Senate Panel Says Credit Suisse Helped Hide U.S. Assets

Senators on both sides of the aisle criticized Credit Suisse at a hearing on Wednesday, saying it helped thousands of Americans hide billions of dollars in assets from United States tax authorities.

“We’re interested in collecting taxes that we’re owed, that were evaded,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “We simply have got to use our own domestic laws to force cooperation from the banks.”

The hearing was the result of a two-year investigation into practices at the bank from 2001 through 2008, when, Senate investigators said, Credit Suisse bankers actively recruited American clients and helped them hide money offshore.

Brady W. Dougan, the chief executive of Credit Suisse, based in Zurich, said that only a small number of employees were involved in such activity and that the bank had moved decisively to improve compliance in the last five years.

“Some Swiss-based private bankers went to great lengths to disguise their bad conduct from Credit Suisse executive management,” Mr. Dougan told the panel. “While that employee misconduct violated our policies and was unknown to our executive management, we accept responsibility for and deeply regret these employees’ actions.”

But that apology did little to appease the committee, whose members expressed doubt that executives did not know that the bank was helping its American customers evade taxes, and anger that no employees had been fired for misconduct.

“If you believe that, I have some beachfront property in Arizona I’d like you to look at,” said Senator John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican member on the committee, briefing reporters in advance of the hearing.

The Senate investigation found that Credit Suisse held as many as 22,000 American accounts with assets worth an estimated $10 billion to $12 billion. Thus far, the identities of about 1 percent of account holders have been revealed to American authorities, though Credit Suisse has closed most of those accounts.

“We’re really talking about a minuscule number of individuals who have intentionally evaded U.S. taxes” that have been uncovered, Mr. McCain said at the hearing.

The Credit Suisse executives â€" generally deferential in the face of hours of barbed questioning â€" said that the bank had to comply with American and Swiss laws, which can be at odds on the issue of client privacy.

“We do not want U.S. clients who are not fully compliant with the laws of this country,” said Hans-Ulrich Meister, the head of Credit Suisse’s private banking and wealth management.

The bank executives repeatedly said that Swiss law prevented them from disclosing certain client information. In part, that is because the Senate has not ratified a bilateral treaty with Switzerland that would allow fuller disclosures.

“We are prepared to provide any information that we can legally provide,” Mr. Dougan said. “To break the law in one jurisdiction to provide that information is difficult for us to do.”

Mr. Levin told the executives, “You folks have not been willing to give us more than 238 accounts.” He then recounted the ways that the bank helped Americans hide assets and evade taxes, and added, “The jig is up.”

A 176-page report by the Senate committee said that the bank was going to great lengths to help Americans evade taxes. That included helping clients set up shell corporations, having Swiss bankers travel to the United States to avoid creating a paper trail and recruiting Americans at a New York “ball” and a golf tournament.

The report describes one instance in which a Credit Suisse banker “traveled to the United States to meet with the customer at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and, over breakfast, handed the customer bank statements hidden in a Sports Illustrated magazine.”

It also described Credit Suisse opening an office at a Swiss airport. “It was an office of convenience for clients,” Mr. Dougan said, adding that it was used by account holders headed to and from Swiss ski resorts.

“It certainly was,” Mr. McCain retorted.

The Justice Department also came in for criticism; senators said it dragged its feet in prosecuting or settling with Swiss banks under investigation â€" an accusation that American law enforcement has strongly denied.

“The department is committed to global enforcement against financial institutions that engage in or facilitate cross-border tax evasion,” James M. Cole and Kathryn Keneally of the Justice Department said in prepared testimony to the committee. “We also continue to track down and hold accountable individuals who sought to evade their tax and reporting obligations by hiding money in foreign accounts.”

The Justice Department has said that it is investigating more than a dozen Swiss financial institutions. Banks, including Credit Suisse, have warned that continuing legal costs may take a toll on their bottom lines. Five years ago, UBS, the largest Swiss bank, admitted to helping American account holders avoid taxes.

A Top Financial Prosecutor to Leave

The exodus of corporate prosecutors continues.

The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that Mythili Raman, an acting assistant attorney general overseeing some of the biggest investigations into Wall Street misdeeds, would soon depart the government. Ms. Raman spent the last year as acting head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, tasked with unearthing financial and other corporate frauds.

“From combating financial and health care fraud, to fighting foreign and domestic corruption, and safeguarding the American people from crime and drug-fueled violence, Mythili’s tenure as head of the criminal division has been defined by extraordinary achievements,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement. He added that Ms. Raman “has done an exemplary job of leading the criminal division during a pivotal time.”

Ms. Raman, whose departure will cap a nearly two-decade-long Justice Department career, is the latest high-ranking prosecutor to move on this year. Her departure coincides with the exit of Denis J. McInerney, one of Ms. Raman’s top deputies at the Justice Department’s criminal division.

It also comes on the heels of Charles Duross, the prosecutor who oversaw the Justice Department’s investigations into corporate bribery overseas, joining the law firm Morrison & Foerster. Two other tenured fraud prosecutors, Kathleen Hamann and Adam Safwat, also recently joined private firms.

Much of the turnover is natural, if not expected, and new blood is expected to fill the agency soon. Ms. Raman, whose last day will be March 21, agreed to fill the role on an interim basis only. She took over as assistant attorney general for the criminal division in March of last year, when Lanny Breuer left the role.

The White House’s pick for a permanent successor, Leslie Caldwell, is expected to receive the blessing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Other recruits might also join the agency in the coming months.

Even so, the recent departures raise questions about a potential leadership vacuum at a crucial time for the Justice Department’s financial fraud investigations. In the past, the agency has taken heat for not aggressively pursuing cases tied to the 2008 financial crisis.

But in one prominent case that has consumed the banking industry, the Justice Department and other federal authorities have taken aim at big banks suspected of manipulating the global interest rate benchmark for credit cards and other loans. UBS, Barclays and others have collectively paid billions of dollars in fines, while the Justice Department also took the rare step of extracting criminal guilty pleas from subsidiaries of some of the banks.

That investigation, focused on the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, laid the groundwork for another manipulation case that is expected to yield even larger penalties. The latest investigation - which is also being overseen by Ms. Raman â€" into potential manipulation of foreign currencies has already prompted banks to fire or suspend more than 20 traders.

Ms. Raman’s Justice Department tenure traces to 1996, when she joined as a trial attorney in the criminal division. A few years later, she left for the United States Attorney’s Office in Maryland, where she ultimately became appellate chief. She then returned to the criminal division amid the financial crisis, eventually becoming Mr. Breuer’s chief of staff and principal deputy.

“Mythili Raman is an extraordinary prosecutor and public servant, and the country is better and safer for her many years of service in the Department of Justice,” Mr. Breuer said on Wednesday, “She has a keen intellect, terrific judgment, and an unwavering commitment to the cause of justice.”

JPMorgan and American Express Oppose Arizona Bill

REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Jamie Dimon

JPMorgan Chase, which is one of the largest employers in Arizona, wants Governor Jan Brewer to veto a bill that critics argue would allow businesses to discriminate against lesbian and gay customers. JPMorgan Chase spokeswoman Darcy Donahoe-Wilmot provided Business Insider a statement Wednesday saying the company wants the bill, SB 1062, to be vetoed. 

"JPMorgan Chase opposes all forms of discrimination in law and in fact. The bill passed by the Arizona legislature does not reflect the values of our country or the State of Arizona and should be vetoed. JPMorgan Chase is one of the largest private employers in the State of Arizona with over 11,000 employees here," the statement said.

Supporters of SB 1062 argue it preserves religious freedom. If Brewer does not veto the bill, it will become law. Brewer has said she will make a decision by Friday. 

According to the Arizona Republic, JPMorgan Chase ranked as the state's eighth largest employer in 2013. 

Update (4:47 PM): American Express spokeswoman told Business Insider, "I can confirm for you that we have asked the governor to veto the bill." According to the Republic, American Express was Arizona's 18th largest employer last year. 

