Oil is getting crushed

• Oscar Williams-Grut
 

• 3h
• 4,950

Oil prices are diving Monday morning in response to a downbeat note from Morgan Stanley.

UK Brent was down 2.83% to $49.44 a barrel as of 1 p.m. BST (8 a.m. ET):Investing.com

Crude oil was down 2.67% to $47.80:Investing.com

The price of the black stuff is responding to a downbeat note from Morgan Stanley quashing hopes of a production freeze from the OPEC cartel of oil producers.

Oil had been rallying throughout August, climbing from $41.51 a barrel on August 2 to over $50 a barrel in recent weeks. It was buoyed by comments from Russia and Saudi Arabia hinting that they could freeze or cap production. Russia's oil minister, Alexander Novak, told a Saudi newspaper the two countries would "put in place joint measures to achieve oil market stability."

But Adam Longson, the head of energy commodity research at Morgan Stanley, said in a recent note that he saw "meaningful OPEC production agreement as highly unlikely," suggesting that there were simply "too many headwinds and logistical challenges to a meaningful deal." (You can read more on that note here.)

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Pfizer has one-upped the competition with a $14 billion bid for a cancer drugmaker

• Lydia Ramsey
 

• 4h
• 5,776
 
• 3
 

The Pfizer World Headquarters building in New York.Thomson Reuters

Current Prices

Symbol	Price	+/-	%
MDVN	80.50	+13.36	+19.90
PFE	35.26	+0.29	+0.80

Disclaimer

Pfizer is scooping up the cancer drugmaker Medivation for $14 billion.

The deal values Medivation at$81.50 a share, a notable premium to the $52.50-a-share offer Sanofi had made for it earlier this year.

Medivation shares ended trading at $67.16 on Friday.

Sanofi went public with its $9.3 billion bid for the company in April. Medivation rejected that bid, but it wasn't long before it was fielding other offers and analysts were speculating about possible buyers, including reports that Pfizer — which in April terminated its merger with Allergan after the US Treasury released new rules — was in the mix.

"The addition of Medivation will strengthen Pfizer's Innovative Health business and accelerate its pathway to a leadership position in oncology, one of our key focus areas, which we believe will drive greater growth and scale of that business over the long-term," Pfizer CEO Ian Read said in a release.

Pfizer said in a call Monday that the deal wouldn't affect the company's timeline to decide whether or not to split into two separate companies, something Pfizer's been talking about doing for years. The decision will come no later than the end of 2016.

Medivation already has one drug on the market to treat prostate cancer. And its big appeal comes from an experimental breast-cancer treatment called talazoparib. It still hasn't been approved for use, but the drug also has potential as a treatment of cervical, lung, and ovarian cancers.

In a July conference call, Medivation talked up the value of talazoparib, saying it had the potential to be "best-in-class" among so-called PARP inhibitors — a new type of medicine that blocks a particular enzyme that is used by our cells to repair DNA so that tumors can't survive.

Medivation's shares surged in early trading, rising by almost 20% early on Monday.

Google Finance

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More: Medivation Biotech Mergers And Acquisitions Pfizer

The 10 biggest fintech VC funding deals so far this year

• Oscar Williams-Grut
 

• Aug. 21, 2016, 7:36 AM
• 1,270

KPMG and venture capital industry data tracker CB Insights this week published a big report on the state of fintech funding in the second quarter of the year.

The headlines from the report were that fintech funding plateaued globally, with a big drop-off in funding in North America. In Europe, Germany overtook the UK as the fintech funding capital of the continent for the first time ever.

Globally, $2.5 billion of VC money went into fintech companies around the world in the first 6 months of the year, while a total of $9.4 billion went into fintech overall. That was boosted by Ant Financials bumper $4.5 billion funding round in China.

The report also included data on the biggest venture capital funding deals of 2016 so far, which our colleagues over at BI Intelligence have pulled together in the below chart.

BI Intelligence

There are two things that jump out about the top 10: China's dominance and the rise of insurance tech.

