March 29, 2024

DealBook: Nasdaq Sets Aside $40 Million to Settle Facebook Claims

A Nasdaq ticker in Times Square.Ángel Franco/The New York TimesA Nasdaq ticker in Times Square.

9:28 p.m. | Updated
The Nasdaq OMX Group is taking its first step to quell investor anger over the flawed debut of Facebook shares last month — pledging $40 million to cover broker losses — but some customers and competitors quickly raised objections.

The stock market operator said on Wednesday that it would set aside $13.7 million in cash and pay out the rest in trading rebates to settle disputes by investors arising from technical malfunctions in Facebook’s initial public offering on May 18, the biggest technology I.P.O. ever.

Nasdaq has maintained that the decline in the price of Facebook’s stock since the first day was because of factors other than the glitches on the exchange. Facebook’s shares rose 3.6 percent to $26.81 on Wednesday, an overall strong day for stocks around the globe, but they are still down 29 percent from the $38 offering price.

Retail investors bore the brunt of the losses from the fumbled I.P.O., but they will not be able to appeal directly to Nasdaq. Instead the exchange is making the money available to the market-making firms that traded on behalf of investors.

Some of the Nasdaq money could flow through to investors who lost money on the first day of trading, including when the exchange ignored their requests to cancel purchase orders. But some analysts say they doubt that the compensation will do much to restore confidence among ordinary investors, who had already been turning away from stock markets before the I.P.O.

Facebook's first day in public trading, May 18, touched off excitement at the Nasdaq in New York.Scott Eells/Bloomberg NewsFacebook’s first day in public trading, May 18, touched off excitement at the Nasdaq in New York.

Nasdaq’s proposal to compensate firms by reducing future trading costs quickly faced opposition from other exchanges, who said the rebates gave Nasdaq an unfair advantage.

Even if approved by regulators, the plan still falls far short of the more than $100 million that industry experts have said market-making firms lost when errors in Nasdaq’s systems led to delays in setting an opening price for Facebook. About 30 million shares were executed improperly after trading that was supposed to start at 11 a.m. was delayed by a half-hour.

“Their proposed solution to this problem is simply unacceptable,” Knight Capital, a major brokerage firm that has claimed some $30 million of Facebook-related losses, said in a statement. “As previously stated, the company is evaluating all remedies available under law.”

Nasdaq’s chief executive, Robert Greifeld, has admitted that the ordeal has left his company “humbly embarrassed.” In Wednesday’s announcement, the exchange said that it had hired I.B.M. to review its technical systems.

Others have been criticized for the Facebook fiasco, among them the lead underwriter, Morgan Stanley, for setting too high an offer price. But Nasdaq has been a popular target for investors and firms involved in the I.P.O. The common thread of their complaints has been that the Nasdaq technical stumbles spooked investors and created a climate of fear that sent the Facebook share price down.

Such are the scope of Nasdaq’s problems that its main rival, NYSE Euronext, briefly tested the possibility of luring Facebook onto the New York Stock Exchange, people briefed on the advances have said.

Nasdaq has already explained what lay behind the problem. As Nasdaq’s systems were setting Facebook’s opening price, a wave of order modifications forced the exchange’s computers into a loop of constant recalculations. The firm was forced to switch to another system, knocking out some orders and delaying many trade confirmations.

The net effect was investors left guessing as to whether they held any Facebook shares at all. For days afterward, traders claimed that they still did not know how many Facebook shares they held, while others argued that the technical problems left them holding stock that quickly plummeted in value on Friday and days afterward.

Nasdaq’s proposal on Wednesday has several qualifications. Member firms must prove they were directly harmed by malfunctions that erupted before trading started at 11:30 a.m. on the first day of trading, when the stock opened at $42.

And the program applies only to certain kinds of trades, including sale orders priced at $42 or less that did not execute or were carried out at lower prices, and purchases that were priced at $42 but were not immediately confirmed. All claims will be evaluated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Brokerage firms that handled the problematic trades declined to comment or said they were reviewing Nasdaq’s proposal.

The swiftest response came from other stock exchanges.

NYSE Euronext complained that the proposal would incentivize trading firms to flock to the beleaguered exchange to claim their rebates. The plan would “allow Nasdaq to reap a benefit from market share gains they would not have otherwise received,” NYSE said in a statement.

