JPMorgan Gets an Information Edge Over Activist Shareholders

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Aw Mom, JPMorgan Again? Yes, kids, but today's meatloaf is spicy. Broadridge, the firm counting JPMorgan shareholder votes on the resolution to sever the CEO and chairman jobs, has stopped providing running tallies to the investors sponsoring the proposal, the Times reports. Broadridge says it did so at the behest of SIFMA, the Wall Street trade group, whose members are the firm's clients. SIFMA told the Times that "one of its working groups had concerns about 'the authority of a vendor to release confidential information.' … Executives at some banks were concerned, according to people briefed on the matter, that shareholder groups were leaking early vote tabulations." (Wonder where they got that idea.) The activist shareholders complain that without polling numbers, they are at an unfair disadvantage to management, which opposes the proposal to split the CEO and chairman roles. "It's like playing a game where only the home team gets to know the score," says an assistant to New York City comptroller John Liu, who oversees pension funds that own shares in JPMorgan. … In other JPMorgan news, the bank is considering legal action against Bloomberg and has demanded five years of employee records from the information giant following reports that journalists in its news division were spying on clients' terminals. You can read all about it in the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times, but the best headline is (naturally) in the New York Post.

Wall Street Journal

"Investors Flood Into Loan Funds" — I.e., funds that buy pieces of leveraged corporate loans. "The activity is adding fuel to the roaring corporate-refinancing boom by driving loan prices up, in turn pushing interest rates lower for companies rated below investment grade."

"U.S. Officials Freeze An Account Linked to Bitcoin Exchange" — The account in question is at the payments startup Dwolla. Not mentioned in the story is that the exchange, Mt. Gox, also had an account seized at Wells Fargo; you can read about that here. At issue is Mt. Gox's failure to get licensed as a money transmitter; it's the largest exchange for buying and selling the Internet currency bitcoins for U.S. dollars and euros. Big picture in the Journal's second-to-last paragraph: "The rising popularity of virtual currencies is being fueled by Internet merchants, as well as users' concerns about privacy, jitters about traditional currencies in Europe [read: Cyprus] and efforts to move money for illicit purposes." In. That. Order.

Financial Times

"Brown-Vitter is another example of how not to fix the banks" — An op-ed by a Harvard Law professor.

New York Times