F.C.C. Report Is Said to Criticize AT&T Deal The Federal Communications Commission released a staff report on Tuesday that said AT&T had not shown that the benefits of its proposed merger with T-Mobile USA would outweigh the costs, adding that AT&T would likely build high-speed wireless Internet connections even without the deal, an unidentified F.C.C. official told Bloomberg News. The report came even as the F.C.C. allowed the companies to withdraw their application for approval of the merger.
At Diamond Foods, Accounting Weighs on Pringles Deal Short-sellers have challenged Diamond Foods' accounting over a payment for walnuts. A subsequent drop in the company's stock has cast a shadow over a deal to acquire Pringles from Procter & Gamble, Steven M. Davidoff writes in his Deal Professor column.
Samsung in Deal to Buy Parallel Petroleum Samsung C&T, the engineering and construction division of South Korea's Samsung Group, along with the Korea National Oil Corporation, agreed to buy the American energy company Parallel Petroleum from the private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $772 million, Reuters reports.
Icahn's Metals Bid Presents Opportunity for Rivals Carl C. Icahn's $2.6 billion offer to buy Commercial Metals marks the lowest valuation for a steel takeover since 2007, creating an opportunity for other potential bidders, such as the American steel maker Nucor, Bloomberg News writes.
BHP Puts Diamond Mine on the Block BHP Billiton, the mining giant, is pursuing a sale of its diamond mining business in Canada, and potential buyers include Rio Tinto and Anglo American, The Financial Times reports.
Brazilian Lenders Are Said to Be for Sale The Brazilian bank Banco Prosper and the Brazil unit of the Madeira-based Banif SGPS, which has been affected by the European debt crisis, are for sale, Bloomberg News reports, citing four people with knowledge of the negotiations.
S.&P. Cuts Its Ratings for 15 Banks The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's will downgrade 37 banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Citigroup's Deals With Wealthy Clients Become Legal HeadacheCitigroup sold a Saudi businessman a deal that he says lost him $383 million, even though the bank questioned his ability to manage the investments, according to an internal memo, Bloomberg News reports. It's just one of the deals with wealthy clients that now haunt the bank, Bloomberg writes.
"As each issue bubbles up, analysts or providers of capital to the firm have to say, 'OK, what other tape bombs are lying in the dusty lines of Citi's balance sheet?'" David Knutson, a credit analyst with Legal & General Investment Management, told Bloomberg.
Bank of America Stock Nears $5 The bank's stock, pennies above $5, recently touched its lowest intraday value since March 2009, The Wall Street Journal writes. If it falls below $5, some investors could be forced to sell, The Journal notes.
Bank Work Forces Shrank by 2.5 Percent It's not just Wall Street banks that are scaling back: more than 2,500 American banks cut staff in the third quarter, for a combined reduction of 20,332 jobs, The Wall Street Journal reports, noting that job growth was the slowest since bank employment fell in the first quarter of last year.
France's Big Three Banks Lose Loans Share BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Societe Generale, France's three largest banks, saw their share of syndicated loans in Europe, the Middle East and Africa decline this year to 14.9 percent from 16 percent, as the European debt crisis erodes their earlier advantage, Bloomberg News reports.
"Today their obsession is: capital, capital, capital," Jacques-Pascal Porta, who manages money at Ofi Gestion Privee in Paris, told Bloomberg.
Italian Banks Forgo Bond Sale Commissions for a Day For one day, Italian banks agreed to give up commissions for selling Italian sovereign debt on the secondary market, but the patriotic effort did not placate investors on Tuesday, as they demanded record high yields, The Wall Street Journal reports.
