- Bank of Japan Holds Fire on Stimulus, Negative Rate Unchanged (BBG)
- Donald Trump Aims for a Knockout in Tuesday Primaries (WSJ)
- Global Stocks Fall on Commodities Decline, Ahead of Fed Meeting (WSJ)
- Oil prices fall as clouds gather over supply picture (Reuters)
- Many Shale Companies Are Unable to Ramp Up Oil Output (WSJ)
- Valeant Slashes Guidance, stock crashes (WSJ)
- Fed to sit tight on rates at March meet, hint at hikes to come (Reuters)
- Big Money Gets On China’s Lifeboats (BBG)
- Republican Party gears up to fight Obama court nominee (Reuters)
- BOJ Move Backfires as 0.001% Deposits Lure Cash of Fund Managers (BBG)
- VW Whistle-Blower’s Suit Accuses Carmaker of Deleting Data (NYT)
- Apple fight could escalate with demand for ‘source code’ (Reuters)
- Near-Record Cash `Comfort’ for Canada Oil Firms Amid Price Rout (BBG)
- The Koch Brothers Have Started a New Family Office to Quietly Invest Their Fortune (BBG)
- Stanley Fischer and Lael Brainard Are Battling for Yellen’s Soul (BBG)
- Ex-Sequoia Partner Goguen Calls Sex-Abuse Suit Extortion (BBG)
- State TV shows Russian troops in Syria packing up (Reuters)
- Cost-Cutting Shale Drillers Limit Potential for Oil Rally (BBG)
- U.S. Investors Have Capitulated on Europe at the Worst Possible Time (BBG)
Overnight Media Digest
WSJ
– Chinese insurance company Anbang Insurance Group Co lobbed in a roughly $13 billion bid for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc, an effort to break up the hotelier’s pending sale to Marriott International Inc and the latest sign of China’s growing appetite for overseas takeovers. (http://on.wsj.com/1Rj9Xjd)
– North Korean leader Kim Jong Un claimed a key advance in ballistic missile technology and called for further missile and nuclear warhead tests “in a short time”, the latest in a string of recent threats aimed at creating fear of war in the U.S. and South Korea. (http://on.wsj.com/1Rja1Q7)
– Sony Corp has reached an agreement with the estate of Michael Jackson for Sony to obtain ownership of Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC by purchasing the estate’s 50% stake. (http://on.wsj.com/1RigWPJ)
– Bottles of Honest laundry detergent say they don’t contain SLS, a chemical that the consumer-products company says can irritate skin. But Earth Friendly Products LLC, the company that makes the detergent for Honest, dropped such marketing claims from its own website last year. (http://on.wsj.com/1RjaaDb)
– Avon Products Inc said Monday that it would eliminate around 2,500 jobs and move its corporate headquarters to the United Kingdom, the latest step in a years-long turnaround of the struggling beauty company. (http://on.wsj.com/1RjadPm)
– Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s investment-management division said it would buy Honest Dollar, an online retirement-savings startup that is barely a year old, consisting of portfolios of low-cost exchange-traded funds to small companies, charging $8 to $10 an employee a month. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. (http://on.wsj.com/1RjahhZ)
– JPMorgan Chase & Co is trying to sell new securities that would pass along most of the credit risk on $1.9 billion in mortgages, in an attempt to revive a debt market that has been largely left to the government since the financial crisis. (http://on.wsj.com/1RjamCb)
FT
China’s Anbang Insurance Group has challenged Marriott International Inc’s merger with U.S. hotel operator Starwood with a $12.8 billion cash offer.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Monday that “the main part” of Russian armed forces in Syria would start to withdraw.
Brussels is urging European banks to stay away from Russia’s first sovereign bond issue, creating doubts about the viability of the offering.
