, but absent radical change so undoubtedly will the litigation.

The ‘Wolf’ Is Still Bending the Truth, Prosecutors Say

Jordan Belfort, the author of two books about his life as the rapacious “Wolf of Wall Street” and now a prominent motivational speaker, is sending mixed messages, federal prosecutors say.

Mr. Belfort is the felon whose life as a crooked, drug-addled stockbroker is portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the Martin Scorsese movie released last month. He has taken to social media to defend himself after a flurry of publicity that has sometimes been unflattering. But the prosecutors who sent him to jail are not buying Mr. Belfort’s account.

The United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York said that Mr. Belfort owed $100 million to investors who lost money in the 1990s doing business with Stratton Oakmont, the now-defunct Long Island brokerage firm that Mr. Belfort founded. And Mr. Belfort wants the public to know that he’s doing everything he can to make those investors whole.

“For the record, I am not turning over 50 percent of the profits of the books and the movie, which was what the government had wanted me to do,” he wrote on his Facebook page on Dec. 29, referring to his contributions to a court-ordered restitution fund. “Instead, I insisted on turning over 100 percent of the profits,” he said.

Mr. Belfort added that his proceeds “should amount to countless millions of dollars and hopefully be more than enough to pay back anyone who is still out there.”

The comments were also published on Mr. Belfort’s Twitter account, @wolfofwallst.

Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, took issue with Mr. Belfort’s claims.

“Belfort’s Facebook comments are substantially inaccurate,” he said. “The government has seen nothing to suggest that even 100 percent of Belfort’s profits from his book and the movie ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ would yield, in his words, ‘countless millions,’ much less the approximately $100 million that is still owed to the victims.”

Nicholas M. De Feis, a lawyer for Mr. Belfort, said that he did not have a crystal ball to divine the final tally, but his understanding was that the movie and the books “are succeeding well beyond expectations.”

Among the extensive publicity surrounding the release of the movie have been articles that refer to Mr. Belfort’s obligation to give back half of his gross income for three years after his supervisory release from prison, which was April 28, 2009.

Mr. Belfort’s lawyers have said in letters to the United States attorney that the obligation to turn over half his income is over and that they have made repeated offers to pay 100 percent of the profits from the movie and the two books in a forbearance agreement.

Mr. Nardoza, however, said that even before Mr. Belfort’s supervisory release, the government had to take aggressive steps to claim portions of Mr. Belfort’s income. After the government learned about Mr. Belfort’s deal to publish the book “The Wolf of Wall Street” in 2007, it served subpoenas and restraining notices on Bantam Books, Warner Brothers and Appian Way for any payments they might have been obligated to make to Mr. Belfort, Mr. Nardoza said.

Similarly, the United States attorney served a restraining notice on Red Granite Pictures, the production company for the movie, after it became aware of Mr. Belfort’s movie contract. As a result, the government has received $125,000 from Red Granite and expects to receive a second payment of $125,000 “in the near term,” Mr. Nardoza said.

Mr. De Feis said that it had always been Mr. Belfort’s position that he would turn over all of his book and movie proceeds to the government and that the Facebook post was “completely true.”

Mr. Belfort has offered several accounts of how much money his victims might receive from his book and movie deals and of the status of his negotiations with the government. New York magazine said in an article published in November that Mr. Belfort claimed to have signed over all the proceeds and profits from his story to the government, but no signed agreement has been executed. Both the United States attorney and Mr. Belfort’s lawyers say the two sides are negotiating.

As for the amount that investors might see from his books and movie, along with his estimate of “countless millions,” he has also told Bloomberg Businessweek that his books and movie revenue “will probably be 20, 30 million dollars.”

Mr. Nardoza said that Mr. Belfort is giving the wrong impression in his claims. “He insinuates in his Facebook post that he’s going to make victims whole by all this money from the book and movie,” he said. “But he still owes victims $100 million,” which is not a realistic amount to expect from the movie proceeds in Mr. Nardoza’s view.

“We’re seeking to get assets from Belfort and people that owe him and to do our best to get money back to victims,” Mr. Nardoza said. “Whatever money that may be, we’re going to look to seize it.”

Since the release of the film on Christmas Day, there has been a tidal wave of news coverage, and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University is even sponsoring a program titled “The Wolf of Wall Street: Behind the Scenes at Stratton Oakmont” later this month. The evening will feature panelists and speakers including Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Gregory Coleman, the F.B.I. special agent who led the investigation of Mr. Belfort, among other prominent lawyers.