Blackstone Said to Be Near a Deal to Invest in Versace

Versace is in advanced discussions to take on the Blackstone Group as a minority investor, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday, in the latest sign that the finance industry’s interest in high fashion shows few signs of abating.

Blackstone, which beat out a number of rival investment firms to claim exclusive negotiating rights, is contemplating buying a roughly 20 percent stake in the company at a valuation of about 1 billion euros, or $1.37 billion.

A deal could be announced later this week, this person added, cautioning that talks could still fall apart.

Long known for its decadent, flesh-baring style, Versace has long been one of the best-known presences on the runway. But the company has been eclipsed by rivals that have tapped outside investors to fuel their global expansion. Fellow high-fashion house Prada carried a market valuation of nearly $20 billion as of Wednesday, for instance, while Michael Kors was valued slightly higher.

Versace has made strides in recovering from the financial crisis, thanks in part to efforts led by chief executive Gian Giacomo Ferraris. Mr. Ferraris has said publicly that the company plans to eventually list on an exchange.

News of the talks with Blackstone was reported earlier by The Financial Times.

House Proposal Would Raise Taxes on Private Equity Income

The investment profits generated by private equity, long a subject of debate in Washington, would be taxed at a higher rate under a proposal on Wednesday by the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

The proposal, part of a broad tax overhaul by Representative Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican, is already being criticized by the top lobbyist for the private equity industry, who says it is unfair. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader, said the overhaul had no chance of becoming law.

Nevertheless, it represents the latest effort to change a tax policy that has been assailed by a number of lawmakers over the past decade and singled out for criticism by President Obama. Private equity investment profits, known as carried interest, are currently taxed as capital gains, at a significantly lower rate than ordinary income.

Mr. Camp seeks to raise the tax on carried interest to 35 percent from the current 23.8 percent rate for the highest earners. Underpinning that higher rate is a proposal that carried interest be treated as ordinary income, an idea that is popular among critics of the current tax policy.

While Mr. Camp’s plan would lower the top income tax rate to 25 percent from 39.6 percent, it would also add a 10 percentage point tax surcharge for carried interest, creating a 35 percent tax rate for the millions of dollars in such income that private equity executives take home.

According to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, the carried interest plan would generate $3.1 billion in revenue this year through 2023.

Critics of the current policy argue that private equity deal makers make their money from active management of their portfolio companies, rather than passive investment. These critics also point out that carried interest profits are not proportional to the relatively small amount of capital that the managers invest in a given deal.

“A partnership (e.g., private equity fund) that is in the business of raising capital, investing in other businesses, developing such businesses, and ultimately selling them, is in the trade or business of selling businesses,” an official summary of the proposed legislation reads.

“For the tax law to be applied consistently, the profits derived by such an investment partnership and paid to its managing partners through management fees and a profits interest in the partnership (generally referred to as a carried interest), should be treated as ordinary income,” it continues.

Exempted from the proposed higher rate would be any gains on an individual’s invested capital. The proposed rate would also not apply to real estate development.

Defenders of the current system say the capital gains rate makes sense for carried interest because of the risk involved in private equity deals. The industry’s lobbying group, the Private Equity Growth Capital Council, called Mr. Camp’s proposal “disappointing.”

“Chairman Camp’s proposal penalizes long-term capital investment, which he and other members of the House Ways and Means Committee have purported to support,” Steve Judge, the president and chief executive of the lobbying group, said in a statement. “It is our hope that as the debate over tax reform unfolds, policy makers will utilize the opportunity to reform the tax code as a way to encourage, not undermine, capital investment in America.”

Mr. Camp’s plan â€" which contemplates a cut in the top corporate income tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent and a reduction of the seven individual tax brackets to two â€" also goes after another corner of Wall Street: the big banks.

Arguing that the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul creates an “implicit subsidy” for the banks deemed systemically important, Mr. Camp’s plan would impose a quarterly excise tax of 0.035 percent on bank assets above $500 billion. (The “subsidy,” the summary of the proposal says, stems from the lower borrowing costs these banks receive from the perception that they are “too big to fail.”)

“While tax reform cannot undo Dodd-Frank, it can and should help recapture a portion of that implicit subsidy,” the summary says. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the bank tax would generate $86.4 billion in revenue this year through 2023.

The plan faces some big hurdles in Congress. Mr. McConnell said it had no chance of passing, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, agreed with that assessment.

Private equity executives seem confident that no tax changes are imminent. David M. Rubenstein, a co-founder of the Carlyle Group, said at a conference in Berlin on Wednesday that the departure from the Senate of Max Baucus, the former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who was recently confirmed as the ambassador to China, lowered the likelihood of substantial changes.

“I don’t think that there will be any tax legislation passed by this Congress at all,” Mr. Rubenstein said.

A Hedge Fund Manager Says SAC ‘Taint’ Is Manageable

Dmitry Balyasny is one hedge fund owner who isn’t afraid of hiring traders from SAC Capital Advisors as long as they were far away from the “messiness” that engulfed the firm during the federal government’s crackdown on insider trading.

“There were people there who did the wrong things and it seems to have been an aggressive culture,” Mr. Balyasny said in a conference call last month with investors in his fund, Balyasny Asset Management. “Quite a number of people are completely clean and had no contact with the messiness that was going on.”

The messiness that Mr. Balyasny referred to was SAC’s guilty plea in November to securities fraud and the insider trading guilty pleas and convictions of eight people who once worked for the firm. To date, Mr. Balyasny’s firm has hired three traders who previously worked in SAC’s office in London, which was shuttered late last year.

In the aftermath of the SAC guilty plea, there have been a lot of whispers in the $2.4 trillion hedge fund industry about an “SAC taint,” which would prevent the firm’s traders and analysts from getting another job. But so far, the taint has not emerged as a real problem, with hedge funds like Mr. Balyasny’s firm as well as BlueCrest Capital Management and Moore Capital Management all hiring people who used to work for SAC.

To be sure, not as many people have left SAC, the firm founded by Steven A. Cohen, as had been anticipated. When the firm pleaded guilty to securities fraud last year, Mr. Cohen said it would transform itself into a family office that would mange mainly some $9 billion of his personal fortune. There was an expectation that SAC, which at one point last year employed 1,000 people, would shed hundreds of jobs. But while the firm has slimmed down and let go of more than two dozen marketing employees, SAC continues to employ about 850 people.

In a letter to employees on Tuesday, Mr. Cohen did not give any indications of further plans to trim jobs at the firm he founded in 1992 with $15 million. By April, the SAC name will disappear and the Connecticut-based firm will operate as a family office under a new name, which has not yet been announced.

Mr. Balyasny, in a recording of his investor call, said he would not be concerned about hiring other people from SAC if they were looking for jobs and could help his fund make money. “We hired several people from there last year and may hire some more from there this year,” he said.

Mr. Balyasny said his hedge fund had a “very thorough vetting and compliance process” for new hires, particularly for traders and analysts coming from SAC. He said that Balyasny’s general counsel personally meets with any job applicant coming from SAC and that the prospective employees are interviewed more than a dozen times before a job offer is made.

But Mr. Balyasny said any future hiring from SAC would be done selectively. He said the firm most likely would avoid hiring anyone who traded technology or health care stocks at SAC because those were the sectors where the authorities found evidence of “improprieties.”

In the call, Mr. Balyasny mostly discussed his firm’s performance in 2013 and where he anticipates the firm making money this year.

If Mr. Balyasny’s view on SAC is not a minority one in the hedge fund industry, that probably bodes well down the road for Mr. Cohen’s other employees who are looking for new jobs.

A Hedge Fund Manager Says SAC ‘Taint’ Is Manageable

Dmitry Balyasny is one hedge fund owner who isn’t afraid of hiring traders from SAC Capital Advisors as long as they were far away from the “messiness” that engulfed the firm during the federal government’s crackdown on insider trading.