First, China. Five of the top 10 deals are Asian businesses and the top two deals are worth more than the rest of the top 10 combined. (Ant Financial's mammoth $4.5 billion deal isn't included because it's not VC-backed, but if it was it would be worth more than the entire top 10 combined.)

The huge amounts of capital flowing into Chinese fintech companies tallies up with the survey of the world's fintech unicorns I did recently. Four out of the five most valuable fintech companies in the world are in China.

Second, the rise of insurance. Oscar Health, Clover Health, and Bright Health are all startups in insurance technology — sometimes known as InsurTech. Investors have been touting the opportunities for innovation in this area for a while but it's only now starting to take off and at the moment largely in the US. It will be interesting to see if the trend starts to spread to the European fintech scene.

SEE ALSO: The 27 fintech unicorns from around the world, ranked by value

DON'T MISS: This is the next revolution in fintech according to investors

NEXT UP: German fintech startups raised 80% more than British ones in the second quarter

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More: Fintech KPMG CB Insights insurtech 

The Reserve Bank of India has a new governor

• Reuters

• Aug. 20, 2016, 9:23 AM
• 1,440
 

Reserve Bank of India. Wikimedia Commons

MUMBAI, Aug 20 (Reuters) - India's government promotedUrjit Patel, a deputy governor in charge of monetary policy at the Reserve Bank of India, to serve as its next governor for a three-year term, it said on Saturday.

Patel will replace Raghuram Rajan, a former International Monetary Fund chief economist who stunned financial markets in June by announcing he would step down in September and return to academia after a single three-year term at the RBI.

Patel, 52, headed a panel that recommended landmark changes to monetary policy in India, including a switch to inflation-targeting and the adoption of a panel to set interest rates. (Reporting by India Newsroom; Editing by Kim Coghill and Douglas Busvine)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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Fed close to hitting job and inflation targets: Fischer

Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer speaks during a televised interview during the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming August 28, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan Crosby

The Federal Reserve is close to hitting its targets for full employment and 2 percent inflation, the Fed's No. 2 policymaker said on Sunday in comments that did not address when the U.S. central bank should next raise interest rates.

The Fed has been suggesting it could raise rates in 2016 since it tightened policy in December for the first time in nearly a decade, but investors have doubts the central bank will follow through on that guidance.

Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer gave a generally upbeat assessment of the economy's current strength, saying the job market was close to full strength and still improving.

"We are close to our targets," Fischer said in prepared remarks for a conference in Aspen, Colorado.

Fischer's comments come ahead of a speech scheduled on Friday by Fed Chair Janet Yellen who is expected to give guidance on interest rate policy. New York Fed President William Dudley said last week a rate hike would be possible at the Fed's next policy meeting in September.

The Fed in June pointed to two rate increases in what remains of 2016 but investors see almost no chance of an increases at its September or November meetings. Prices for interest rate future contracts show investors see roughly 50/50 odds of an increase at the Fed's last meeting of the year in December.

Fischer, who has argued in the past that the Fed needed to be wary of being too slow in raising interest rates, made no such argument on Sunday.

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At the same time, Fischer's comments were not inconsistent with that sort of view. He said this year's pace of job growth, while slower than that seen last year, was "more than enough" for the labor market to continue to improve.

"The behavior of employment has been remarkably resilient," he said, adding that inflation outside of food and energy prices was "within hailing distance" of 2 percent, the Fed's target rate.

(Reporting by Jason Lange in Washington; Editing by Toby Chopra and Susan Thomas)

SolarCity slashing costs, including CEO pay

Lyndon Rive, SolarCity co-founder and CEO, attends SolarCity's Inside Energy Summit in Manhattan, New York October 2, 2015.REUTERS/Rashid Umar Abbasi

By Nichola Groom | LOS ANGELES

SolarCity Corp on Wednesday said it would cut operating costs, including slashing its chief executive's salary, to bring expenses in line with its reduced solar installation outlook.

The company said Chief Executive Officer Lyndon Rive and his brother, Chief Technology Officer Peter Rive, had asked to have their annual salaries reduced to $1 from $275,000, as part of the company's cost-cutting plans.

Earlier this month, San Mateo, California-based Solar City said it accepted Tesla Motors Inc's $2.6 billion buyout offer.