In the meantime, Mr. Belfort has garnered hundreds of mostly supportive comments from Facebook followers, including “You are a good man Jordan!” and “Bayside’s got your back.”

Mr. Belfort rallied his troops in late December with a Facebook post that pointed out that all publicity is good publicity. “Ahh, the haters!” he wrote. “No one spreads the word for you faster than they do. They’re the best PR in the world.”

Those who know him best might even wonder whether it was all another example of his genius at manipulation. Even Mr. Belfort’s pesky prosecutors â€" and the journalists who write about him â€" might agree that every criticism and every article simply furthers the fame of the broker who fleeced investors of millions.

Carlyle Hires UBS Executive for Market Strategies Group

The Carlyle Group, the big alternative investment firm based in Washington, has hired a UBS executive to bolster its capital markets expertise.

Boris Okuliar, recently a managing director at UBS, is joining Carlyle as head of capital markets in the investment firm’s global market strategies group, which invests in equities, hedge funds and various types of credit, Carlyle said on Friday. Mr. Okuliar will also hold that title at Carlyle GMS Finance, a business development company focused on middle-market lending.

Mr. Okuliar, 37, who was head of leveraged capital markets in London for UBS, is starting at Carlyle in February. He will be based in New York.

“With his extensive background in syndicated and middle-market leveraged finance in the U.S. and Europe, Boris will play an important role in helping ensure that global market strategies, and in particular our GMS Finance business, are strongly anchored within the banking and sponsor community, enabling us to continue to invest wisely and create value for our investors,” Mitch Petrick, Carlyle’s head of global market strategies, said in a statement on Friday.

A number of investment bankers have left UBS to pursue other opportunities in recent months. The big Swiss bank, facing pressure from regulators to wall off its riskier activities, has moved to reduce its investment bank and focus more on businesses like wealth management.

On Thursday, the Blackstone Group, another private equity giant, announced that it had hired James R. Schaefer from UBS, where he was was global head of the power and renewable energy group.

During his time at UBS, Mr. Okuliar oversaw the structuring and execution of leveraged loans, bridge financing and high-yield bond placements. He previously worked for Barclays and Bank of America’s investment banking division.

Carlyle, which had $185 billion of assets under management as of Sept. 30, is best known for its private equity deals. But its global market strategies business is also a major focus, representing $35.4 billion in assets under management.

Morning Agenda: Banks Brace for Reckoning

When the dust has settled on investigations into the role of banks in the mortgage crisis, fines could total nearly $50 billion, and that does not include the $13 billion that JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Peter Eavis report in DealBook. Put into context, the $50 billion would equal roughly half the total annual profit of large American banks in 2012.

JPMorgan’s record mortgage settlement in November has caused trepidation for many Wall Street banks as they and their lawyers try to calculate how much they could owe the government for their role in selling troubled mortgages leading up to the financial crisis.

Ms. Silver-Greenberg and Mr. Eavis write: “The legal barrage has been generating mounting frustration among some top executives. The bankers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, say the government has taken an arbitrary, one-size-fits-all approach that could force them to pay more than their fair share.”

“While the potential settlements could be painful for banks, they also would enable them to close a troubled chapter,” they write.

INSIDER TRADING TRIAL RUNDOWN | Lawyers for Mathew Martoma, a former SAC Capital Advisors hedge fund manager charged with insider trading, tried to keep evidence that Mr. Martoma had been expelled from Harvard Law School under wraps. But on Thursday, the secret got out after the judge presiding over the trial ordered relevant court papers unsealed, Matthew Goldstein and Alexandra Stevenson report in DealBook. Mr. Martoma was expelled from the prestigious institution in 1999 for creating a false transcript of his grades when he was applying for a clerkship with a federal judge.

The disclosure of the information coincided with the selection of a 12-member jury, a difficult process that took three days. The jury consists of seven women and five men, including a chief executive for a shoe and accessory company, a bus operator, an insurance underwriter, an employee of an accounting firm and a labor lawyer. Opening statements are set to begin today.

LAWYERS AS BUSINESSMEN  |  For more than 50 years, the Washington law firm Patton Boggs has been a major force in legal, lobbying and business circles. But even the storied law firm is being forced to adapt to a changing industry that is increasingly requiring firms to act like business strategists, Elizabeth Olson writes in DealBook.

Like many of its peers, the Washington-based firm, which has represented corporations like the Mars candy company and Exxon Mobil, is “seeking a rapid way to bolster its revenue and expand its practice areas through a merger,” Ms. Olson writes. But even “casting about for a merger partner can open up a firm to speculation in the current ravenously competitive landscape.”