“There were people there who did the wrong things and it seems to have been an aggressive culture,” Mr. Balyasny said in a conference call last month with investors in his fund, Balyasny Asset Management. “Quite a number of people are completely clean and had no contact with the messiness that was going on.”

The messiness that Mr. Balyasny referred to was SAC’s guilty plea in November to securities fraud and the insider trading guilty pleas and convictions of eight people who once worked for the firm. To date, Mr. Balyasny’s firm has hired three traders who previously worked in SAC’s office in London, which was shuttered late last year.

In the aftermath of the SAC guilty plea, there have been a lot of whispers in the $2.4 trillion hedge fund industry about an “SAC taint,” which would prevent the firm’s traders and analysts from getting another job. But so far, the taint has not emerged as a real problem, with hedge funds like Mr. Balyasny’s firm as well as BlueCrest Capital Management and Moore Capital Management all hiring people who used to work for SAC.

To be sure, not as many people have left SAC, the firm founded by Steven A. Cohen, as had been anticipated. When the firm pleaded guilty to securities fraud last year, Mr. Cohen said it would transform itself into a family office that would mange mainly some $9 billion of his personal fortune. There was an expectation that SAC, which at one point last year employed 1,000 people, would shed hundreds of jobs. But while the firm has slimmed down and let go of more than two dozen marketing employees, SAC continues to employ about 850 people.

In a letter to employees on Tuesday, Mr. Cohen did not give any indications of further plans to trim jobs at the firm he founded in 1992 with $15 million. By April, the SAC name will disappear and the Connecticut-based firm will operate as a family office under a new name, which has not yet been announced.

Mr. Balyasny, in a recording of his investor call, said he would not be concerned about hiring other people from SAC if they were looking for jobs and could help his fund make money. “We hired several people from there last year and may hire some more from there this year,” he said.

Mr. Balyasny said his hedge fund had a “very thorough vetting and compliance process” for new hires, particularly for traders and analysts coming from SAC. He said that Balyasny’s general counsel personally meets with any job applicant coming from SAC and that the prospective employees are interviewed more than a dozen times before a job offer is made.

But Mr. Balyasny said any future hiring from SAC would be done selectively. He said the firm most likely would avoid hiring anyone who traded technology or health care stocks at SAC because those were the sectors where the authorities found evidence of “improprieties.”

In the call, Mr. Balyasny mostly discussed his firm’s performance in 2013 and where he anticipates the firm making money this year.

If Mr. Balyasny’s view on SAC is not a minority one in the hedge fund industry, that probably bodes well down the road for Mr. Cohen’s other employees who are looking for new jobs.

In a Retirement, a Loss for Barclays

Hans-Joerg Rudloff’s retirement at age 73 comes at an unhelpful time for Barclays.

Mr. Rudloff, the British lender’s chairman of investment banking, is stepping down after a distinguished career that spanned five decades â€" long enough for any banker. Mr. Rudloff’s achievements are myriad. A doyen of the euro bond market, which he helped create in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, Mr. Rudloff also saw the potential in Russia and central Europe in the 1990s, long before emerging markets became fashionable.

Right now, farsightedness is precisely what Barclays needs as the future of the investment banking industry and the British firm’s place within it are not clear. Leverage limits and American regulations on the capitalization of the bank’s subsidiaries constrain its global strategy. Mr. Rudloff has been here before. He transformed Credit Suisse First Boston, which he ran from 1989 to 1994, into a contender to Wall Street at a time when most felt the United States banks would dominate.

Barclays’ ability to compete on equal terms with Wall Street owes much to Mr. Rudloff’s backing of its 2008 purchase of Lehman Brothers. Without that deal, Barclays’ investment bank would be in a tougher bind now: Last year, equities trading and advisory â€" the remains of the old Lehman â€" outshone fixed-income trading, the core of the old Barclays Capital.

True, Mr. Rudloff’s strong ties to Robert E. Diamond Jr., the former Barclays chief executive, mean that his exit helps break with a troubled recent past. But that is offset by the loss of Mr. Rudloff’s 16 years of institutional memory. A continuity figure and mentor could help the new chief executive, Antony Jenkins, win support as he seeks to foster needed cultural change. There is much in Barclays’ past that underpins its future value.

Dominic Elliott is a columnist at Reuters Breakingviews. For more independent commentary and analysis, visit breakingviews.com.

Foreign Exchange Firm Fined in Britain

Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority on Wednesday fined the British units of FXCM, a retail foreign exchange trading firm, 4 million pounds for
withholding profits from its clients.

In what appears to be a classic ‘heads we win, tails you lose’ case, FXCM, whose United States parent is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, allowed its British units to execute trades in another part of the firm and profit from them if the market moved their way but passed on losses to the clients if the market moved against them.

The regulator said nearly £6 million, or $10 million, which should have gone to its customers went into its own coffers instead. The firm will pay that amount to clients in restitution.

Most of the of fine that FXCM will pay is for failing to treat its customers fairly. But the authority also fined the firm for failing to disclose that the United States authorities were investigating another part of FXCM for the same misconduct. In 2011, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered the company to pay $14.2 million to settle similar accusations.

FXCM violated an F.C.A. principle that says firms must have an open relationship with its regulators.

“Not only did FXCM UK fail to treat its customers fairly or correctly apply our rules, I am particularly disappointed that it was not transparent in its dealings with the F.C.A.,” said Tracey McDermott, the authority’s director of enforcement and financial crime.

FXCM said in a statement that it had put in place changes to make sure it does not profit from trades at its clients’ expense. “This settlement is a significant step in our efforts to put this legacy trade execution issue behind us,” said Brendan Callan, the chief executive of FXCM’s British operations.

The investigation and settlement are unrelated to the broader foreign exchange investigation being led by the United States Justice Department, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Serious Fraud Office and other regulators spanning the globe.

But it does highlight the opaque nature of the huge foreign exchange market, which is bigger than both the stock and bond markets.

According to the authority, FXCM’s British division placed “over the counter” foreign exchange transactions known as rolling spot forex contracts on behalf of retail clients, which were then executed by another part of FXCM in the United States. Between August 2006 and December 2010, FXCM kept trading profits but passed on any losses to clients - a practice known as “asymmetric price slippage.”

The authority is conducting a so-called thematic review of firms’ execution practices, including the way services are described to clients and arrangements for order execution and review, and plans to publish its findings by summer.

New York Regulator Asks Ocwen to Explain Potential Conflicts

New York State’s top banking regulator said he had new concerns about Ocwen Financial, creating another regulatory headache for one of the nation’s largest mortgage servicing companies.

In a letter to Ocwen released Wednesday, Benjamin M. Lawsky, supervisor of the state’s Department of Financial Services, said his office had found a “number of potential conflicts of interest” between Ocwen and other public companies with which it is affiliated.

Ocwen was founded by William Erbey and has grown in recent years into a major player in the mortgage industry, servicing 2.3 million home loans.

Mr. Lawsky said he was concerned that potential conflicts between Ocwen and four other publicly traded companies chaired by Mr. Erbey could “harm borrowers and push homeowners unduly in foreclosure.”

Ocwen has said that it maintains an arms-length business relationship with the other companies, which rent foreclosed houses and sell homes online. In addition, the company said that Mr. Erbey recused himself from any discussions where the five companies’ businesses overlap.

In the letter, Mr. Lawsky has asked Ocwen to detail the financial interests that Ocwen’s directors and employees have in the other companies. He also asked for details about the agreements Ocwen has made with the other companies for services.

Last month, Mr. Lawsky halted the transfer of $39 billion of mortgage servicing rights to Ocwen from Wells Fargo out of concern that the company lacked the capacity to handle the influx of new loans.

Prominent Occupations Still Seen as Male Domains, Study Finds

A new report finds that while both men and women say there are not enough women in positions of power in the workplace, a majority of respondents still preferred to cast men in prominent jobs.

An online study conducted by Harris Poll found that both sexes preferred having men as president of the United States, Fortune 500 senior executives and personal financial advisers.

