Aurelia Butler

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NEW YORK (Reuters) -Joe Lewis, the British billionaire and owner of the Tottenham Hotspur soccer team, has been criminally charged in New York for orchestrating a “brazen” insider trading scheme.Prosecutors said Lewis exploited his access to corporate boardrooms by passing tips about companies in which he invested to friends, personal assistants, private pilots and romantic partners, enabling them to reap millions of dollars of profit.”None of this was necessary. Joe Lewis is a wealthy man,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a video on the X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.”But as we allege he used inside information as a way to compensate his employees or shower gifts on his friends and lovers,” Williams continued. “That’s classic corporate corruption. It’s cheating. And it’s against the law.”Lewis, who founded the investment firm Tavistock Group, was charged with 16 counts of securities fraud and three counts of conspiracy, for alleged crimes spanning from 2013 to 2021.”The government has made an egregious error in judgment in charging Mr. Lewis, an 86-year-old man of impeccable integrity and prodigious accomplishment,” Lewis’ lawyer David Zornow said in an emailed statement.”Mr. Lewis has come to the U.S. voluntarily to answer these ill-conceived charges, and we will defend him vigorously in court,” Zornow added.Lewis is worth $6.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.Insider trading has long been a focus of Williams’ office, dating to 2009 when a crackdown began under one of his predecessors, Preet Bharara.’THE BOSS HAS INSIDE INFO’Lewis was accused of having from 2019 to 2021 passed material nonpublic information about companies such as Mirati Therapeutics (NASDAQ:MRTX), Solid Biosciences (NASDAQ:SLDB) and Australian Agricultural Co.He was also accused of having from 2013 to 2018 conspired to defraud Mirati, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and investors by using shell companies and other means to hide his more than 20% stake in the cancer therapy company.Prosecutors said that in some insider trading cases, Lewis lent money to recipients of his tips, including in Oct. 2019 when he wired $1 million to two pilots so they could buy more Mirati shares.The indictment quoted one pilot texting a friend that “Boss lent Marty and I $500,000 each for this,” and that he thought “the Boss has inside info” because “otherwise why would he make us invest.”Both pilots allegedly repaid their loans soon after Mirati announced favorable results from a clinical trial, causing its stock price to rise 16.7%.”Loan payback for MRTX,” the second pilot wrote in his records.Lewis is also known for taking a nearly 10% stake in Bear Stearns in 2007, shortly before the Wall Street bank narrowly avoided collapse and was bought by JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) at a fire-sale price. His losses were estimated at more than $1 billion. More

Investors are widely expecting the Bank of Japan to buck the global trend and keep monetary policy on hold on Friday, but a clutch of heavy-hitting investment banks is warning them to brace for a shock.Most major central banks are coming towards the end of the historically rapid tightening cycles they unleashed in an effort to hose down inflation that erupted in the wake of Covid lockdowns, but the BoJ has largely held firm, happy to see Japan’s relatively tame inflation pick up after decades in the freezer.In a Bloomberg survey of 50 economists this month, 42 expected the central bank to opt for no change, maintaining its seven-year policy of buying bonds to depress yields, known as yield curve control, in an effort to ensure modest inflation sticks. But previous adjustments to this policy have generated large shifts in markets in Japan and across the world, and some banks say it is wise to be ready this time around.UBS economist Masamichi Adachi said he expected the BoJ to tweak the yield curve control policy, adding that “the majority may have misinterpreted” recent comments from BoJ governor Kazuo Ueda in which he signalled patience in achieving 2 per cent inflation. If there was a change in the policy, markets should expect a push higher in Japanese government bond yields, a jump in the yen and a dent in the country’s stocks, which had outperformed much of the rest of the world so far this year, the Swiss bank said.Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Nomura, BNP Paribas and Morgan Stanley MUFG have also argued the BoJ will relax its grip on the bond market. SMBC Nikko has even said there is a 50 per cent chance that the BoJ will abandon yield curve control altogether this week.The future of Japan’s ultra-loose monetary policy has been closely watched as inflation in Asia’s most advanced economy has continued to rise even as the rate of consumer price increases has started to fall in the US and Europe. Headline inflation in Japan rose to 3.3 per cent in June, outpacing the US figure for the first time in eight years.In the US, the Federal Reserve has ended new bond purchases and pushed its key rate up 5 percentage points since March 2022. It is likely to bump up rates once more, by 0.25 percentage points, this week, and then pause. The European Central Bank has lifted rates from minus 0.5 per cent in July 2022 to 3.5 per cent. It is also expected to increase them again this week and apply the brakes soon after. But the BoJ’s base rate remains at minus 0.1 per cent, and it holds 10-year yields at zero per cent, tolerating just half a percentage point of movement on either side of that target.Officials have led most investors to believe this will stay in place. In addition to Ueda, BoJ board member Seiji Adachi suggested last month that smoother market functioning since the last yield control tweak in December meant it was appropriate to keep the framework in place.But UBS’s Adachi said the central bank could argue that underlying inflation had strengthened, justifying a policy tweak to improve the functioning of the bond market. The BoJ can then still keep its other easing measures, such as negative interest rates, until it is more confident of sustainably achieving its 2 per cent inflation target. “If the BoJ doesn’t move, we think it is unwise but it would underscore that its outlook on inflation is extremely cautious,” he said. Economists expect the BoJ to raise its core inflation forecast for the 2023 fiscal year from 1.8 per cent to more than 2.5 per cent.The BoJ last altered its yield curve control policy last December, widening the tolerance to half a percentage point from a quarter — a move that shocked economists and sent government bonds sliding in price. Now some banks think the BoJ will widen the band to a full percentage point on either side of zero.Mark Dowding, chief investment officer at BlueBay Asset Management, was one of the few investors who had anticipated December’s shift. He believes the BoJ will raise the top band of its yield curve control policy between 0.75 and 1 percentage points this week, to coincide with what he expects will be a rise in BoJ inflation forecasts. Reflecting that view, he said he had been betting against Japanese government bonds and betting on the “undervalued” yen since March. “Ueda has been playing down speculation of change in policy because he does not want the speculators to profit,” he said. If the BoJ did change its stance, the yen would rise to at least ¥135 per dollar, he added. The yen is pinned at about ¥141.2 against the dollar, close to its weakest level in two decades, reflecting the yawning gap in monetary policy stances in the two economies. The Japanese currency has picked up from its lows late last year, suggesting investors have sniffed some possibility that the BoJ could change tack, but despite the rally the yen remains notably weak against the dollar. Similarly, Japanese government bonds have weakened somewhat, but with 10-year yields at 0.46 per cent, the market is not staging a serious challenge to the BoJ’s current stance.If the BoJ delayed changing its yield curve control policy, Takeshi Yamaguchi, chief Japan economist at Morgan Stanley MUFG, warned there was a higher risk of a disorderly exit since the market will start to factor in the start of a rate hike cycle.“If the BoJ waits until its 2 per cent target is achieved, it will be way behind the curve,” he said. More