CHRIS CHRISTIE‘S ‘INNER JAMIE DIMON’  |  “Jamie Dimon’s tale of woe is proving an uncanny inspiration” to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Jeffrey Goldfarb of Reuters Breakingviews writes. “The two men share a no-nonsense leadership style, but perhaps also a blind spot to the repercussions their behaviors foster further down the organizations they run.”

ON THE AGENDA  |  The jobs report for December comes out at 8:30 a.m. Two regional Federal Reserve presidents are scheduled to give separate speeches on the economy â€" Jeffrey Lacker, the president of the Richmond Fed, goes on in Raliegh, N.C., at 8:45 a.m and James Bullard takes the stage in Indianapolis at 1:05 p.m. William H. Gross, the co-founder of Pimco, is on CNBC at 2 p.m. Looking ahead: NBC hosts the Golden Globes on Sunday at 8 p.m.

SNAPCHAT SAYS SORRY  |  Snapchat finally apologized on Thursday for a security vulnerability that allowed a group of security researchers to expose the names and phone numbers of 4.6 million Snapchat users on Jan. 1. “We are sorry for any problems this issue may have caused you and we really appreciate your patience and support,” Snapchat wrote in a blog post. (h/t The Verge)

Mergers & Acquisitions »

Dish Shares Drop After It Withdraws Bid for LightSquared  |  Shares in Dish were down more than 2.5 percent on Thursday after a lawyer for LightSquared said in bankruptcy court that its suitor had terminated its offer.
DealBook »

Striving to Be the Berkshire Hathaway of China  |  Fosun International is plain about its ambition to emulate Warren Buffett’s investment firm, buying up companies at home and abroad. Its latest deal is for Portugal’s largest insurance company.
DealBook »

Rolls-Royce Approached Wartsila, but Talks Have Ended  |  An acquisition of the Finnish manufacturer Wartsila would have expanded Rolls-Royce’s marine engine and energy businesses.
DealBook »

Regulators Approve Merger of Omnicom and Publicis  |  European antitrust regulators gave the go-ahead to the $35 billion merger of the United States advertising agency Omnicom and Publicis, its French peer, Reuters reports.
REUTERS

INVESTMENT BANKING »

Blackstone Hires UBS Banker to Lead Energy Advisory Group  |  James R. Schaefer was most recently global head of the power and renewable energy group at UBS. He will be a senior managing director at Blackstone Advisory Partners.
DealBook »

Analyst Suggests UBS Spin Off Investment Bank and Revive Warburg Name  |  In a research report on Thursday, Christopher Wheeler, a banking analyst at Medicobanca, said that it was a “strategic consideration” for UBS to spin off its investment bank.
DealBook »

JPMorgan to End Prepaid Card Business  |  JPMorgan Chase said it planned to sell or wind down its prepaid card business for corporate payrolls and government tax refunds and benefits, Reuters reports. The move is part of an effort to simplify its risk operations.
REUTERS

Bankers’ Bonus Blues  |  A mediocre fourth quarter means that bankers in New York and London are unlikely to improve on their total compensation from 2012 â€" and that could be the case for the next couple of years, say Antony Currie and Dominic Elliott of Reuters Breakingviews.
DealBook »

Why Are High-Level Bankers Not Being Prosecuted?  |  A federal judge asks why no one has been prosecuted when there is a widespread conclusion that fraud at every level permeated the bubble in mortgage-backed securities, Teresa Tritch writes in a New York Times Op-Ed piece.
NEW YORK TIMES

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Apollo Secures $18.4 Billion War Chest for Private Equity  |  Apollo’s newest fund, the largest in its history, underscores investors’ confidence that firm can find buying opportunities at a time when stock prices have risen drastically.
DealBook »

K.K.R. Raises $2 Billion Credit Fund  |  Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company is expanding its business of investing in distressed debt, and it said on Thursday that the amount of money raised for the new fund was double its initial goal.
DealBook »

Hellman & Friedman Exploring Sale of Catalina  |  The private equity firm Hellman & Friedman has approached other private equity firms to seek offers for Catalina Marketing Corporation, Reuters reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. Catalina offers personalized digital shopping for consumers.
REUTERS

Healogics Prepares Sale  |  Healogics, a wound care provider owned by the private equity firm Metalmark Capital, is exploring a sale valuing the company at nearly $1 billion, Reuters writes.
REUTERS