Although those attitudes may be disheartening to women who have aspired to male-dominated careers, many respondents did express support for having women in several other jobs, including senators and physicians.

When asked who they preferred in specific occupations, most of those responding said they preferred women to be direct managers, teachers, registered nurses and family therapists, according to the report commissioned by Pershing, a BNY Mellon company that provides financial business solutions.

Such positions are less associated with old-style top-down management. Instead, such jobs tend to require listening, consultation, coaching and community building approaches - skills that respondents said they associated with women.

“This presents a gender paradox,” said Kim Dellarocca, global head of Pershing’s marketing and practice management. “How can people prefer a management style they associate with women then balk at actually feeling comfortable with women in charge?”

What may be surprising is that older Americans said that they were more comfortable having a woman in fields dominated by men.

“We found that the older the age bracket, the greater the comfort with seeing women in traditionally male roles,” she said. “Other research has shown that stereotypes can be broken down through real life experiences with women in traditionally male occupations.”

“Some may have had difficulty in picturing a woman as an engineer or another male occupation until they were old enough to have encountered one themselves,” Ms. Dellarocca said.

Harris Poll conducted the study online in January among 2,047 adults ages 18 and older. Respondents were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in online questions. There is no estimate of sampling error because the sample is based on people agreed to participate.

Despite the comfort expressed with women in nontraditional jobs, the picture changed when those surveyed were asked to choose between the sexes for specific posts. Men, according to the findings, registered a 59 percent preference for a man as president, and 53 percent for a male lawyer, 72 percent for men as an engineer and 56 percent for a man as a Fortune 500 senior executive.

That compares with 28 percent women favoring male engineers, 41 percent for a male president, 44 percent for a top-tier executive and 47 percent for a male lawyer.

Ms. Dellarocca suggested that one way to overcome such attitudes would be to have more female role models. And over all, study participants said they wanted leaders to have the qualities they associated with women like collaboration, pointing to signs that women may be able to step into nontraditional roles.

Judge Expedites Men’s Wearhouse Lawsuit

A Delaware judge on Tuesday expedited Men’s Wearhouse’s lawsuit against its smaller rival, Jos. A. Bank, in an ugly takeover battle between the men’s suit retailers that is playing out in court.

Earlier this week, Men’s Wearhouse sued to block Jos. A. Bank’s proposed acquisition of the clothing retailer Eddie Bauer for $825 million. The acquisition was seen as a defensive measure to protect Jos. A. Bank from its unwanted suitor.

The judge, J. Travis Laster, did not block the Eddie Bauer deal, but he did order Jos. A. Bank to quickly submit documents relating to the acquisition. The judge said he decided to expedite the lawsuit in part because the Eddie Bauer deal was likely a defensive maneuver.

“The allegations of the complaint, taken as a whole, create a colorable basis to believe that the features of the Eddie Bauer transaction are such that in their totality they may well fall outside the range of reasonableness,” Judge Laster said, according to a court transcript.

Jos. A. Bank declined to comment.

The judge also ordered Jos. A. Bank to give Men’s Wearhouse 10 days notice before closing a deal with Eddie Bauer, although the expedited lawsuit fuels Men’s Wearhouse’s legal efforts to block the deal.

The judge is scheduled to make a final decision March 25.

The suit is the latest in a takeover saga that goes back to October, when Jos. A. Bank first proposed an unsolicited offer to acquire Men’s Wearhouse. Men’s Wearhouse quickly flipped the conversation, coming back at Jos. A. Bank with an offer of its own.

Jos. A. Bank recently rejected a tender offer of $57.50 per share. Earlier this week, Men’s Wearhouse raised its offer to $63.50. Jos. A. Bank shareholders have until March 12 to consider the proposal.

Japan Studies Regulation of Bitcoin After Mt. Gox Goes Dark

TOKYO â€" A top government official said on Wednesday that Japan was studying possible ways to regulate Bitcoin trading in the wake of the implosion of a prominent Tokyo-based trading platform for the virtual currency.

Japan has no laws regulating the use of Bitcoin, and authorities here have seemed content to take a wait-and-see attitude on the currency and its recent ups and downs.

But on Wednesday, Yoshihide Suga, a top government spokesman, said that relevant authorities â€" including Japan’s Financial Services Agency, Finance Ministry and the police â€" were collecting information on the Bitcoin trade in Japan, with an eye on regulatory action.

“Once we assess the situation, we will respond as necessary,” Mr. Suga said at a news conference. “At the moment, we are still in the information-gathering stage.”

Japan’s new interest in Bitcoin comes as authorities around the world grapple with regulating, or even defining, a virtual currency whose trade has surged in recent years.

Japanese financial regulators had so far suggested that the virtual coins are a traded product, not a currency, and therefore remain outside their purview. Some in Japan, where Bitcoin adoption has been relatively slow, continue to question whether the currency is here to stay or a mere fad.

Koji Ishida, a member of the Bank of Japan‘s policy board, said that the bank saw limited use and adoption of Bitcoin. Instead, the central bank should focus on ensuring smooth fiat money transactions for now, Mr. Ishida told reporters outside Tokyo, according to the Nikkei website.

“Though some people might find it useful, its use is limited as a method of transaction,” Mr. Ishida said. The central bank would leave it up to the government to mull any regulatory steps, he said.

Users of the now seemingly defunct Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange have said they would seek to meet with Japanese financial regulators to urge them to act against the secretive platform and help those seeking redress. Mt. Gox went dark on Tuesday amid rumors that hackers had swiped millions of dollars’ worth of the virtual currency from its systems.

In a statement on the company’s website on Wednesday, Mt. Gox’s chief executive, Mark Karpeles, said he was still in Japan and “working very hard with the support of different parties to find a solution to our recent issues.”

Mr. Karpeles also said that Mt. Gox employees had been instructed not to give out any information, and asked users to refrain from asking the staff questions.

Kolin Burges, a trader from London who flew to Japan this month after the exchange stopped paying out funds, said he was considering legal action to try to retrieve the money he invested in the exchange last month. But he conceded that there would not be much point in suing if the company itself had lost all of its funds.

Like their counterparts elsewhere, Japanese authorities head into unfamiliar territory in regulating a virtual currency. A relatively easy change for regulation would be to bring Bitcoin under the purview of Japan’s Payment Services Act, which oversees electronic money, shopping points and escrow transactions, according to a person with knowledge of the Financial Services Agency’s thinking. Such a move could enforce new limits on Bitcoin transactions, including transaction size.

While Bitcoin has faced relatively little scrutiny here, it has invited comparisons to an infamous scandal involving”Enten,” an electronic currency used by a Tokyo company to defraud investors of billions of yen in the mid-2000s.

Some experts say that because of the sway physical cash still holds in Japan, with many businesses still refusing to accept credit cards and trusting only cash, Bitcoin adoption will be slow, reducing the need for regulators to move quickly.

“There just hasn’t been the need for Bitcoin in Japan as there’s been elsewhere,” said James MacWhyte, an early Bitcoin user and long-term Tokyo resident who is working to set up an association of Bitcoin users in Japan. He said the low adoption reflected the trust Japanese still seemed to hold in government institutions and government-issued money.

“No one has lost their pensions, the government hasn’t shut down, bank fees are reasonable, and electronic money is so fast and easy to use,” Mr. MacWhyte said. “But that could change.”

The general attitude among Japanese experts seems to be to let Bitcoin users be â€" but that anyone dabbling in virtual currencies should be aware of the risks.

“Its use should be left to those who find it’s useful,” Koji Sakuma, an economist at the Institute of Monetary Affairs, said in a research note this month.

“Those who buy it might incur losses as prices go wildly up and down,” Mr. Sakuma said, “but I don’t see it as a problem for those who choose not to get involved.”

Zhiyi Yang contributed reporting.

Carlyle’s Co-Founder Says More Private Equity Firms Likely to Go Public

BERLIN â€" David M. Rubenstein, the co-founder of the private equity firm Carlyle Group, said on Wednesday that he believed more private equity firms would seek to go public in the next few years.

