Joe Wiesenthal reads into a video of a Spanish bar owner yelling at cops yesterday, as anti-austerity protests turned tense.

Also: Greece. Yesterday's protests in photos.

U.S. Bancorp and PNC Financial Services are the latest banks to experience slowdowns on their consumer websites, said to be the result of cyber attacks. Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase seemed to be the focus of attacks last week.

Mergers and acquisitions have slumped to their lowest level since the third quarter of 2009, when the financial crisis stemmed dealmaking.

Hedge fund managers may be facing lower bonuses this year, as many funds failed to adequately recover from poor performances in 2011, The New York Post reports.

Banks will pay out lower bonuses, rather than cut jobs, to control costs this year, Morgan Stanley banking analyst Betsy Graseck told Bloomberg.

Nomura continues its restructuring with plans to eliminate 30 jobs in its Americas equities division, according to Bloomberg. The Japanese firm is also cutting 100 investment banking jobs in Europe as it attempts to shed $1 billion in costs under new CEO Koji Nagai.

Credit Agricole chief executive officer Jean-Paul Chifflet expects a deal to sell its Greek lender Emporiki in the next few weeks, according to Reuters. The price may be a symbolic 1 euro.

Hong Kong tycoon Cecil Chao is offering a $65 million bounty to the man who can win the heart of his lesbian daughter.

Credit Agricole's 2006 purchase of Emporiki Bank of Greece may cost the French lender another $779 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Credit Agricole has already written off billions on Emporiki, which has been roiled by the Greek economic crisis; the French bank is in the process of selling Emporiki, for an expected price of 1 euro. Credit Suisse cut two investment banking jobs in Dubai and relocated others to Qatar, according to Bloomberg. Those moves come after Deutsche Bank and Nomura eliminated jobs in Dubai.

The American boss of former UBS rogue trader Kweku Adoboli testified on Friday, noting that the bank's London office had an aggressive attitude towards risk.

A panel of European lawmakers asked regulators from the U.S., Europe and Japan how and why Libor-rigging was allowed to go unchecked for so long.

'Free checking' is more expensive than ever, The Journal reports.

Fake gold panic hits the diamond district.

The son of a New York hedge fund manager—and great-grandson of the man who created Junior Mints—is set to be arraigned on charges of negligent vehicular homicide while under the influence of alcohol after he crashed an all-terrain vehicle, killing a passenger, at the Yellowstone Club in Bozeman, Mont.

Real estate banker Jeffrey Baker, a managing director at Savills, is marking artisanal whiskey in the Hudson River Valley.

The median home price in Greenwich, Conn. fell 11 percent in the first seven months of the year, according to Bloomberg, as Wall Street cut jobs and pared compensation.

M&T Bank's deal for Hudson City Bancorp shows the Buffalo-based acquirer needs capital to meet new regulatory requirements, writes Peter Eavis in The Times.

Barclays has watched energy traders depart for other firms after the bank placed capped bonuses and limited the amount that traders can risk.

Credit Agricole hopes to reach a deal to sell its Greek unit in the next few weeks, the French lender's CEO Jean-Paul Chifflet said today. Credit Agricole said it lost 370 million euros on the Emporiki in the second quarter.

Depositors are pulling money out of Spanish banks, Reuters reports, and the Spanish recession continues to deepen.

Greece is planning special economic zones that would offer tax and administrative advantages (but which not allow business to pay lower wages).

In the U.S., meanwhile, things are such that investors are giving up on stocks and bonds and placing bets on...the Iraqi Dinar. That's old news, but The New York Post reports that a Dinar trade figures in the plot of Hollywood's Hit and Run, starring Kristen Bell.

In Hong Kong, Occupy protestors defied a court order to evacuate HSBC's headquarters. According to Bloomberg, media outnumbered protestors.

Greenlight Capital founder David Einhorn sank $15 million into a Milwaukee-based venture capital firm—the Capital Midwest Fund, managed by his brother Daniel and father Stephen.

William C. Butcher, former chairman and chief executive officer of Chase Manhattan, died at 85.

The downgrade didn't prevent Spain's Amancio Ortega, founder of retail giant Inditex, from becoming Europe's richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.

“We have no sense that European partners will follow this tactic of blackmail heard from some quarters and stop funding,” Alex Tsipras, leader of Greece's anti-bailout Syriza party told Bloomberg Television. Rather, Mr. Tsipras thinks that Greece can break the terms of the European rescue agreement signed by a previous Greek government without being forced to exit the eurozone.

"If the Greeks do not meet the commitments they have made, do not meet their financial commitments, do not repay loans, Slovakia will demand that Greece leaves the euro zone," Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico said at a news conference today.

Credit Agricole's Grexit contingency plans include walking away from Greek assets, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Germany beat the Netherlands 2-1 on goals by Mario Gomez.