K.K.R. to Open Canadian Office  |  The private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company plans to open an office in Calgary, the capital of Canada’s oil patch, The Wall Street Journal reports. The office will be the first in Canada and will focus on energy investment.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

HEDGE FUNDS »

British Regulators Said to Prepare Charges Against Ex-Trader  |  Julian Rifat, a former trader arrested nearly four years ago in a crackdown on insider trading in London, is expected to be charged criminally in the coming weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter.
DealBook »

Elliott to Accept Increased Tender Offer for Celesio  |  The announcement by the hedge fund Elliott Management ends an impasse that threatened to block the $8.3 billion deal by the McKesson Corporation for the German pharmaceutical wholesaler Celesio.
DealBook »

Former Citigroup Chief Joins Ex-SAC Reinsurer  |  Sanford I. Weill, 80, the former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup, was named chairman of the board at Hamilton Insurance Group, a holding company for a reinsurer based in Bermuda that was sold by SAC Capital Advisors, The Financial Times writes.
FINANCIAL TIMES

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

Euronext Changes Up Management  |  The European exchange operator Euronext has shuffled its management ahead of its initial public offering, The Financial Times reports. Euronext’s parent company, United States-based IntercontinentalExchange, is planning to spin off the company this year.
FINANCIAL TIMES

Chinese Start-Up Delays I.P.O.  |  Jiangsu Aosaikang Pharmaceutical Company, a maker of cancer drugs, is postponing its $669 million initial public offering, which would have been the largest for Chinese start-ups, Bloomberg News reports.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

VENTURE CAPITAL »

New York to Host Bitcoin Breakfast  |  The New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Partnership Fund for New York City are hosting an invitation-only breakfast discussion on Bitcoin, ReCode reports. Invitations have gone out to banking and policy officials, as well as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
RECODE

Young Tech Workers Transforming San Francisco  |  Young technology workers are moving out of the suburbs to San Francisco in droves, attracting venture capitalists to the heart of the technology scene, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

Attorney General Vows to Crack Down on ‘Insider Trading 2.0’  |  The New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said he planned to investigate brokerage firms that might have provided early market-moving information to preferred clients.
DealBook »

JPMorgan Lost Madoff in a Blizzard of Paper  |  Documents released this week by federal prosecutors in their settlement of JPMorgan Chase’s involvement with Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud showed that a combination of turf wars and incompetence combined to facilitate the biggest Ponzi scheme ever, Floyd Norris writes in the High & Low Finance column in The New York Times.
NEW YORK TIMES

Cadwalader Picks Woolery as Next Chairman  |  Last February, James C. Woolery left investment banking to return to the practice of law. Less than a year later, he has been tapped to lead his new law firm.
DealBook »

Apple and Samsung Agree to Meet Mediator  |  Apple and Samsung Electronics agreed to meet with a mediator before their next trial to fight over smartphone patents, scheduled for March, the Bits blog writes.
NEW YORK TIMES BITS

British Regulators Said to Prepare Charges Against Ex-Trader

LONDON - British regulators are preparing to bring criminal charges against Julian Rifat, a former trader arrested nearly four years ago in what was then described as the largest crackdown on insider trading here, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Mr. Rifat’s lawyers were informed this week that the Financial Conduct Authority is planning to bring criminal charges against him, the person said. Those charges are expected to be announced publicly in the coming weeks, said the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Mr. Rifat, a former trader at the hedge fund Moore Capital Management, was among those arrested in a series of raids by the British authorities in March 2010 in an investigation called Operation Tabernula. He has denied wrongdoing.

His lawyers have been pressuring the British authorities to unfreeze his assets and had been expected to appear in court in London on Friday to argue their case, but that hearing was canceled as a result of the pending criminal charges.

News of the pending charges against Mr. Rifat comes as British authorities have faced criticism over their ability to bring criminal insider trading cases, known as insider dealing here.

Late last year, the Financial Conduct Authority quietly dropped its investigation of two executives at the hedge fund Lodestone Natural Resources and a trader at another firm.

The men were arrested last February and the hedge fund was forced to liquidate, but the investigation resulted in no fines or charges of criminal wrongdoing.

The Financial Conduct Authority, created after the Financial Services Authority was split into two regulators last April, has defended its ability and the ability of its predecessor to bring such cases, saying the investigations are complex and can take time to build.

In a news release last month, the agency noted that the British regulator and its predecessor had secured 23 convictions for insider dealing since March 2009.

