Whither Europe: Greece’s leading pro-bailout party—conservative New Democracy, which won Sunday’s elections, and socialist Pasok—are still negotiating to form a coalition to govern the teetering nation. Assuming a deal gets done, the first task will be to convince Europe to rewrite the Greek rescue agreement to provide more time—and financing—to meet austerity goals.
European leaders promised a more integrated banking system at the G-20 meeting in Mexico City yesterday, listing common banking oversight and depositor guarantees among future steps to be considered.
Asset managers like Legg Mason are preparing for worst case news out of Europe.
Greek savers aren’t the only ones stuffing banknotes under their mattresses; Reuters reports that institutional investors are increasingly holding cash.
(“If you wrapped up all the $100 bills in circulation, it would form a cube about 74 feet per side…”)
Spain paid 2 percentage points more to borrow on 12-month bonds yesterday than it did one month ago.
If all that paints too rosy a picture, talk to Mark J. Grant.
For a little optimist, CNBC brings you Mark Mobius.
Jon Stewart interviews the drachma.
Your tab… Goldman Sachs (GS) advanced Rajat Gupta nearly $30 million to cover legal expenses, according to The New York Times, salt in the wounds after a) the former McKinsey & Co. chief executive and Goldman director passed Goldman secrets to hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, according to the jury and b) Mr. Gupta’s defense team took an adversarial approach to the parade of Goldman execs appearing at the witness stand (one attorney for Mr. Gupta called Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein “cold and callous,” according to The Times). Anyway, Goldman has been picking up the tab because firm bylaws require the bank to pay the legal fees of executives and board directors; Mr. Gupta signed a pretrial agreement stipulating that he would pay his own legal bills if convicted.
Hide the whale: Bruno Iksil, the JPMorgan trader known as the London Whale, sometimes resisted sharing the details of his trading positions with superiors,The Wall Street Journalreports: “Mr. Iksil once confided to the colleague that when he wanted to avoid questions from supervisors about his trades, he sometimes would start discussing a mathematical term, equation or other technical jargon, to confuse and end the conversation.”
Jamie Dimon is scheduled to testify before the “harsher and crazier” House of Representatives today.
BofA to divest? Swiss private bank Julius Baer is in talks to acquire Bank of America (BAC)’s non-U.S. wealth management unit, which manages about $90 billion, and which Reuters says could be worth about $2 billion.
Short-term fix: Nine months and $15 million later, Michael Francis is out as president of J.C. Penney.