The compensation committee of the company's board of directors agreed to reduce the salaries, SolarCity said in a regulatory filing.

"It's a symbolic gesture, but it's appropriate," Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov said.

The Rives' move comes a week after Chief Executive Officer Tom Werner of rival solar company SunPower Corp, said he would reduce his salary and bonus to $1 for the rest of the year as part of a broader restructuring.

SolarCity will incur restructuring charges of about $3 million to $5 million, mostly in the second half of this year. Most of the spending will be on severance benefits.(bit.ly/2bImyom)

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SolarCity did not immediately respond to requests for further details on the restructuring plan.

Earlier this month, SolarCity cut its 2016 installation forecast for the second time, citing lower residential bookings in the first half. The company said late last year that it would slow its pace of growth to focus on generating cash. Investors have punished the company's stock, sending it down 60 percent since December.

In a separate filing, SolarCity said it planned to issue $124 million in bonds. The bonds carry a 6.5 percent interest rate, higher than any of SolarCity's previous offerings, and also have a longer maturity rate of 18 months.

(Additional reporting by Sai Sachin R in Bengaluru; Editing by David Gregorio)

The CEO of the world's oldest bank is reportedly under investigation for market manipulation

• Silvia Ognibene, Reuters

• 24h
• 199

Monte Dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) CEO Fabrizio Viola attends a FABI meeting in Milan Thomson Reuters

FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters) - The chief executive of Monte dei Paschi di Siena , Fabrizio Viola, and the Italian bank's former chairman, Alessandro Profumo, are under investigation for alleged false accounting and market manipulation, a source with knowledge of the matter said.

The investigation, which started in 2015 following complaints filed by small shareholders and consumer associations, comes as the Tuscan bank prepares to launch a 5 billion euro ($6 billion) stock sale after emerging as the weakest bank in Europe in industry stress tests in July.

A spokesman for Monte dei Paschi said the decision to investigate Viola and Profumo followed a proposal by two shareholders to seek damages from the two executives which was rejected by other shareholders at an April meeting.

"(Under Italian law) prosecutors are bound to open an investigation when they receive a complaint," the spokesman said in an emailed comment.

This comment reflects Profumo's position, a separate spokesman for Profumo said.

Being placed under investigation in Italy does not imply guilt and does not automatically lead to charges being laid.

The source said on Thursday prosecutors in Siena alleged the bank did not correctly book two derivatives trades known as Alexandria and Santorini between 2011 and 2014.

The inquiry was transferred to prosecutors in Milan in July. They now have 18 months to decide whether to shelve the investigation or seek trial for Viola and Profumo, the source said.

Siena prosecutors could have chosen to close the case, the source added.

Reuters' calls to the prosecutors' offices in Milan and Siena went unanswered.

The health of Italy's third-largest lender poses a threat to the wider banking system, the savings of thousands of small savers and also to the weakening political standing of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who faces a make-or-break constitutional referendum in the autumn.

Viola and Profumo were drafted in at Monte dei Paschi in 2012 to turn it around after it wrecked its balance sheet by overpaying on the purchase of rival Antonveneta in 2007 and engineering risky derivatives trades.

Profumo, a veteran Italian banker formerly at UniCredit , stepped down as Monte dei Paschi chairman in August last year after overseeing two cash calls in 2014 and 2015 which raised a total of 8 billion euros.

Shares in Monte dei Paschi are trading at record lows, after losing around 86 percent of their value since the bank completed its last share sale in June 2015.

In January, Milan prosecutors sent to trial 13 former managers at Monte dei Paschi, Nomura and Deutsche Bank in a separate investigation into the two derivatives as well as a hybrid financial instrument used to partly finance the 2007 acquisition.

All the managers involved and the banks have denied any wrongdoing.

Prosecutors have said the bank's former management entered Alexandria and other derivative trades to conceal losses after stretching its finances to buy Antonveneta for 9 billion euros.

In December, Italy's market watchdog Consob told Monte dei Paschi it had inaccurately booked the Alexandria derivative trade in its 2014 and first-half 2015 accounts.

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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