A spokesman for DirectEdge, another major stock exchange operator, said that the company had “several significant concerns with the Nasdaq remedy and plan to aggressively voice them throughout the process.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission will ultimately decide whether to approve the compensation program.

Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/nasdaq-sets-aside-40-million-to-settle-facebook-trading-claims/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Stock Markets Recover Some Losses

Stock markets were modestly higher Thursday, just about recovering Wednesday’s losses, although many traders were still shying away from riskier assets at year-end.

In Italy, the government successfully tapped bond investors for more cash for the second day running.

But in a sign that nerves remained high, the euro was near a one-year low against the dollar and sank to a decade-low against the Japanese yen. In relatively thin trading, which often accentuates movements, the euro fell to $1.2883, its lowest level since Jan. 10 and not far from its 2011 low of $1.2860. Against the yen, it fell to 100.33 yen, a 10-year low.

In New York, the Standard Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average both closed up 1.1 percent. The Nasdaq composite index was 0.9 percent higher.

On Wednesday, the S.P. 500 fell 1.3 percent, while the Dow lost 1.1 percent.

Another bond auction from Italy’s monetary authorities did little to shore up stocks or the euro, even though borrowing rates fell for the second consecutive day. In total, Italy raised around 7 billion euros ($9.2 billion) in the four auctions.

In the most awaited auction, the Bank of Italy reported that Italy raised 2.5 billion euros ($3.3 billion) of 10-year bonds at an average yield of 6.98 percent. That is lower than the 7.56 percent it had to pay at an equivalent auction last month, when investor concerns over the ability of the country to service its huge debts became particularly acute and effectively prompted a change in government.

However, the country’s borrowing rate on the critical 10-year bond remained uncomfortably close to the 7 percent level widely considered to be unsustainable in the long run. Greece, Ireland and Portugal all had to request financial bailouts after their 10-year bond yields pushed above 7 percent.

In another sign of unease, banks continued to park large amounts of money overnight at the European Central Bank, reflecting strains in the interbank lending market and the central bank’s big 489 billion euro infusion of cheap, long-term credit into the banking system last week. The amount deposited overnight Wednesday was an elevated 436.58 billion euros, down from a record 452.03 billion euros from Tuesday.

The large deposits suggest banks are temporarily holding some of their borrowings from last week there. It also suggests that banks are afraid to lend to each other on the interbank market, preferring to hold cash risk-free at the central bank even at low interest rates.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares closed up 1.1 percent, while the CAC 40 in France rose 1.8 percent. Germany’s DAX was 1.3 percent higher, though it had borne the brunt of the selling in the previous session.

Earlier in Asia, investors booked losses amid light trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.3 percent to close at 8,398.89. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index closed 0.7 percent lower at 18,397.92.

Oil markets were subdued with the benchmark New York rate up 27 cents at $99.63 a barrel.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5ebef89fac5afe3608436749feecb98b

Geithner Sees ‘Progress’ in Efforts to Shore Up Euro

European leaders are to gather Thursday night in Brussels to begin seeking agreement on the latest series of measures to support euro-zone governments that are facing a crisis of confidence in their finances.

After meetings in Germany on Tuesday, Mr. Geithner arrived in Paris for talks with French officials including Prime Minister François Fillon and President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr. Geithner said he had confidence in what French officials “are doing with Germany to try to build a stronger Europe,” adding that he was “encouraged by the progress they’re making.”

“I want to emphasize again how important it is to the United States and to countries around the world that Europe succeeds in this effort to build a stronger Europe, and I’m confident they will succeed,” he added.

He spoke as the German Finance Agency sold €4.1 billion, or $5.5 billion, of 5-year debt securities at an average yield of 1.11 percent, up slightly from the 1.0 percent it paid to sell similar debt on Nov. 2. Investors had been watching the auction carefully, after a November offering of 10-year bonds flopped, sending markets reeling.

This time, there were a healthy 2.1 bids for each of the 5-year bonds sold, up from 1.5 on Nov. 2. Stock markets in Europe were generally flat Wednesday, after early gains.

“Today’s tender reflects volatile and uncertain market conditions,” Reuters quoted the agency as saying in a statement. “Investors are looking for, and trust, the quality of the paper from the euro zone’s benchmark issuer.”

The European Union’s main bailout fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility, will provide another test of investor confidence later this month, when the German debt management office begins auctioning the fund’s 3-, 6- and 12-month bills.

