EFinancialInvestment

Bernard Madoff will remain free on a $10 million bond, a federal judge ruled, denying a request by U.S. prosecutors that he be jailed while awaiting trial on a federal securities fraud charge.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis in Manhattan today said Madoff, arrested last month for running an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme, may continue to live under house arrest in his Manhattan apartment on the Upper East Side. Ellis imposed new conditions, ordering Madoff to compile an inventory of all items in his home and barring him from transferring property.

“Because the government has failed to meet its legal burden, the motion is denied,” Ellis wrote in the order. “The government has failed to articulate any flaw in the current conditions of release.”

The government agreed to delay seeking a grand jury indictment of Madoff. He is scheduled to appear in court Feb. 11 and, if indicted, will be ordered to appear to answer the new charges, at which time prosecutors may ask again for him to be jailed. Charged with one count of securities fraud, Madoff faces as much as 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine if convicted.

Prosecutors on Jan. 5 asked Ellis to jail Madoff because he mailed items including a diamond bracelet and watches to relatives in violation of a court-ordered asset freeze. In a letter to Ellis two days later, Madoff’s defense lawyer, Ira Sorkin, said his client didn’t know the order from a related lawsuit by securities regulators applied to personal items.

‘Speaks For Itself’

“The decision speaks for itself,” Sorkin said today.

Madoff, 70, was arrested on Dec. 11 at his apartment and charged by prosecutors with using billions of dollars from new investors to pay off older ones. Madoff told authorities that investors may have lost $50 billion, prosecutors said.

Madoff has been restricted to his Upper East Side home. His assets were frozen in a related civil lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

On Jan. 5, prosecutors said Madoff violated the court order and obstructed justice by mailing Cartier and Tiffany watches, a ring, a diamond bracelet, a diamond necklace, and other jewelry in an effort to “dissipate” his assets. They said his violation of a court order indicated he might also flee the country. The property was worth more than $1 million, they said.

Presumed Innocent

In response, Sorkin told Ellis that Madoff is presumed innocent and may only be held in jail if he poses a threat to the community or is a risk to flee. Neither circumstance exists in this case, he said.

Sorkin said the mailings started Christmas Eve as Madoff and his wife Ruth began to “reach out” to immediate family and friends by giving them a few “sentimental personal items.” That evening, Ruth Madoff set aside items accumulated over 49 years of marriage and Madoff gathered watches he’d collected over the years.

Madoff knew that, “due to the sudden change in his circumstances, he would never have an occasion to wear these watches again,” Sorkin wrote.

The couple, Sorkin said, mailed the items to their sons Andrew and Mark; to their daughters-in-law; to Ruth Madoff’s sister, Joan Roman; and to an unnamed married couple with whom they were close friends. It wasn’t until after Ruth Madoff met with lawyers on Dec. 30 that she realized they shouldn’t have done so, and the Madoffs began retrieving the items, he said.

The case is U.S. v. Madoff, 08-mag-2735, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

U.S. stocks fell, extending losses from the market’s worst week since November, as a slump in oil prices dragged energy producers lower and investors speculated Alcoa Inc. will kick off another disappointing earnings season.

Alcoa, the aluminum producer that begins profit reports among Dow Jones Industrial Average companies today, dropped 7.5 percent as Deutsche Bank AG recommended selling the stock on a worsening earnings outlook. ConocoPhillips declined 2.3 percent after crude sank below $38 a barrel amid concern production cuts will fail to counter a slump in demand. Morgan Stanley gained 4.7 percent on plans to combine brokerage units with Citigroup Inc.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slipped 1.5 percent to 877.11 at 12:41 p.m. in New York. The Dow average retreated 65.79 points, or 0.8 percent, to 8,533.39. The Russell 2000 Index slumped 1.1 percent. Stocks in Europe and Asia declined.

“The market is in the process of factoring in a worst-case scenario for earnings,” said Dan Veru, chief investment officer at Palisade Capital Management in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which oversees about $2 billion. “The companies that are going to miss will miss by a wide margin.”

The S&P 500 slumped 4.5 percent last week as companies from Alcoa to Intel Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spurred concern earnings will deteriorate, while the unemployment rate in the U.S. climbed to the highest level in almost 16 years.

Profits for companies in the S&P 500 probably fell 20 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. That would mark the sixth straight period of declining earnings, the longest stretch on record.

Valuations

The S&P 500 was valued at less than 15.9 times earnings at the start of trading, the lowest since February 1991, Bloomberg data show. The gauge may rise to 1,110 by the end of the year, a gain of 24 percent from the Jan. 9 close, as government measures revive the economy and investors move from cash into equities, according to Nomura Holdings Inc. strategist Ian Scott.

The index has rebounded 16 percent from an 11-yer low on Nov. 20 as investors speculated that President-elect Barack Obama will boost the world’s biggest economy with tax cuts, while the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to as low as zero percent.

Obama said in an ABC interview yesterday that reviving the economy will require scaling back on campaign promises and personal sacrifice from all Americans.

Alcoa lost 86 cents to $9.95. The shares slumped 11 percent last week after the company said it will cut 13 percent of its 107,000 employees and reduce capital spending by half. Deutsche Bank downgraded Alcoa to “sell” from “hold” and reduced its price estimate on the shares 20 percent to $8.

Commodity Shares Slump

Raw-materials producers fell 3.4 percent, the most among 10 S&P 500 industries.

Energy shares declined as crude sank as much as 7.9 percent to $37.60 a barrel in New York on concern production cuts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will fail to counter a slump in demand. ConocoPhillips retreated $1.29, or 2.5 percent, to $50.70. Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest oil company, slipped 0.9 percent to $76.84, while Chevron Corp. retreated 1.5 percent to $71.71.