Speaking at SuperReturn International, the private equity conference in Berlin, Mr. Rubenstein said that smaller private equity firms were likely to follow a wave of initial public offerings by larger firms in recent years.

Mr. Rubenstein said that the perceived level of assets under management that a firm should have before going public was likely to decline, opening the door to more offerings by midsize and smaller firms.

“I think you’ll see more and more of these firms go public,” Mr. Rubenstein said.

Carlyle, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, The Blackstone Group and Apollo Global Management have all publicly floated their stock in recent years despite concerns that firms might struggle to balance the conflicting expectations of so-called limited partners who invest with the firms and the shareholders who buy the firms’ stock.

On Tuesday, David Bonderman, the co-founder of TPG Capital, said that his firm was contemplating going public, but hadn’t committed to doing so.

A Silver Lining in Bitcoin’s Stumble

BITCOIN’S SILVER LINING  |  The apparent collapse of Mt. Gox, the most prominent Bitcoin exchange, late Monday night naturally stirred outrage and panic. After all, a document circulating widely in the Bitcoin world said the company had lost 744,000 Bitcoins â€" about 6 percent of Bitcoins in circulation â€" worth more than $300 million at current exchange rates. But Bitcoin’s latest troubles did little to shake the confidence of many, and indeed, the virtual currency’s stumble may provide just the spark it needs to become a more mature part of the financial system, Nathaniel Popper and Rachel Abrams write in DealBook.

One champion of the virtual currency, Cameron Winklevoss (of Facebook fame), said Mt. Gox’s closing “underscores just how far the Bitcoin ecosystem has come,” adding that “the brightest minds in the room are hard at work building a responsible and secure future.” One of these new, more experienced companies entering the void left by Mt. Gox is SecondMarket, which runs an exchange for the buying and selling of shares of private companies. As Mt. Gox was preparing to go offline on Monday, SecondMarket announced plans to start a new, regulated Bitcoin exchange for large banks.

From Quartz: “Confidence â€" that Bitcoin is a reliable store of value, and that it can be used without fear of getting totally ripped off â€" is just the problem for Bitcoin. Mt. Gox is by far the largest in a long string of collapses and thefts that have plagued the upstart currency. The exchange had its humble roots as an online marketplace for wizard-themed playing cards (its full name derives from ‘Magic: the Gathering Digital Exchange’), but in the end it made a fortune in Bitcoins disappear into thin air. The question now is whether Bitcoin will follow suit.”

From The Economist: “But as ever, much of the Bitcoin community continues to act as if nothing has happened. Six Bitcoin businesses issued a statement saying that recent events don’t ‘reflect the resilience or value of Bitcoin.’ And today’s entry on the Bitcoin Foundation’s blog is an invitation to ‘Bitcoin 2014’ in Amsterdam (‘Bitcoin is a game changer on a global scale â€" don’t miss out!’). It’s hard not to think that the real problem in Bitcoinland isn’t denial-of-service attacks. It’s denial.”

From the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, on CNBC: “Mt. Gox has been obviously broken and possibly outright crooked for months. As seen in trading spreads. This is like MF Global. Not some huge breakdown of the underlying technology or other exchanges. Bitcoin protocol is unchanged and other Bitcoin exchanges and companies are doing fine.”

Mr. Andreessen, from the DealBook archives (Jan. 21, 2014): “Far from a mere libertarian fairy tale or a simple Silicon Valley exercise in hype, Bitcoin offers a sweeping vista of opportunity to reimagine how the financial system can and should work in the Internet era, and a catalyst to reshape that system in ways that are more powerful for individuals and businesses alike.”

From The New Yorker’s John Cassidy: “Is this the end of Bitcoin? Almost certainly not. Many people operating in the black economy will willingly take a few risks to conduct their business. And, for everybody else, the promise of a cheap and ubiquitous electronic-payment system remains. But in the very week that the first Bitcoin A.T.M. opened in Boston, the notion that hundreds of millions of people are going to trust their wages and savings to an unregulated and opaque electronic currency just suffered a big blow.”

SENATE SAYS CREDIT SUISSE HELPED U.S. CLIENTS HIDE BILLIONS  |  “At times, a Senate report into how Credit Suisse, a bank based in Zurich, helped its American customers hide billions of dollars of assets from the United States Treasury reads more like a John Grisham novel than a white paper,” Annie Lowrey writes in DealBook. The 176-page report, released on Tuesday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, contends that from at least 2001 through 2008, the Swiss bank actively helped thousands of Americans conceal their wealth offshore.

Highlights from the report include an instance in which a Credit Suisse banker “traveled to the United States to meet with the customer at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and, over breakfast, handed the customer bank statements hidden in a Sports Illustrated magazine,” and another in which a client recalled visiting a Credit Suisse office and taking an elevator with “no buttons” that was “controlled remotely.”

2 NEW INVESTIGATIONS FOR BANK OF AMERICA  |  Bank of America is facing two new investigations, one related to its activities in foreign currency exchange markets and the other over its handling of government-backed mortgages in the United States. Alas, these fresh legal inquiries could add to the bank’s mounting litigation costs, which could total $6 billion, up from the previous estimate of $5 billion, Michael Corkery writes in DealBook.

The bank also said it had reached an agreement with Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to amend the terms of his $5 billion stake in Bank of America. The bank now cannot call Berkshire’s preferred shares for five years, and, in return, Mr. Buffett has agreed not to require the bank to pay him any dividends on those shares if times are tough.

ON THE AGENDA  |  New home sales for January are out at 10 a.m. Eric S. Rosengren, the president of the Boston Fed, speaks on the economic outlook at noon. Sandra Pianalto, the president of the Cleveland Fed, discusses the Fed’s history at 7:30 p.m. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations holds a hearing on offshore tax evasion at 9:30 a.m., and the Senate Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions and Family Policy holds a hearing to examine retirement savings for low-income workers at 10 a.m. The House Committee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises holds a hearing on Dodd-Frank’s impact on asset-backed securities at 2 p.m. William S. Cohen, the former defense secretary, is on Bloomberg TV at 5:30 p.m.

DON’T CRY, ARGENTINA  |  It’s not often that a foreign country asks the United States Supreme Court to hear a case, but that’s exactly what Argentina is doing. The South American country, which defaulted on $80 billion of government bonds in 2001, wants the highest court in the United States to throw out a lower-court ruling forcing the country to pay up on these bonds. If you’re asking how this happened, you’re not alone.

In 2005 and 2010, Argentina forced its debt holders into a deal offering them new bonds at 25 to 29 cents on the dollar, which was accepted by more than 90 percent of the bondholders. But there were holdouts, including hedge funds, which have sued to force Argentina to pay the bonds in full, Steven M. Davidoff writes in the Deal Professor column. “Normally, sovereign immunity would protect Argentina. In fact, in the United States, there is also a statute, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, that would prevent the hedge funds from seizing Argentine property to collect on the bonds,” he writes. But, rather cleverly, the hedge funds have argued in court that they are not, in fact, seeking to seize Argentine property.