Softballs: Jamie Dimon got in and out of Senate Banking Committee hearings without being pressed too hard on JPMorgan's recent trading losses, and Heidi Moore says it comes down to one chief reason: No amount of regulation can prevent banks from making stupid decisions.

Mr. Dimon's recent troubles may have created space for another Wall Street boss to claim the title of America's Least Hated Banker.

Emerging market: Large institutional investors and the Wall Street firms that bank them are talking about creating an electronic marketplace for corporate bonds, The Journal reports. BlackRock and Goldman Sachs are among firms that have begun building their own platforms.

Lawyer's suit: Former Dewey & Labouef partner Henry Bunsow is suing the law firm, which filed for bankruptcy on May 28, charging that the firm encouraged partners to make capital investments in the firm in what amounted to a pyramid scheme. "Defendants used partner capital investments as a form of revenue to enrich themselves and to hide the dire condition of the firm from the public,” read Mr. Bunsow's complaint.

Tear-jerker:Wily defense counsel Gary P. Naftalis drew tears from client Rajat Gupta, the former McKinsey & Co. founder accused of passing corporate secrets to Galleon Group's Raj Rajaratnam, during closing remarks of the insider-trading trial at the U.S. Southern District courthouse in downtown Manhattan. “Whatever you do here will mark whatever future he [Gupta] has left,” Mr. Naftalis said. “To believe the argument of the defense team, you’d have to believe Mr. Gupta is one of the unluckiest men in the world,” prosecutor Reed Brodsky told the jury.

745 Fifth Avenue (Courtesy Property Shark)

Irving Place will pay rents in the $80s per square foot for the new office according to one person with knowledge of the deal. 745 Fifth Avenue is considered a high end building but the space that Irving Place agreed to lease comes with an added perk. The office is one among a handful of spaces at 745 Fifth Avenue that is equipped with a working outdoor terrace, providing views of nearby Central Park, a coveted amenity.

The pricey transaction is one among a number of recent leases in the Manhattan portfolio of the Paramount Group, a German based real estate investment firm that owns 745 Fifth Avenue as well as a number of other trophy properties in the city.

Credit Agricole, a large French bank, recently renewed its large 350,000 square foot lease at another Paramount property, 1301 Avenue of the Americas, in what was one of the biggest leasing transactions of the fourth quarter. In recent weeks, DG, a media services company, reached a deal to take about 90,000 square feet at another Paramount building, 1633 Broadway.

Brian Goldman, an executive with Newmark Knight Frank, represented Irving Place in the deal at 745 Fifth Avenue along with fellow Newmark executive Neil Goldmacher, a specialist in high-priced commercial rental deals. Neither could be reached by press time. Ted Koltis, a leasing executive at Paramount who handles deals for the company, also wasn’t available. A representative from Irving Place also didn’t return calls by press time.

Dan Geiger, Staff Writer, is reachable at DGeiger@Observer.com

Behold: The biggest transaction of 4Q11.

The French bank and financial firm has extended its hold on a block of floors near the base of the 1.8 million square foot tower, owned by the Paramount Group, and also two tower spaces in the 45-story property. The term of the lease is for 10 years according to a source. One person put the rents in the deal in the $80s per square foot, though The Commercial Observer could not confirm those rates by press time.

Credit Agricole is the largest retail bank in France. It has long had its New York headquarters at 1301 Avenue of the Americas, which is known as the Credit Agricole Building. The company leases floors 13 through 20 in the property and two smaller floors higher up.

The company had been in the leasing market in search of options for months and for a time was rumored to be potentially interested in a deal at 825 Eighth Avenue, the West Side office builidng known as Worldwide Plaza. Most tenants who had been shopping at that location were eventually pushed off the building by the Japanese financial company Nomura, which absorbed virtually all of Worldwide Plaza’s cavernous vacancy in a 900,000 square foot deal there during the summer.

Credit Agricole’s lease, at least for the moment, settles some rising concerns among real estate experts that European financial insitutions could cast sublease space into the market next year as a result of that Europe’s ongoing debt crisis. Many brokers have cast a watchful eye towards banks like UBS, Credit Suisse and Societe Generale, though none have yet announced any intent to downsize in the city.

The tenant representation brokerage Studley, led by the company’s chairman and CEO Mitchell Steir, represented Credit Agricole in the renewal deal. Paramount uses an in house leasing team led by one of the company’s top leasing executives Ted Koltis to tend to its multimillion square foot Manhattan portfolio, which includes several trophy buildings besides 1301 Avenue of the Americas such as 712 Fifth Avenue and 1633 Broadway. Neither Mr. Steir nor Mr. Koltis could be reached.

A spokeswoman from Credit Agricole declined to comment.

Dan Geiger, Staff Writer, is reachable at DGeiger@Observer.com