Prosecutors in the United States have built an impressive string of convictions in recent years using cooperating witnesses and wiretaps. In defending their use of the secret recordings, federal prosecutors in Manhattan have said that insider trading is a particularly difficult crime to uncover.

The United States Attorney’s office in Manhattan has secured 77 insider trading convictions or guilty pleas since 2009.

In the Operation Tabernula investigation, eight people have been charged in Britain, but the inquiry has resulted in only one conviction so far.

Paul Milsom, a former senior trader at Legal & General, pleaded guilty to insider dealing and was sentenced in March to two years in prison.

A 10th man, Clive Roberts, a former trader, was arrested at the same time as Mr. Rifat, but hasn’t been charged.

Moore Capital has said that the investigation did not involve any of its own funds and that it was cooperating with authorities. The company has described Mr. Rifat as an “execution trader,” meaning he did not make investment decisions.

British Regulators Said to Prepare Charges Against Ex-Trader

LONDON - British regulators are preparing to bring criminal charges against Julian Rifat, a former trader arrested nearly four years ago in what was then described as the largest crackdown on insider trading here, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Mr. Rifat’s lawyers were informed this week that the Financial Conduct Authority is planning to bring criminal charges against him, the person said. Those charges are expected to be announced publicly in the coming weeks, said the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Mr. Rifat, a former trader at the hedge fund Moore Capital Management, was among those arrested in a series of raids by the British authorities in March 2010 in an investigation called Operation Tabernula. He has denied wrongdoing.

His lawyers have been pressuring the British authorities to unfreeze his assets and had been expected to appear in court in London on Friday to argue their case, but that hearing was canceled as a result of the pending criminal charges.

News of the pending charges against Mr. Rifat comes as British authorities have faced criticism over their ability to bring criminal insider trading cases, known as insider dealing here.

Late last year, the Financial Conduct Authority quietly dropped its investigation of two executives at the hedge fund Lodestone Natural Resources and a trader at another firm.

The men were arrested last February and the hedge fund was forced to liquidate, but the investigation resulted in no fines or charges of criminal wrongdoing.

The Financial Conduct Authority, created after the Financial Services Authority was split into two regulators last April, has defended its ability and the ability of its predecessor to bring such cases, saying the investigations are complex and can take time to build.

In a news release last month, the agency noted that the British regulator and its predecessor had secured 23 convictions for insider dealing since March 2009.

Prosecutors in the United States have built an impressive string of convictions in recent years using cooperating witnesses and wiretaps. In defending their use of the secret recordings, federal prosecutors in Manhattan have said that insider trading is a particularly difficult crime to uncover.

The United States Attorney’s office in Manhattan has secured 77 insider trading convictions or guilty pleas since 2009.

In the Operation Tabernula investigation, eight people have been charged in Britain, but the inquiry has resulted in only one conviction so far.

Paul Milsom, a former senior trader at Legal & General, pleaded guilty to insider dealing and was sentenced in March to two years in prison.

A 10th man, Clive Roberts, a former trader, was arrested at the same time as Mr. Rifat, but hasn’t been charged.

Moore Capital has said that the investigation did not involve any of its own funds and that it was cooperating with authorities. The company has described Mr. Rifat as an “execution trader,” meaning he did not make investment decisions.

Striving to be the Berkshire Hathaway of China

Fosun International aspires to be China’s answer to Warren Buffett’s investment firm, Berkshire Hathaway, and it wants to be sure everyone knows it.

On Friday, the Shanghai-based Fosun announced that it had won the bidding for Portugal’s biggest insurance company with an offer of 1 billion euros, or $1.4 billion, beating out the American private equity group Apollo Global Management.

The deal is the latest, and biggest, in a string of global acquisitions by Fosun, which has investments in China that include real estate, pharmaceuticals, steel and iron ore production. Fosun has been rapidly expanding internationally, into retail (the Greek fashion label Folli Follie in 2011), resorts (Club Med last year) and insurance and reinsurance (joining with the International Finance Corporation, the profit-seeking arm of the World Bank).

Fosun is clear as to what it wants to accomplish â€" and who it hopes to emulate â€" with the latest acquisition. It will give Fosun an 80 percent stake in the Portuguese insurer Caixa Seguros e Saúde, a state-owned company that is being privatized under the terms of the government’s bailout deal with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

‘‘This marks a solid step for Fosun to evolve into Warren Buffett’s model,’’ Fosun’s chairman, Guo Guangchang, said in a statement Friday.