Instead, these hedge funds argue, when Argentina pays money through the United States financial system on its new bonds, the agents transferring that money can be ordered to pay the holdouts first. The lower courts have ruled in favor of the hedge funds, holding that if Argentina tried to pay its old bondholders first, the banks in the United States that were transferring that money would have an obligation to pay the hedge funds first. Naturally, Argentina reacted with fury. Now, Mr. Davidoff writes, if the Supreme Court denies Argentina’s request to hear the case, it “would effectively turn the United States federal courts into collection agents for the hedge funds.“

Mergers & Acquisitions »

BlackBerry Chief Demurs on Sale of Messenger Service, for Now  |  The prospect of selling or spinning off BlackBerry’s messaging service has helped buoy the company’s fortunes, though John S. Chen, its chief executive, hinted that may not happen quite yet.
DealBook »

A Buyout Offer That Raises Questions of Board Fairness and Duty  |  American Financial’s actions as it tries to buy out minority shareholders of one of its insurance subsidiaries appear deeply flawed, Steven M. Davidoff writes in the Deal Professor column.
DealBook »

Justice Department to Review Comcast Deal  |  The Department of Justice, rather than the Federal Trade Commission, will review Comcast’s $45 billion deal for Time Warner Cable, The Financial Times reports. The Department of Justice led the review of Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal.
FINANCIAL TIMES

Cooper-Standard Considers Merger With TI Automotive  |  Cooper-Standard Holdings is weighing a merger with its rival TI Automotive in a move that would combine the world’s two biggest suppliers of fluid systems for cars and trucks, Reuters reports. Cooper-Standard has a market value of about $750 million and an enterprise value of about $1.4 billion including debt, while TI Automotive has an estimated enterprise value of more than $2 billion.
REUTERS

INVESTMENT BANKING »

@GSElevator’s Unmasking Won’t Stop Book  |  The revelation that the writer behind the popular Twitter feed @GSElevator had never worked for Goldman appeared to undermine his credibility, if not the premise of his planned book, Julie Bosman writes in The New York Times. But the book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, is standing by the author.
NEW YORK TIMES

JPMorgan Estimating $30 Billion of Excess Capital  |  JPMorgan Chase said at its annual investor day on Tuesday that it should have $30 billion of excess capital next year to be distributed to shareholders, The Financial Times reports.
FINANCIAL TIMES

Goldman Poaches Bank of America’s Co-Head of Leveraged Finance  |  Goldman Sachs has hired Alice Murphy, the co-head of global leveraged finance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, as the bank’s global head of leveraged finance origination, The Wall Street Journal reports. Ms. Murphy will be only one of a handful of female partners at the bank.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Barclays to Close Power Trading Unit  |  Barclays has decided to close its United States and European power trading operations as it aims to overhaul its commodities business amid tighter regulation and falling profits, The Financial Times reports.
FINANCIAL TIMES

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Bonderman Says TPG Is Considering Going Public  |  David Bonderman, the co-founder of the private equity firm TPG Capital, said his firm was considering going public like many of its rivals.
DealBook »

At Private Equity Conference, a Debate Over the Benefits of Going Public  |  TPG Capital let slip that it was contemplating an initial public offering, but other industry leaders said they weren’t convinced a public offering was necessary for them at this stage of the game.
DealBook »

Apollo’s Co-Founder Sees Opportunities to Invest in Distressed Debt  |  Private equity firms don’t have to have a “global recession to have good distressed opportunities,” Leon Black, co-founder of Apollo Global Management, said at the SuperReturn International conference in Berlin.
DealBook »

Kravis Says Private Equity Does Poor Job of Discussing Its Benefits  |  Leaders in the private equity industry, including Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, say the business needs to do a better job of communicating its merits.
DealBook »

Carlyle Selected as Preferred Bidder in Tyco Sale  |  The private equity firm Carlyle Group has been selected as the preferred bidder for the $1.6 billion sale of Tyco International’s South Korean security systems unit, Reuters reports.
REUTERS

Top 10 Private Equity Deal Makers Rake in $1.7 Billion  |  The top 10 deal makers at publicly traded private equity firms collected $1.7 billion in dividends in 2013, Bloomberg News writes. Leon Black, the founder of Apollo Global Management, was among the highest earners, receiving about $369 million in distributions from his stock ownership of the firm.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

HEDGE FUNDS »

After Inquiry, SAC Capital Says It Intends to Hire a Trading Monitor  |  Steven A. Cohen, the billionaire hedge fund owner, is looking to hire a former prosecutor or securities regulator to monitor trading at his investment firm after the federal government’s insider trading investigation.
DealBook »

Elliott Raises Bid for Riverbed to $3.3 Billion  |  The hedge fund Elliott Management raised its bid for Riverbed Technology and continued to criticize the networking equipment company for failing to begin a process to sell itself.
DealBook »

Paulson’s Hedge Fund Seeks Puerto Rico Resort  |  The hedge fund Paulson & Company, founded by the billionaire John A. Paulson, is in talks to buy a resort complex in Puerto Rico as it seeks to expand its investments on the beleaguered island, Bloomberg News writes.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

J. Crew Said to Be Considering 2014 I.P.O.  |  J. Crew, the retailer owned by the private equity firms TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partners, is said to be in talks with banks over a possible initial public offering in 2014, Bloomberg News writes, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Lawsuit Against Zynga I.P.O. Dismissed  |  A federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit against Zynga in which shareholders claimed that Zynga misled them and inflated the value of its stock price ahead of and after its 2011 initial public offering, ReCode writes.
RECODE

Westfield Group May List in the U.S.  |  The Westfield Group, one of the world’s biggest owners of shopping malls, said that it may list in the United States or in London after a planned breakup of its global mall empire, The Wall Street Journal writes.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Spain’s Abengoa to Spin Off Assets in U.S. I.P.O.  |  Abengoa, one of Spain’s largest engineering and energy companies, is planning to spin off its solar and electricity transmission assets into a new company in an initial public offering in the United States, The Wall Street Journal writes, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. The company could be valued at up to $1 billion.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

VENTURE CAPITAL »

Brazil Real Estate Start-Up Draws U.S. Investment  |  Amid continuing concerns about Brazil’s sputtering economy, the Dragoneer Investment Group of San Francisco has made its first investment in an Internet company in the country, leading a $12.75 million round in VivaReal, an online real estate classifieds start-up.
DealBook »

Andreessen on the Future of the News Business  |  The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says on his firm’s blog that he is bullish about the future of the news industry over the next 20 years.
A16Z

Alibaba-Backed Quixey Hired Developers to Challenge Google  |  Quixey, a mobile app search start-up backed by the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is hiring developers to help build applications that could make it easier for users to search for information buried deep within other mobile apps, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Security Start-Up Shape Raises $40 Million  |  Shape Security, a start-up that aims to protect websites from automated attacks, announced on Tuesday that it had raised $40 million in Series C funding, increasing its total to $66 million, ReCode reports.
RECODE

London Start-Up Accelerator Aims to Attract Britain’s Best  |  The Entrepreneur First program, a technology start-up accelerator based in London, is helping to attract Britain’s best engineers to technology company founders, Fortune reports.
FORTUNE

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

17 Brokerage Firms Agree to End Analysis Previews  |  Seventeen brokerage firms, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch, have agreed to stop participating in money management surveys aimed at tapping into research analysts’ changing views on companies before those opinions are publicly issued, Gretchen Morgenson writes in The New York Times.
NEW YORK TIMES

S.&P., in Lawsuit Defense, Seeks Documents About Obama-Geithner Meetings  |  Standard & Poor’s is seeking information about certain meetings between President Obama and Timothy F. Geithner in 2011, hoping the details will help show that a lawsuit filed by the government in 2013 against the company was done in retaliation for a ratings downgrade of American debt.
DealBook »

Geithner’s Book Has a Title: ‘Stress Test’  |  The title gives a flavor of the coming memoir by Timothy F. Geithner, who, as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then as Treasury secretary, was a central player in the government’s effort to fight the financial crisis and economic recession.
DealBook »

No Bailout for Bitcoin Holders  |  The distance from the official world is great enough that Mt. Gox customers are almost totally on their own, writes Edward Hadas of Reuters Breakingviews.
DealBook »

Former British Broker Faces Second Round of Criminal Charges  |  Graeme Shelley, a former broker at Novum Securities, will face a second round of criminal charges as part of Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority’s biggest investigation into insider trading, The Financial Times writes.
FINANCIAL TIMES

Details Emerge on Bernanke’s Life After Fed  |  Ben S. Bernanke, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, “has been spotted wearing polo shirts and the quintessential Washington accessory: a lanyard with an I.D. card identifying him as an employee of the Brookings Institution,” The Washington Post writes. Along with giving speeches and reviewing at least one paper, Mr. Bernanke is said to be working on a memoir about his eight years at the Federal Reserve.
WASHINGTON POST

U.S. Fair Housing Group Files Complaint Against Deutsche Bank  |  The National Fair Housing Alliance has filed a complaint with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development against Deutsche Bank, claiming that the bank took better care of foreclosed homes in white neighborhoods, and also marketed them more effectively, than in black or Latino neighborhoods.
NEW YORK TIMES

A Silver Lining in Bitcoin’s Stumble

BITCOIN’S SILVER LINING  |  The apparent collapse of Mt. Gox, the most prominent Bitcoin exchange, late Monday night naturally stirred outrage and panic. After all, a document circulating widely in the Bitcoin world said the company had lost 744,000 Bitcoins â€" about 6 percent of Bitcoins in circulation â€" worth more than $300 million at current exchange rates. But Bitcoin’s latest troubles did little to shake the confidence of many, and indeed, the virtual currency’s stumble may provide just the spark it needs to become a more mature part of the financial system, Nathaniel Popper and Rachel Abrams write in DealBook.