“The launch of a short-term funding program is in line with the enlarged scope of activity of E.F.S.F. to use its new instruments efficiently,” Klaus Regling, the fund’s chief executive, said Wednesday in a statement.

The fund currently enjoys the highest short-term credit ratings from all three of the major agencies, Standard Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings.

But analysts are skeptical that it can maintain that rating if the top-rated European governments cannot maintain their own ratings.

S.P. warned Monday that the ratings of 15 euro-zone countries, including Germany and France, faced a possible downgrade, and it said Tuesday that the bailout fund also faced a downgrade if top governments’ ratings were cut.

The fund said the auctions would be held “before year end.”

Annie Lowrey contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f6be44c9d1b0eef108eb12dcebecad66

Asian Markets Rally on Central Banks’ Actions

HONG KONG — Stock markets across the Asia-Pacific region rose on Friday, continuing a rally that had lifted markets in Europe and the United States, as investors took comfort from moves by the world’s leading central banks to increase liquidity in the European banking system.

The European Central Bank and its counterparts in the United States, Britain, Japan and Switzerland essentially opened new lines of credit to European banks, allowing them to borrow U.S. dollars for up to three months — a period that gives them breathing space for the rest of this year.

The move was designed to ease the pressure on European lenders, some of which have found it hard to borrow dollars from American lenders amid mounting concerns about the European banking sector’s exposure to Greece.

Analysts cautioned that the step, while providing welcome relief to beleaguered financial institutions, was no panacea for the underlying problem: the crippling debt levels that threaten to push Greece into default and have set off wider turmoil in global financial markets.

“It’s an important and gratifying but small step in the right direction,” commented Andrew Pease, chief investment strategist for Asia Pacific at Russell Investments, in a conference call with the media on Friday.

But he added that ultimately, more concerted activity was needed toward a more fiscally united Europe.

“Things will likely need to get worse,” he said, before the necessary decisions to “clear the air” would be taken.

Still, investors around the world greeted the announcement with a renewed willingness to buy stocks.

The benchmark indexes in Hong Kong and Japan both climbed 2 percent by early afternoon. The Kospi in South Korea rallied 3.6 percent, the Taiex in Taiwan added 2.9 percent and the benchmark index in Australia rose 1.8 percent.

The Sensex index was 1 percent higher by late morning in India.

The euro was trading at around $1.3869, having firmed markedly against the dollar on Thursday.

On Thursday, the DAX in Germany and the CAC 40 in France had both gained more than 3 percent on Thursday, while in the United States, the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard Poor’s 500 both closed up 1.7 percent.

Futures on the S. P. 500 were higher in Asia on Friday, signaling that Wall Street could see another firm start.

Meanwhile, a key meeting of European finance ministers and other policy makers in the Polish city of Wroclaw on Friday and Saturday has fanned expectations of potentially more determined action to contain the escalating sovereign debt crisis.

The U.S. Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, will also be attending, which analysts said is a sign of how strong the sense of urgency surrounding the eurozone debt crisis has become.

Analysts said they expected Mr. Geithner to press European ministers at the meeting to increase the resources available to their bailout fund for the euro zone countries. But even the expansion of the fund to €440 billion, or $611 billion, agreed to in July, has yet to be ratified. There is some worry that countries guaranteeing the bailout fund might themselves face doubts about their own credit.

The Federal Reserve’s meeting next week will also be closely watched, amid expectations that the bank will signal new measures for the lumbering U.S. economy.

“The Fed is under pressure to come up with some sort of additional stimulus. It is also under pressure not to do so,” analysts at DBS said in a research note on Friday, highlighting the complex pressures facing the U.S. central bank and the internal debate about how best to act. “Still, we expect the Fed will do something, mainly because that’s the Fed’s job. You can’t just say ‘we’re out of ideas’ and walk away.”

Jack Ewing contributed reporting from Frankfurt.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/business/global/daily-stock-market-activity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

DealBook: Groupon Weighs Delay to I.P.O.

Groupon headquarters in Chicago.Tim Boyle/Bloomberg NewsGroupon headquarters in Chicago.

Groupon is considering pushing back its long-awaited initial public offering amid the ongoing market volatility, two people briefed on the matter told DealBook on Tuesday.

