Stories related to: finance

Rubert Murdoch sometimes finds Wall Street Journal stories a little long. He'd like to see more politics on the editorial page, and to launch a glossy magazine for the Saturday edition . The Aussie tycoon wasn't shy about sharing plans for the paper, should he succeed in buying parent company Dow Jones, in a lengthy sit-down with the Times. More »

A group of investors is buying student lending giant Sally Mae for $25 billion, even as Capitol Hill debates reducing federal subsidies for student loans. The company—which began as a quasi-public agency—will be taken private by Bank of America, JPMorganChase, and private equity houses J. C. Flowers and Friedman Fleischer & Low. More »

Portfolio magazine debuts with a look inside Citadel Investment Group, the $13.5 billion Chicago hedge fund that's even more press-shy than most of its brethren. A rare chat with founder Ken Griffin reveals that he's thinking of taking Citadel public —which the magazine notes could be the biggest stand-alone hedge fund IPO in the US. More »

Don't buy stock in a company whose CEO lives in a huge house, a new study says.  CEOs who move into regular-sized digs —5,600 square feet for the typical company head — see their company's stock jump an average 6% the following year. Those who go palatial — 10,000 square feet or more — watch stocks dip by an average of 1.7%. More »

Citigroup will cut 17,000 jobs in an attempt to close the gap between its revenue, up 7% last year, and its expenses, up 15%. The two-year cost-cutting plan comes after shareholders demanded major changes, but analysts agree that lowering expenses is only the first step. Upping revenue is the next. More »

The tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange is looking to expand into the options-trading market, and it's in talks with the Philadelphia Stock Exchange about a possible merger. Nasdaq's bid to buy the third-largest options trading exchange, valued at up to $300 million, comes as a number of bigger exchanges are on the hunt  for smaller aquisitions, reports the Wall Street Journal. More »

Some very ulikely agrarians—doctors, lawyers, computer programmers—have spurred a huge boom in alpaca farming in the last few years, not for the profits, of which there are rarely any, but for the huge tax write-offs. "What can't I write off?" Manhattanite Rob Bruce says. "I write off food, water, fences, the guy who cuts the lawn." More »

 The IPO filing for the notoriously secretive Blackstone Group wasn't the tell-all Wall Street watchers had hoped for, says Newsweek’s Wall Street editor Allan Sloan, who searched in vain for how big a stake is held by the private equity partnership's  two Mr. Bigs, Steve Schwarzman and Pete Peterson, and how much they and their partners have been paying themselves. More »

Wall Street’s position as the center of the financial universe—unchallenged for more than a century—is under serious threat from the City of London, according to John Gapper. London is catching up with Gotham in bond trading, already ahead in derivatives and the place to be for really big cap IPOs. More »