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NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Pfizer (NYSE:PFE)’s bid to recoup about $75.2 million left over from a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission insider trading settlement with billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s former hedge fund SAC Capital Management.U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan said Wyeth, a drugmaker Pfizer bought in 2009, did not qualify as a victim of the securities violations underlying the SEC case, and therefore was not entitled to the funds.Marrero directed that the money be paid to the U.S. Treasury, which the SEC had requested.Pfizer and its lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The dispute stemmed from a $602 million civil settlement tied to trading in Wyeth and drugmaker Elan by Mathew Martoma, who worked at an SAC unit and was later convicted, based on a neurologist’s tips about a 2008 Alzheimer’s drug trial.SAC pleaded guilty to fraud in 2013 and paid $1.8 billion in settlements with the SEC and other authorities.The SEC had $75.2 million left over after compensating Wyeth and Elan investors for their losses. Pfizer said it deserved that money because the neurologist, Sidney Gilman, breached a fiduciary duty to Wyeth, where he was a consultant.But the judge said the reputational harm that Wyeth suffered from the scandal did not mean it also suffered financial harm.”The court certainly agrees that corporations whose secrets are misappropriated for insider trading purposes are generally victims of wrongdoing,” he wrote. “But Pfizer has failed to allege how the insider trading scheme and Wyeth’s subsequent reputational harm qualifies as pecuniary harm for purposes of distributing the disgorged funds.”Marrero added that a $7 billion decline in Wyeth’s market value following the drug trial had nothing to do with the insider trading scheme, which became public three years later.Cohen was not criminally charged, but accepted a two-year ban on managing outside money to end an SEC probe into his supervision of Martoma.He changed SAC Capital’s name to Point72 Asset Management in 2014, and stopped trading for that fund in September. Cohen is worth $21.3 billion according to Forbes magazine.The case is SEC v CR Intrinsic Investors LLC et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-08466. More

The one-year loan prime rate (LPR) was kept at 3.1%, and the five-year LPR was unchanged at 3.6%.In a Reuters survey of 28 market participants conducted this week, all respondents expected the rates to stay unchanged.Most new and outstanding loans in China are based on the one-year LPR, while the five-year rate influences the pricing of mortgages. More

The PBOC kept its one-year LPR at 3.10% after cutting it by 25 basis points in October. The five-year LPR, which determines mortgage rates, was left at 3.60% after a 25 bps cut in the prior month.The LPR is determined by the PBOC based on considerations from 18 designated commercial banks, and is used as a benchmark for lending rates in the country.Analysts had widely expected the LPR to remain unchanged this month, with Beijing seen awaiting more clarity on what a second Donald Trump presidency will entail for Sino-U.S. trade before unlocking more economic support.China rolled out a slew of aggressive stimulus measures since late September to support growth. But the country held off on outlining more targeted fiscal measures, amid caution over increased trade tariffs under Trump, who has vowed to impose a 60% import tariff on all Chinese goods.The PBOC was also seen as having limited space to cut interest rates further, especially as the Chinese yuan was battered following Trump’s election. The central bank had steadily cut the LPR further into record-low territory over the past two years to support growth.But monetary measures have so far provided limited support to the Chinese economy, which is still struggling with persistent deflation and a property market slump. More

The company priced an offering of $2.65 billion aggregate principal amount of U.S. dollar-denominated notes and RMB 17 billion ($2.35 billion) worth of offshore yuan-denominated notes. The offering of the dollar notes is expected to close on Nov. 26, while that of the yuan notes will close on Nov. 28, subject to conditions, the company said in a statement. Reuters had earlier reported that the U.S. dollar tranche would consist of 5-1/2-year, 10-1/2-year and 30-year bonds, citing a term sheet. The report said Alibaba was also working on 3-1/2-year, 5-year, 10-year and 20-year offshore yuan tranche. Alibaba intends to use the net proceeds from the offering of the notes for general corporate purposes, including repayment of offshore debt and share repurchases.($1 = 7.2385 Chinese yuan renminbi) More

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s exports rebounded in October, led by a pickup in chip equipment demand in China, data showed on Wednesday, suggesting that solid global demand was underpinning the country’s still fragile economic recovery.The data comes as Japanese businesses are weighing the impact of new and potentially hefty tariffs promised by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump that could upend international trade. Total (EPA:TTEF) exports rose 3.1% year-on-year in October, the data showed, more than a median market forecast for a 2.2%% increase and following a 1.7% drop in September.Exports to China rose 1.5% in October from a year earlier, while those to the United States, Japan’s largest export destination, were down 6.2%, the data showed.Imports grew 0.4% in October from a year earlier, compared with market forecasts for a 0.3% decease.That resulted in a trade deficit of 461.2 billion yen ($2.98 billion) in October, compared with the forecast of a deficit of 360.4 billion yen.While the October data was solid, Japanese exports could face pressure from potential U.S. tariffs, a key element of Trump’s pitch to voters.A proposed 10% tariff on all U.S. imports could push down Japan’s gross domestic product by 0.13%, and another 0.12% if a potential 60% levy on Chinese-made products triggers retaliatory tariffs from China, according to estimates by Shunsuke Kobayashi, chief economist at Mizuho (NYSE:MFG) Securities.Japan is seeing growing signs of a recovery in domestic demand. Last week’s GDP data for the July-September quarter showed a stronger-than-expected pickup in private consumption backed by rising wages.Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda said on Monday that the economy was progressing towards sustained wages-driven inflation, leaving open the chance of another interest rate hike as early as next month.($1 = 154.6700 yen) More

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s official labour market statistics may be failing to count almost 1 million people who are in work, complicating the Bank of England’s task of deciding how quickly to cut interest rates, a think tank said on Wednesday.The Resolution Foundation said the official methodology – which is being overhauled – might also be overestimating the number of workers who have dropped out of the jobs market.The BoE has cut rates by half a percentage point since August, less than the European Central Bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve, largely because of its worries about inflation pressures in the job market.”Official statistics have misrepresented what has happened in the UK labour market since the pandemic, and left policymakers in the dark by painting an overly pessimistic picture of our labour market,” Adam Corlett, principal economist at the Resolution Foundation, said.The Office for National Statistics, like agencies in other countries, has struggled to get responses to its surveys since the COVID pandemic. BoE Governor Andrew Bailey has lamented the state of the official data, saying last week it was “a substantial problem”.The Resolution Foundation said the ONS appeared to be underestimating growth in the number of people in work since 2019 by 930,000. The think tank used data from the tax office, self-employment figures and new population data to make its estimate which closely tracked official employment numbers until 2020. Since then it has diverged sharply.Corlett said the employment rate, using the foundation’s approach, probably rose to its pre-pandemic peak in 2023 before edging down in 2024 to broadly the same level as in 2019. The official data suggests the employment rate is lower than it was in 2019, which is at odds with high vacancy rates and strong wage growth, he said.Prime Minister Keir Starmer is aiming to get the employment rate up to 80%, up from the official estimate of 74.8% now.”The government faces a significant challenge in aiming to raise employment, even if the rate is higher than previously thought,” Corlett said. “But crafting good policy is made harder still if the UK does not have reliable employment statistics.” More