Fosun still has some ground to cover. In the first half of last year, it took in $3.1 billion; in the same period, Berkshire’s revenue was $88.6 billion. And while the Chinese company’s shares closed 5 percent higher in Hong Kong on Friday after the Portuguese deal was announced, its market value still trails Berkshire’s â€" by nearly $280 billion.

Fosun is perhaps the most openly ambitious among Chinese companies that are newly looking abroad for investment opportunities. In the past decade, Chinese deal making on foreign shores had taken on a distinctly mercantilist hue, characterized by large, state- owned companies announcing blockbuster acquisitions intended to lock in strategic resources to meet China’s growing demand for energy and raw materials.

Such transactions still take place, of course, like the $15 billion purchase completed last year by the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or Cnooc, of the Canadian oil producer Nexen. But increasingly, it is private companies, not state companies, that account for most of China’s outbound investment, and they are targeting companies outside of the resource sector.

In the United States, for example, acquisitions by private Chinese companies overtook deals by state companies for the first time in 2012, accounting for 59 percent of total transaction value, according to a report published Tuesday by the Rhodium Group, an economic and policy research firm based in New York. In 2013, when the value of deals by Chinese companies in the United States doubled, to $14 billion, private buyers again increased their influence, accounting for 87 percent of transactions by volume and 76 percent by value. Last year’s activity was bolstered by the $4.7 billion cash bid for Smithfield Foods by Shuanghui International, a privately owned company that is China’s biggest pork producer.

‘‘We expect Chinese interest in U.S. assets to remain strong in 2014 because of aggressive economic reforms in China, a more liberal policy environment for Chinese outbound investors and a positive outlook for the U.S. economy,’’ the Rhodium analysts Thilo Hanemann and Cassie Gao wrote in the report.

For companies like Fosun, overseas acquisitions are almost always approached with an eye on how they can be leveraged to tap the huge and fast- growing domestic market in China.

In the $765 million Club Med deal, for example, Fosun in May of last year worked with Axa Private Equity of France to take over the resort operator with a plan to build its business in China. Club Med has already opened its second property in China since that deal was completed â€" a two-hotel resort that sits on 47 hectares, or 116 acres, of land within a national park in the southern tourist hub of Guilin â€" and more resorts are planned.

A list of other overseas deals executed by Fosun last year includes the October purchase of One Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York from JPMorgan for $725 million; a $55 million investment in the American women’s apparel brand St. John Knits in June; and the $221 million takeover in May of Alma Lasers, an Israeli medical equipment manufacturer.

In saying the deal for Caixa Seguros moved it closer to Mr. Buffett’s model, Fosun was referring to its growing footprint in the insurance business. Berkshire Hathaway is a major player across the industry, including as owner of the American auto insurer Geico and the biggest single shareholder of the German reinsurance giant Munich Re.

Fosun, for its part, has for years invested in the Chinese property and casualty insurer Yong’an. In 2012, it set up two new insurance ventures: a 50-50 joint venture with Prudential Financial based in Shanghai called Pramerica-Fosun Life Insurance, and Peak Reinsurance, an Asia-wide firm that insures insurance companies and is partly owned by the International Finance Corporation.

At a conference in Hong Kong in November, Fosun’s chief executive, Leo Liang, said the logic behind investing in the insurance industry was also a China strategy. The country’s banks sit on one of the world’s biggest piles of cash, with more than 100 trillion renminbi, or $16.5 trillion, in deposits. Ordinary Chinese save a relatively high percentage of their incomes against fears of future medical costs, which Fosun sees as a sign of demand for a host of new insurance products.

Moreover, as the country’s financial markets liberalize, Fosun will have more options as to how and where it can invest its float â€" the money left over from insurance premiums after claims are deducted. Adding Caixa Seguros to the mix will broaden those investment options on a global scale.

Analysts see the growth potential, but are worried about the debt that has resulted from Fosun’s global shopping spree in recent years. In a report published Tuesday, analysts at Goldman Sachs upgraded their rating on Fosun’s stock, to ‘‘neutral’’ from ‘‘sell,’’ but pointed out that 41 percent of the company’s debt was due for refinancing within a year.

‘‘We are still concerned about earnings risk in a rising interest rate environment due to Fosun’s highly geared balance sheet,’’ the Goldman analysts wrote. ‘‘That said, we believe the above negatives could be offset by fundamental improvement in its underlying businesses as outlined below. Should it execute well on its growth strategies in the asset management and insurance divisions, better investment return may help the stock to re-rate further in the medium term.’’