One champion of the virtual currency, Cameron Winklevoss (of Facebook fame), said Mt. Gox’s closing “underscores just how far the Bitcoin ecosystem has come,” adding that “the brightest minds in the room are hard at work building a responsible and secure future.” One of these new, more experienced companies entering the void left by Mt. Gox is SecondMarket, which runs an exchange for the buying and selling of shares of private companies. As Mt. Gox was preparing to go offline on Monday, SecondMarket announced plans to start a new, regulated Bitcoin exchange for large banks.

From Quartz: “Confidence â€" that Bitcoin is a reliable store of value, and that it can be used without fear of getting totally ripped off â€" is just the problem for Bitcoin. Mt. Gox is by far the largest in a long string of collapses and thefts that have plagued the upstart currency. The exchange had its humble roots as an online marketplace for wizard-themed playing cards (its full name derives from ‘Magic: the Gathering Digital Exchange’), but in the end it made a fortune in Bitcoins disappear into thin air. The question now is whether Bitcoin will follow suit.”

From The Economist: “But as ever, much of the Bitcoin community continues to act as if nothing has happened. Six Bitcoin businesses issued a statement saying that recent events don’t ‘reflect the resilience or value of Bitcoin.’ And today’s entry on the Bitcoin Foundation’s blog is an invitation to ‘Bitcoin 2014’ in Amsterdam (‘Bitcoin is a game changer on a global scale â€" don’t miss out!’). It’s hard not to think that the real problem in Bitcoinland isn’t denial-of-service attacks. It’s denial.”

From the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, on CNBC: “Mt. Gox has been obviously broken and possibly outright crooked for months. As seen in trading spreads. This is like MF Global. Not some huge breakdown of the underlying technology or other exchanges. Bitcoin protocol is unchanged and other Bitcoin exchanges and companies are doing fine.”

Mr. Andreessen, from the DealBook archives (Jan. 21, 2014): “Far from a mere libertarian fairy tale or a simple Silicon Valley exercise in hype, Bitcoin offers a sweeping vista of opportunity to reimagine how the financial system can and should work in the Internet era, and a catalyst to reshape that system in ways that are more powerful for individuals and businesses alike.”

From The New Yorker’s John Cassidy: “Is this the end of Bitcoin? Almost certainly not. Many people operating in the black economy will willingly take a few risks to conduct their business. And, for everybody else, the promise of a cheap and ubiquitous electronic-payment system remains. But in the very week that the first Bitcoin A.T.M. opened in Boston, the notion that hundreds of millions of people are going to trust their wages and savings to an unregulated and opaque electronic currency just suffered a big blow.”

SENATE SAYS CREDIT SUISSE HELPED U.S. CLIENTS HIDE BILLIONS  |  “At times, a Senate report into how Credit Suisse, a bank based in Zurich, helped its American customers hide billions of dollars of assets from the United States Treasury reads more like a John Grisham novel than a white paper,” Annie Lowrey writes in DealBook. The 176-page report, released on Tuesday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, contends that from at least 2001 through 2008, the Swiss bank actively helped thousands of Americans conceal their wealth offshore.

Highlights from the report include an instance in which a Credit Suisse banker “traveled to the United States to meet with the customer at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and, over breakfast, handed the customer bank statements hidden in a Sports Illustrated magazine,” and another in which a client recalled visiting a Credit Suisse office and taking an elevator with “no buttons” that was “controlled remotely.”

2 NEW INVESTIGATIONS FOR BANK OF AMERICA  |  Bank of America is facing two new investigations, one related to its activities in foreign currency exchange markets and the other over its handling of government-backed mortgages in the United States. Alas, these fresh legal inquiries could add to the bank’s mounting litigation costs, which could total $6 billion, up from the previous estimate of $5 billion, Michael Corkery writes in DealBook.

The bank also said it had reached an agreement with Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to amend the terms of his $5 billion stake in Bank of America. The bank now cannot call Berkshire’s preferred shares for five years, and, in return, Mr. Buffett has agreed not to require the bank to pay him any dividends on those shares if times are tough.

ON THE AGENDA  |  New home sales for January are out at 10 a.m. Eric S. Rosengren, the president of the Boston Fed, speaks on the economic outlook at noon. Sandra Pianalto, the president of the Cleveland Fed, discusses the Fed’s history at 7:30 p.m. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations holds a hearing on offshore tax evasion at 9:30 a.m., and the Senate Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions and Family Policy holds a hearing to examine retirement savings for low-income workers at 10 a.m. The House Committee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises holds a hearing on Dodd-Frank’s impact on asset-backed securities at 2 p.m. William S. Cohen, the former defense secretary, is on Bloomberg TV at 5:30 p.m.

DON’T CRY, ARGENTINA  |  It’s not often that a foreign country asks the United States Supreme Court to hear a case, but that’s exactly what Argentina is doing. The South American country, which defaulted on $80 billion of government bonds in 2001, wants the highest court in the United States to throw out a lower-court ruling forcing the country to pay up on these bonds. If you’re asking how this happened, you’re not alone.

In 2005 and 2010, Argentina forced its debt holders into a deal offering them new bonds at 25 to 29 cents on the dollar, which was accepted by more than 90 percent of the bondholders. But there were holdouts, including hedge funds, which have sued to force Argentina to pay the bonds in full, Steven M. Davidoff writes in the Deal Professor column. “Normally, sovereign immunity would protect Argentina. In fact, in the United States, there is also a statute, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, that would prevent the hedge funds from seizing Argentine property to collect on the bonds,” he writes. But, rather cleverly, the hedge funds have argued in court that they are not, in fact, seeking to seize Argentine property.

Instead, these hedge funds argue, when Argentina pays money through the United States financial system on its new bonds, the agents transferring that money can be ordered to pay the holdouts first. The lower courts have ruled in favor of the hedge funds, holding that if Argentina tried to pay its old bondholders first, the banks in the United States that were transferring that money would have an obligation to pay the hedge funds first. Naturally, Argentina reacted with fury. Now, Mr. Davidoff writes, if the Supreme Court denies Argentina’s request to hear the case, it “would effectively turn the United States federal courts into collection agents for the hedge funds.“

Mergers & Acquisitions »

BlackBerry Chief Demurs on Sale of Messenger Service, for Now  |  The prospect of selling or spinning off BlackBerry’s messaging service has helped buoy the company’s fortunes, though John S. Chen, its chief executive, hinted that may not happen quite yet.
DealBook »

A Buyout Offer That Raises Questions of Board Fairness and Duty  |  American Financial’s actions as it tries to buy out minority shareholders of one of its insurance subsidiaries appear deeply flawed, Steven M. Davidoff writes in the Deal Professor column.
DealBook »

Justice Department to Review Comcast Deal  |  The Department of Justice, rather than the Federal Trade Commission, will review Comcast’s $45 billion deal for Time Warner Cable, The Financial Times reports. The Department of Justice led the review of Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal.
FINANCIAL TIMES