While the online coupon giant had been hoping to go public by the end of this month, it is studying the market conditions and may push the timing of the offering back, the people said. While it had been considering holding a roadshow for investors next week, that is likely off the table for now.

Few companies would consider braving choppy stock markets to go public, even those with I.P.O.’s as eagerly awaited as Groupon. Its offering was one of the most anticipated of the fall, the latest in a line of new Web giants that have sought a stock market listing.

Another issue that Groupon will likely have to address is an internal memorandum from its chief executive, Andrew Mason, that quickly found its way into the public sphere. The memo, which promoted the company’s growth and strength against rivals, raised concerns about whether the company had violated the mandatory “quiet period” that applies to companies waiting to go public.

As it has with other companies, the Securities and Exchange Commission has been reviewing Groupon’s prospectus. One possible outcome is that Groupon will need to again amend its I.P.O. filing to include the memo from Mr. Mason and provide additional data to back up his assertions.

This would not be the first time Mr. Mason’s team has tangled with regulators. In August the daily deal site dropped a controversial accounting metric, called “adjusted consolidated segment operating income,” or A.C.S.O.I., after pushback from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Representatives for Groupon and the S.E.C. declined to comment.

Started less than three years ago, Groupon has emerged as one of the fastest rising start-ups in the technology sector. The company’s valuation has soared in the past year, turbo-charged by increasing sales and early takeover interest from technology giants, like Google and Yahoo. It recorded $878 million in net revenue for the second quarter — a 36 percent increase from the previous quarter.

But the site, the largest of its kind, has drawn sharp criticism from retailers and analysts who question its ability to reduce its marketing expenses and sustain its growth rate. It has also confronted some setbacks abroad, most notably in China, where it is facing stiff competition from a swarm domestic players. Yet despite its challenges, Groupon is expected to be one of the largest public offerings in technology this year. Before credit fears roiled equity markets in August, Groupon’s team was eying an I.P.O. at a valuation near $30 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

News of Groupon’s deliberations was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal online.

Evelyn M. Rusli contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=46d836f4c48ed56a51bdb830a7f21c59

Optimism on Wall St. Tempered by Hurdles Ahead

The doomsday discussions that dominated conversations of late quickly faded as political leaders in Washington first signaled a compromise was close, then finally announced a deal on Sunday night.

Wall Street was hesitant to declare total victory, though, because lawmakers still faced the hurdle of getting a bill through both chambers of Congress.

The optimism was further tempered by the broader economic challenges that continue to confront the United States and global markets.

“The debt ceiling is out of the way, but the current picture is far from rosy,” said Ajay Rajadhyaksha, head of United States fixed-income and securitized strategy at Barclays Capital. “Economic growth is so much weaker than many people thought just six months ago, and we are heading into a period of austerity.”

Analysts and investors warned that the markets could remain turbulent in the weeks ahead. Besides sluggish economic growth, the threat of a ratings downgrade on United States debt and Europe’s continuing financial troubles loom.

Still, the first signs of market reaction to the deal were positive. Stock markets in Japan and South Korea rallied 1.3 percent in early trading, and picked up steam as the deal was announced by President Obama. Futures contracts on the American stock market also jumped, indicating that Wall Street may recoup some of the past week’s losses once trading starts in New York on Monday.

Gold, a traditional haven that struck record highs amid the uncertainty of the past weeks, fell 1 percent to $1,610 an ounce. Oil rose about $1, to $97 a barrel.

In the currencies markets, the dollar gained against the yen and the Swiss franc after falling last week. It was barely changed against the euro.

For Wall Street executives, it was a roller-coaster weekend. Although optimistic that Congress would reach an 11th-hour agreement, bankers had been planning for the worst in case a deal was not struck.

But there was little of the market panic that in the 2008 financial crisis had bankers traders stuck at their desks for much of every weekend. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley executives were monitoring the news from home.

“Everybody still has the fireman boots and fireman hat on, but there is a significant sigh of relief these guys are moving in the right direction,” said one senior Wall Street executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity on Sunday afternoon as the deal was coming together.

At JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon huddled with his senior managers at the bank’s Park Avenue headquarters. Bank executives also set up a war room at an operations center in Columbus, Ohio, to react to customer issues stemming from the political developments — just as they did for natural catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina.

