Category: Investing

Facebook Privacy, Novelty Issues Create Openings for Competitors

It sounds like a kamikaze mission: an upstart with a meager number of users and no capital squaring off against Facebook, a social networking juggernaut with more than 400 million members and a $15 billion valuation.

But despite those odds, a handful of start-ups are eyeing the social networking industry with renewed interest.

UK Fines JP Morgan Nearly $50 Million for Not “Ringfencing” Client Money

U.S. investment bank JP Morgan Securities Ltd has been fined a record 33.32 million pounds ($49.12 million) in Britain for failing to protect billions of dollars of client money over almost seven years.

Issuing a stark warning to other banks operating in Britain, the country’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) said on Thursday that

Antitrust Regulators Watching Google – Albeit Uncertainly

IN the 1990s, Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley lawyer, almost single-handedly brought the antitrust weight of the federal government down on that era’s high-tech heavyweight, Microsoft.

Now Mr. Reback contends there is a dangerous new monopolist in the catbird seat: the search giant Google.

This month, Mr. Reback shepherded Adam and Shivaun Raff, the husband-and-wife entrepreneurs behind the London comparison shopping site Foundem, around Washington.

Big Setback for A.I.G. in Collapse of Deal Selling Asia Branch AIA

The American International Group scuttled the deal to sell its huge Asian life insurance arm, AIA,  to Prudential of Britain for about $35 billion,

in a major setback to repaying the government for its 2008 rescue.

We have already noted in detail how the failure to institute Basel II banking regulations could create problems for the US-taxpayer-owned AIG,

AIG Could Be Whacked By Euro Debt Crisis

The waves of financial trouble rippling across Europe could end up splashing at least one American institution: the taxpayer-owned American International Group.

A.I.G. has sought to unwind its derivatives business, which gave it a big exposure to Europe.

After an outcry over details disclosed last year about how the government’s bailout helped a number of European banks,

Apple Overtakes MS As Leading High-Tech Cap Company

“It is the single most important turnaround that I have seen in Silicon Valley,” said Jim Breyer, a venture capitalist who has invested in some of the most successful technology companies.

That was the reaction yesterday when Apple closed trading on Wednesday ahead of arch-rival Micro-Soft for the first time ever.

This changing of the guard caps one of the most stunning turnarounds in business history, as Apple had been given up for dead only a decade earlier.

Health Insurance Companies Spend Lobbying Millions to Manipulate New Law

Health insurance companies are lobbying federal and state officials in an effort to ward off strict regulation of premiums and profits under the new health care law.

The effort is, in some ways, a continuation of the battle over health care that consumed Congress last year.

Insurance lobbyists are trying to shape regulations that will define “unreasonable” premium increases and require them to pay rebates to consumers if the companies do not spend enough on patient care.

Europeans, Hong Kong, Others Taking Hard Look At Google “Street View” Privacy Issue

In a sign that Europe is taking an increasingly unified line on Internet privacy,

six European countries have joined Germany in asking Google to preserve data it improperly collected from unsecured wireless networks as part of Street View, its photo-mapping service, the company said Friday.