
Major oil-producing countries failed to reach an agreement to cap production at meetings held this weekend at Doha. Expect markets not to take this news well – WSJ and Bloomberg
IPOs have been down—way down—in the start to 2016. With news that Jose Cuervo’s got one in the works, it seems that maybe a little social lubricant was what it took to get the deals going again – NYTimes
With today’s deadline for preliminary bids looming large, Verizon seems to be making the strongest case so far for an acquisition of Yahoo’s core businesses – WSJ
The Times reports that groups of Wall Street vets—including some who made billions for Goldman by “betting against the market as housing prices began to crash in 2007”—are getting into the low-income, contract-for-deed housing market. Some have described this segment as the “underbelly of real estate,” and it’s rife with its own rules, including “as is” sales, evictions instead of foreclosures, and pretty hefty interest rates – NYTimes
RBS is doing what it can to escape the $806 million penalty that Judge Denise Cote saddled it and Nomura with after its bench trial loss over toxic MBS, making the case to the 2d Circuit that Fannie & Freddie “knew of the specific misrepresentations about which FHFA now complains” – Law360
S&P Ratings parent company McGraw Hill Financial has sold off its J.D. Power & Associates business to a PE firm for $1.1 billion – NYTimes
Citigroup—the lone big bank to pass its living will test last week—may have done so in part because it looks very different than the firm that “became the nation’s first megabank some two decades ago.” In the past 7 years, Citi’s “sold more than 60 businesses,” and it’s holdings “have shrunk by more than $700 billion” – NYTimes
I guess this is the “What to expect when you’re expecting” for the Big Data generation – NYTimes
Oh, the Brits. Those cheeky, cheeky Brits – HuffingtonPost