By Sunday night when the deal had been announced, lobbyists and financial executives were almost gleeful. “This is huge,” said Scott E. Talbott of the Financial Services Roundtable, an industry lobbying group. “It provides much-needed certainty during an uncertain economic time.”

Mr. Talbott said his group was still reviewing details of the deal, but would likely move forward with a lobbying blitz over the next two days. “We will light it up with Hill visits, joint-letters, and encourage our member companies to consider contacting members of Congress, too,” he added.

Indeed, BlackRock, the giant asset manager, issued a statement urging lawmakers to take prompt action. “Every day of delay in resolving this situation will erode economic confidence, jeopardize job creation and undermine the credibility of the United States in global financial markets,” it said.

With the deal yet to be approved by lawmakers, Chase announced that it would temporarily waive overdraft fees and other account charges for Social Security recipients, military workers and other federal employees if their government-issued checks were not posted. Last week, the Navy Federal Credit Union pledged that it would advance pay to active military and civilian defense workers in the event of a breach of the debt ceiling.

Investors were hopeful that approval of the deal by Congress would cause the markets to rebound. after tumbling 3.9 percent last week.

“It isn’t a ‘grand bargain’ to cut the deficit — that would have been great for the market,” said Byron Wien, the vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Partners. But he said that the current blueprint, if passed, at least deals with the debt ceiling and that the government’s bills will be paid.

“This is a positive, but there was so much negative momentum going into the weekend,” he added.

Indeed, some investors cautioned that failure to pass the bill would be catastrophic, recalling how the market dropped precipitously in 2008 when Congress initially voted down a huge bailout package for the nation’s banks. “You are looking at Dow 10,000 if this doesn’t get resolved in a very short period of time,” said M. Jake Dollarhide, chief executive of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Okla. That would be a 21 percent drop from where the Dow Jones industrial average closed on Friday.

Even as attention has shifted to the domestic fiscal problems, the European Union financial health continues to deteriorate despite a second bailout package it put in place for Greece last month in an effort to stem its sovereign debt crisis. In one sign of worsening trouble, the spreads on credit-default swaps on the debt of Italy and Spain are nearing their widest level of the year. Investors are betting that those countries are becoming more likely to default on their debts.

Meanwhile, new data released on Friday showed the United States economy had experienced a significant slowdown during the first half of 2011, underscoring the weakness of the recovery. And the political mayhem in Washington has done little to bolster consumer confidence, a crucial economic engine.

Daniel J. Arbess, manager of the Xerion fund at Perella Weinberg Partners in New York, said the fiscal problems in the United States and Europe were “chronic and will be persisting” for some time. “Investors need to get used to them,” he said. “No single episode of tension is the ultimate one, nor is any patch the ultimate solution.”

Nelson D. Schwartz, Susanne Craig and Bettina Wassener contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=fa9ef5bcff48186622b3f579b4fde657

Off the Charts: The Boom and Crash Cycle of I.P.O.’s

In just a few months, the market has gone from raising record amounts of money to reaching a 10-year high in the number of proposed offerings withdrawn because there was no market.

During this year’s second quarter, 98 offerings — which had been projected to raise $21 billion — were withdrawn, according to calculations by Dealogic. The number of canceled offerings was the highest since 129 proposed offerings were canceled in the fourth quarter of 2000, as it became clear that the technology bubble had burst.

The recent boom in initial public offerings was spread much wider than the one that ended in 2000. The earlier boom was concentrated in the United States, but the latest included many more companies from booming developing markets, particularly in China.

In the fourth quarter of 1999, the total amount raised by I.P.O.’s hit $66.1 billion, which was then the highest level ever. More than three-quarters of that was raised in the American market and most of it was for technology companies. In the final quarter of 2010, $127 billion was raised and less than one-quarter of that was raised by offerings in the United States.

In the latest quarter, the total raised was about half the level of the fourth quarter of 2010, although the decline in the number of completed offerings, to 406 from 516, was not as sharp.

As can be seen from the accompanying graphic, the market for initial public offerings virtually collapsed in 2002 and 2003, but then began to recover as stock markets rose and many countries reported strong growth. Thanks to strong volumes of foreign offerings, the I.P.O. market had become strong before the financial crisis killed the market in 2008 and 2009.

The volume of withdrawn offerings provides a clear indication of rapid changes in markets. Those are deals that underwriters thought they could sell. They went to the expense of preparing offering documents but then were unable to sell, at least at prices acceptable to the companies.