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York Federal Reserve was sued on Tuesday by a Puerto Rican bank that said its access to the U.S. central banking system could be improperly cut off following a federal crackdown on banks with links to Venezuela.Banco San Juan Internacional (BSJI) said in a complaint in Manhattan federal court that the Fed’s New York branch informed the bank earlier this year that its “master account” – which lets banks access the Fed’s electronic payment systems – would be terminated due to concerns about its compliance with U.S. sanctions and anti-money laundering rules.The bank asked the court to bar the New York Fed from terminating its master account, without which it said it “cannot effectively function as a depository institution.” A spokesperson for the New York Fed declined to comment.BSJI said it improved its compliance program during a previous 22-month suspension of its master account between 2019 and 2020 in the wake of a federal money laundering and sanctions evasion investigation into its 2016 and 2017 credit agreements with state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela. BSJI agreed in 2020 to pay $1 million to resolve the probe. Federal prosecutors dismissed a civil forfeiture complaint and returned $53 million in seized funds to the bank. BSJI says the loan agreements were lawful. Puerto Rico’s banking industry has historically had close ties Venezuela, an OPEC member. The New York Fed in 2019 said it would stop approving master accounts for some Puerto Rican banks due to U.S. sanctions on Venezuela aimed at ousting socialist President Nicolas Maduro, Reuters reported at the time. “Improper targeting of BSJI because it was founded by a Venezuelan national more than 12 years ago … is, of course, patently unreasonable (and unlawful),” BSJI wrote in the complaint, citing the Reuters story. The bank said its founder, Marcelino Bellosta, has lived in the United States and Europe for much of the last 25 years. More

Failures in long-term planning by the UK’s tax authority have left more than £1.7bn dormant in state-supported accounts aimed at boosting young people’s savings, according to a cross-party group of MPs.The House of Commons public accounts committee said on Wednesday that HM Revenue & Customs had “failed to co-ordinate efforts” around Child Trust Funds. It urged the agency to increase efforts to pair the money with account holders who were contending with rising living costs. About £2bn was invested by the government in CTFs across the lifespan of the scheme between 2002 and 2011. It benefited 6.3mn children in all. The value of unclaimed funds is at least £1.7bn, according to the MPs’ report, although this includes some money contributed by families. The PAC found that many account holders were unlikely to “know about their savings” and many providers were “not doing enough to link up forgotten accounts with their owners”. Parents of eligible children born between September 2002 and January 2011 received £250 in vouchers from the UK government to open an account for them. Lower-income families received £500, and households were encouraged to contribute to the tax-free wrappers that matured when a child turned 18.The Share Foundation, a charity, estimated that 1mn — or 42 per cent of — eligible 18- to 20-year-olds had not claimed their account by spring of 2023. The average amount held in a CTF was £1,911 in April 2021, according to HMRC. Dame Meg Hillier, Labour MP and committee chair, said: “In an ongoing cost of living crisis, our young people need every bit of support we can give them. HMRC still has time to make sure that CTFs are given the chance to be the boost to young people’s futures which they were designed to be.” The PAC also raised concerns over the status of roughly 126,000 young people living with mental incapacity who needed to apply for a court order to gain access to their funds. It called on officials to cut bureaucracy and costs for this group. The report comes after the National Audit Office, the public spending watchdog, found in March that, among parents who had received a voucher, those on lower incomes were less likely to set up a CTF and their children were more at risk of losing track of funds. The MPs challenged HMRC’s decision to treat the policy as having ended in 2011 despite accounts maturing from 2020 onwards. They said this hampered accurate record-keeping and meant providers were left unmonitored.

The committee also urged HMRC to incentivise providers to match up accounts, warning that banks and building societies had failed to work with a tracing service while charging fees for basic services such as issuing statements. HMRC said: “Every 16-year-old is sent information about finding their Child Trust Fund with their national insurance letter . . . We would encourage anyone unsure about their situation to get in touch with their bank or building society.”The Investing and Saving Alliance, a trade body for providers, declined to comment. More