Cooper-Standard Considers Merger With TI Automotive  |  Cooper-Standard Holdings is weighing a merger with its rival TI Automotive in a move that would combine the world’s two biggest suppliers of fluid systems for cars and trucks, Reuters reports. Cooper-Standard has a market value of about $750 million and an enterprise value of about $1.4 billion including debt, while TI Automotive has an estimated enterprise value of more than $2 billion.
REUTERS

INVESTMENT BANKING »

@GSElevator’s Unmasking Won’t Stop Book  |  The revelation that the writer behind the popular Twitter feed @GSElevator had never worked for Goldman appeared to undermine his credibility, if not the premise of his planned book, Julie Bosman writes in The New York Times. But the book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, is standing by the author.
NEW YORK TIMES

JPMorgan Estimating $30 Billion of Excess Capital  |  JPMorgan Chase said at its annual investor day on Tuesday that it should have $30 billion of excess capital next year to be distributed to shareholders, The Financial Times reports.
FINANCIAL TIMES

Goldman Poaches Bank of America’s Co-Head of Leveraged Finance  |  Goldman Sachs has hired Alice Murphy, the co-head of global leveraged finance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, as the bank’s global head of leveraged finance origination, The Wall Street Journal reports. Ms. Murphy will be only one of a handful of female partners at the bank.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Barclays to Close Power Trading Unit  |  Barclays has decided to close its United States and European power trading operations as it aims to overhaul its commodities business amid tighter regulation and falling profits, The Financial Times reports.
FINANCIAL TIMES

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Bonderman Says TPG Is Considering Going Public  |  David Bonderman, the co-founder of the private equity firm TPG Capital, said his firm was considering going public like many of its rivals.
DealBook »

At Private Equity Conference, a Debate Over the Benefits of Going Public  |  TPG Capital let slip that it was contemplating an initial public offering, but other industry leaders said they weren’t convinced a public offering was necessary for them at this stage of the game.
DealBook »

Apollo’s Co-Founder Sees Opportunities to Invest in Distressed Debt  |  Private equity firms don’t have to have a “global recession to have good distressed opportunities,” Leon Black, co-founder of Apollo Global Management, said at the SuperReturn International conference in Berlin.
DealBook »

Kravis Says Private Equity Does Poor Job of Discussing Its Benefits  |  Leaders in the private equity industry, including Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, say the business needs to do a better job of communicating its merits.
DealBook »

Carlyle Selected as Preferred Bidder in Tyco Sale  |  The private equity firm Carlyle Group has been selected as the preferred bidder for the $1.6 billion sale of Tyco International’s South Korean security systems unit, Reuters reports.
REUTERS

Top 10 Private Equity Deal Makers Rake in $1.7 Billion  |  The top 10 deal makers at publicly traded private equity firms collected $1.7 billion in dividends in 2013, Bloomberg News writes. Leon Black, the founder of Apollo Global Management, was among the highest earners, receiving about $369 million in distributions from his stock ownership of the firm.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

HEDGE FUNDS »

After Inquiry, SAC Capital Says It Intends to Hire a Trading Monitor  |  Steven A. Cohen, the billionaire hedge fund owner, is looking to hire a former prosecutor or securities regulator to monitor trading at his investment firm after the federal government’s insider trading investigation.
DealBook »

Elliott Raises Bid for Riverbed to $3.3 Billion  |  The hedge fund Elliott Management raised its bid for Riverbed Technology and continued to criticize the networking equipment company for failing to begin a process to sell itself.
DealBook »

Paulson’s Hedge Fund Seeks Puerto Rico Resort  |  The hedge fund Paulson & Company, founded by the billionaire John A. Paulson, is in talks to buy a resort complex in Puerto Rico as it seeks to expand its investments on the beleaguered island, Bloomberg News writes.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

J. Crew Said to Be Considering 2014 I.P.O.  |  J. Crew, the retailer owned by the private equity firms TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partners, is said to be in talks with banks over a possible initial public offering in 2014, Bloomberg News writes, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Lawsuit Against Zynga I.P.O. Dismissed  |  A federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit against Zynga in which shareholders claimed that Zynga misled them and inflated the value of its stock price ahead of and after its 2011 initial public offering, ReCode writes.
RECODE

Westfield Group May List in the U.S.  |  The Westfield Group, one of the world’s biggest owners of shopping malls, said that it may list in the United States or in London after a planned breakup of its global mall empire, The Wall Street Journal writes.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Spain’s Abengoa to Spin Off Assets in U.S. I.P.O.  |  Abengoa, one of Spain’s largest engineering and energy companies, is planning to spin off its solar and electricity transmission assets into a new company in an initial public offering in the United States, The Wall Street Journal writes, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. The company could be valued at up to $1 billion.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

VENTURE CAPITAL »

Brazil Real Estate Start-Up Draws U.S. Investment  |  Amid continuing concerns about Brazil’s sputtering economy, the Dragoneer Investment Group of San Francisco has made its first investment in an Internet company in the country, leading a $12.75 million round in VivaReal, an online real estate classifieds start-up.
DealBook »

Andreessen on the Future of the News Business  |  The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says on his firm’s blog that he is bullish about the future of the news industry over the next 20 years.
A16Z

Alibaba-Backed Quixey Hired Developers to Challenge Google  |  Quixey, a mobile app search start-up backed by the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is hiring developers to help build applications that could make it easier for users to search for information buried deep within other mobile apps, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Security Start-Up Shape Raises $40 Million  |  Shape Security, a start-up that aims to protect websites from automated attacks, announced on Tuesday that it had raised $40 million in Series C funding, increasing its total to $66 million, ReCode reports.
RECODE

London Start-Up Accelerator Aims to Attract Britain’s Best  |  The Entrepreneur First program, a technology start-up accelerator based in London, is helping to attract Britain’s best engineers to technology company founders, Fortune reports.
FORTUNE

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

17 Brokerage Firms Agree to End Analysis Previews  |  Seventeen brokerage firms, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch, have agreed to stop participating in money management surveys aimed at tapping into research analysts’ changing views on companies before those opinions are publicly issued, Gretchen Morgenson writes in The New York Times.
NEW YORK TIMES

S.&P., in Lawsuit Defense, Seeks Documents About Obama-Geithner Meetings  |  Standard & Poor’s is seeking information about certain meetings between President Obama and Timothy F. Geithner in 2011, hoping the details will help show that a lawsuit filed by the government in 2013 against the company was done in retaliation for a ratings downgrade of American debt.
DealBook »

Geithner’s Book Has a Title: ‘Stress Test’  |  The title gives a flavor of the coming memoir by Timothy F. Geithner, who, as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then as Treasury secretary, was a central player in the government’s effort to fight the financial crisis and economic recession.
DealBook »

No Bailout for Bitcoin Holders  |  The distance from the official world is great enough that Mt. Gox customers are almost totally on their own, writes Edward Hadas of Reuters Breakingviews.
DealBook »

Former British Broker Faces Second Round of Criminal Charges  |  Graeme Shelley, a former broker at Novum Securities, will face a second round of criminal charges as part of Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority’s biggest investigation into insider trading, The Financial Times writes.
FINANCIAL TIMES

Details Emerge on Bernanke’s Life After Fed  |  Ben S. Bernanke, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, “has been spotted wearing polo shirts and the quintessential Washington accessory: a lanyard with an I.D. card identifying him as an employee of the Brookings Institution,” The Washington Post writes. Along with giving speeches and reviewing at least one paper, Mr. Bernanke is said to be working on a memoir about his eight years at the Federal Reserve.
WASHINGTON POST

U.S. Fair Housing Group Files Complaint Against Deutsche Bank  |  The National Fair Housing Alliance has filed a complaint with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development against Deutsche Bank, claiming that the bank took better care of foreclosed homes in white neighborhoods, and also marketed them more effectively, than in black or Latino neighborhoods.
NEW YORK TIMES