The failed offerings cover the spectrum, both geographically and in the nature of the business. In June, three proposed I.P.O.’s that had been expected to yield more than $1 billion each were withdrawn. One was a Hong Kong company that mines iron ore in Australia, another a French company that makes glass containers and the third an Indian company that builds and leases communications towers for cellular telephone service providers.

Unlike the collapse of the market in 2000, the latest decline does not follow a widespread collapse in the prices of previously hot new offerings. During the final three months of 2010, when the total amount raised by new offerings set a record, Dealogic counted nine offerings that doubled in price on the first day of trading. This week, all of those stocks were still trading above the offering price, although only two — Youku.com, a Chinese Internet television company, and TPK Holding, a Taiwanese maker of screens for smartphones and other devices — traded for more than they did on the first day.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy on his blog at nytimes.com/norris.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/business/the-boom-and-crash-cycle-of-ipos.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Economix: Podcast: Good Euros, Bad Euros and Market Worries

Gresham’s Law is a centuries-old economic principle that is often defined quite simply as “bad money drives out good money.”

Because gold is more valuable on the open market than copper, for example, copper coins with the same nominal value as gold coins would quickly drive the gold coins out of circulation; the gold coins would be hoarded or melted down, to extract every last bit of value from them.

There’s more to Gresham’s Law than that, though, and Tyler Cowen says it helps to explain some of the problems in the euro zone.

In the Economic View column in Sunday Business and in a conversation in the new Weekend Business podcast, Professor Cowen, who is based at George Mason University, says that many bank depositors in Ireland have begun to doubt that country’s commitment to the euro.

As a result, depositors have begun moving money from Ireland to banks elsewhere within the euro zone. In effect, euros held in a bank in, say, Germany, are being perceived as being more valuable than euros held in Ireland.

Gresham’s law is relevant in this case because it holds that if two assets — in this case, euros held inside and outside Ireland — are deemed by traders to have different values, sooner or later the legally fixed price parity will break down. This breakdown is already occurring, Professor Cowen says, and it is causing enormous problems within the euro zone. The various patches being applied won’t be enough to cure this problem, in his opinion.

The financial problems in Europe are part of the “wall of worry” that investors have been climbing in the long rally under way in many stock markets around the world since March 2009. Calamities abound, as I write in the Strategies column in Sunday Business, but markets have been rising anyway.

As I explain in the podcast, the markets have been weighed down by a host of troubling issues. These include the weak economic recovery in the United States, turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, the rising price of oil, and the prospect of budget cuts in the United States and an end to the Federal Reserve’s expansionary monetary policy. On the other hand, corporate profits are rising, and even if the economy is less than robust, it is certainly growing. Whether you emphasize the pros or the cons will go a long way toward determining your market outlook.

Compared to the dark days of the financial crisis in 2008, the markets have become calm and stable. But after a series of investigations into what went wrong, no high-level participants in the disaster have been prosecuted, as Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story wrote this week in The Times.

In a discussion of the financial crisis on the podcast, they say that the current situation differs markedly from other periods in history. In the aftermath of the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, for example, more than 800 bank officials went to jail. But financial regulators have referred very few cases stemming from recent events to the various prosecutors.

The podcast covers a lot of ground this week. It also includes a discussion between David Gillen and Adam Bryant of the lessons that C.E.O.’s have given over the last several years in Mr. Bryant’s Corner Office column in Sunday Business. Mr. Bryant’s book about these lessons is excerpted in the section this Sunday.

And Randall Stross discusses apps that show where sobriety checkpoints are located, a subject that he covers in the Digital Domain column in Sunday Business. In his view, this may be one of those rare occasions when too much information is being made available for the public’s own good.

The podcast also updates the week’s business news, including President Obama’s proposal for paring down the budget deficit.

You can find specific segments of the show at these junctures: prosecutors and the financial crisis (28:59); news headlines and the “wall of worry” (21:02); lessons from the Corner Office (16:50); 4. Tyler Cowen on the euro (11:05); Randall Stross on controversial apps (6:45); the Week Ahead (2:04).

As articles discussed in the podcast are published during the weekend, links will be added to this posting.

You can download the show by subscribing from the New York Times podcast page or directly from iTunes.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=49160a4d2a561bebf1a7ef00183333b8