NYT
– A fired Volkswagen AG employee in Michigan contends that employees erased electronic files as U.S. officials were investigating its emissions cheating. (http://nyti.ms/1RihVPN)
– China’s Anbang Insurance Group hopes to expand its hotel empire with an unsolicited bid to acquire Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide’s, hoping to derail Starwood’s $10.8 billion cash-and-stock merger with Marriott International Inc that is set to be considered by shareholders of both hotel operators this month. (http://nyti.ms/1QTxkTk)
– As China’s economy slows after more than two decades of breakneck growth, strikes and labor protests have erupted across the country. Factories, mines and other businesses are withholding wages and benefits, laying off staff or shutting down altogether. Worried about their prospects in a gloomy job market, workers are fighting back with unusual ferocity. (http://nyti.ms/1Riin0C)
– Goldman Sachs Group Inc is adding a little robo to its investment management business, buying Honest Dollar, a digital retirement savings tool aimed at millions of small-business employees who do not have access to traditional employer-sponsored savings plans. (http://nyti.ms/1Riiwkt)
– The Obama administration is expected to withdraw its plan to permit oil and gas drilling off the southeast Atlantic coast, yielding to an outpouring of opposition from coastal communities from Virginia to Georgia but dashing the hopes and expectations of many of those states’ top leaders. (http://nyti.ms/1QToghl)
Canada
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
** The largest shareholder in Postmedia Network Canada Corp is soliciting offers to sell its stake in the media company, signalling a potential shift in the ownership of Canada’s biggest chain of newspapers. (http://bit.ly/1pk4Nx5)
** Federal prison authorities are under criminal investigation for possible illegal surveillance, The Globe and Mail has learned. The probe centres on Correctional Service Canada’s use of a dragnet surveillance device inside a penitentiary. (http://bit.ly/1Uvs8rs)
NATIONAL POST
** London’s city council has lambasted Bombardier Inc for “duping” the British capital into awarding it a train-signalling contract that it was incapable of delivering, creating “nothing short of a disaster” for the London Underground. (http://bit.ly/1UvsKNB)
** Low oil prices could cost Canada’s federally owned mortgage insurer C$7 billion ($5.23 billion) a year in lost profits, though the organization’s top executive said Monday the oil price collapse will not drain its capital to unsustainable levels. (http://bit.ly/1RiCUlI)
** Airfares are falling across the globe but that isn’t affecting the financial performance of North America’s airlines, according to a new report by the International Air Transport Association. (http://bit.ly/1V8KLSG)
Britain
The Times
The chief executive of Britain’s biggest supermarket, Tesco Plc, has warned that the retail sector could come under intolerable pressure unless British finance minister George Osborne pledges to reform business rates. (http://thetim.es/1QS4WCv)
Shares of London Stock Exchange Group Plc hit a record high Monday as expectations grew that it will reveal the details of an agreed merger with Deutsche Boerse AG within days, valuing the combined group at more than 20 billion stg. (http://thetim.es/1V7QJmw)
The Guardian
Weaker growth and a deterioration in public finances will force the Treasury to make an additional 4 billion stg of savings by the end of the current parliament, British finance minister George Osborne has said. (http://bit.ly/1QWo135)
Fever-Tree, the supplier of premium tonic water and other carbonated mixers, is toasting a surge in profits after it won new business with Marks and Spencer Group Plc and British Airways. (http://bit.ly/1LndBg2)
The Telegraph
Supporters of Brexit are more likely to vote in the forthcoming referendum which could give the Leave campaign a decisive edge in the final result, a new Telegraph poll suggests. (http://bit.ly/250Ooya)
Iran has vowed to resist a move to cut oil production as its output soared by the largest monthly amount in nearly 20 years. (http://bit.ly/1UceKtk)
Sky News
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc is to cut around 550 jobs in the UK as it moves away from offering face-to-face advice to automated services. (http://bit.ly/1QTzzYb)
British people on low incomes will be eligible for a bonus of up to 1,200 stg over four years if they put money away in a new savings scheme, Prime Minister David Cameron has announced. (http://bit.ly/1Mjb01l)
The Independent
British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has been warned that he risks damaging the struggling UK economy with another round of spending cuts. (http://ind.pn/1QYVRo2)
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1RLmGvy Tyler Durden