Harley-Davidson Inc. dropped 11 percent to $14.25. The biggest U.S. motorcycle maker was cut to “sell” at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and added to the brokerage’s “conviction sell” list. Goldman also slashed its price estimate on the stock to $11 from $30, citing slowing demand and the credit contraction.

Morgan Stanley Rallies

Morgan Stanley gained 4.9 percent to $19.99. The world’s second-biggest securities firm by market value may pay Citigroup Inc. as much as $3 billion for control of a venture that would combine their brokerage units and overtake Bank of America Corp. as the largest financial adviser to individuals, a person with knowledge of the discussions said.

Citigroup may book a gain of as much as $10 billion, helping to replenish capital depleted by the biggest losses in the bank’s history. Citigroup dropped 11 percent to $6.02, the steepest drop in the Dow.

Citigroup spokesman Michael Hanretta declined to comment. Jim Wiggins, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley, didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Bank of America Corp. lost 92 cents, or 7.1 percent, to $12.07. The lender that completed its purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co. earlier this month may post a $3.6 billion loss in the fourth quarter and slash its quarterly dividend, Citigroup analyst Keith Horowitz said.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped 80 cents, or 3.1 percent, to $25.17.

Financial shares in the S&P 500 slumped for a fourth straight day, losing 3.3 percent as a group, even as a gauge of money-market stress favored by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan fell to the lowest level since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

‘Everybody’s Worried’

The Libor-OIS spread, the difference between the three-month London interbank offered rate, or Libor, for dollars and the overnight indexed swap rate, dropped to 98 basis points. The last time it closed below 100 basis points was Sept. 12, the final working day before Lehman filed for bankruptcy, causing credit markets to freeze worldwide.

“Investors are braced for one of the worst earnings seasons ever,” David Bianco, UBS AG’s New York-based chief equity strategist, said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio. “Everybody’s worried about more fallout in the financial system despite there being some signs of stability lately.”

Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc. led life insurers lower after regulators dismissed an industry plea to speed capital relief.

Hartford fell 11 percent to $16.10 and Prudential declined 8.4 percent to $29.21. Life insurers are pushing regulators to grant looser reserve standards after investment losses depleted capital across the industry. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners rejected an industry request to approve reform by Jan. 16 and plans to hold a hearing at the end of the month before taking a vote, Susan Voss, the vice president of the group, said late on Jan. 9.

Royal Bank of Scotland Plc is the biggest lender to bankrupt chemical maker Lyondell Chemical Co. and may face losses on its $3.47 billion of loans to the U.S. chemicals company.

The lender inherited the loans after its purchase last year of ABN Amro Holding NV’s investment bank, which extended a $1.6 billion portion of the Lyondell credit that may lose all its value, according to Andrew Brady, an analyst at CreditSights Inc. in New York.

“There was always the risk RBS would get caught by a leveraged buyout gone wrong,” Simon Willis, an analyst for U.K. financial stocks at NCB Stockbrokers Ltd. in London, said in a telephone interview. RBS consolidated Amsterdam-based ABN Amro’s loans onto its balance sheet, he said.

The Dutch bank is listed as Lyondell’s largest secured creditor, according to documents filed in the U.S. bankruptcy court in New York. The loans are part of the $20.5 billion of funds raised to finance Basell AF’s 2007 purchase of Lyondell, creating Rotterdam-based LyondellBasell Industries AF.

“It’s very early in the process, and we don’t want to speculate on any potential impact,” Royal Bank spokesman Piers Townsend in London said. He declined to comment on whether the U.K.’s second-largest bank has already written down the debt, which has lost more than half its value in the past year.

RBS rose 39 cents to $16.55 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading at 1:05 p.m.

Citigroup’s Loss

Citigroup Inc., one of the five banks that financed the merger, said Jan. 8 that it would take a $1.4 billion loss on its $2 billion in Lyondell loans.

“There has been significant value destruction in Lyondell,” CreditSights’ Brady said.

ABN Amro, New York-based Citigroup, UBS AG of Zurich and an Apollo Management LP unit are listed as creditors to Lyondell Chemical, which filed for bankruptcy protection Jan. 6. UBS may write down as much as $500 million on the loans in the first quarter, Bank Vontobel analyst Teresa Nielsen in Zurich wrote in a note to investors.

Royal Bank, based in Edinburgh, will take more writedowns after 7 billion pounds ($10.4 billion) of credit losses in 2008, Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hester said in November. The bank was forced to accept a 20 billion-pound bailout from the U.K. government six months after buying ABN Amro.

Loan Parts

Citigroup, UBS, New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and ABN Amro arranged the financing for the merger, which was split among $12.5 billion of first-lien bank loans; $5.5 billion of second-lien notes and loans; and $2.5 billion of third-lien notes and loans, according to Standard & Poor’s. First-lien lenders are first in line to be paid back when a borrower defaults.

Lyondell’s first-lien debt is quoted at 44 cents on the dollar, according to London-based pricing service Markit.

First-lien loan holders might recover 76 cents on the dollar, CreditSights’ Brady wrote in a report Jan. 8. The second and third liens will have lower recoveries, he wrote.

Leon Black’s Apollo Management bought first-lien loans from Citigroup in April, according to people with knowledge of the transaction. The private-equity firm has $2.2 billion of the loans, according to court documents.

Lyondell Chemical is seeking final approval for an $8 billion loan that will fund operations through bankruptcy. The loan, the biggest in bankruptcy history, is being provided by a group of 14 lenders.

The largest participants are UBS with $770 million; Apollo with $710 million; Cerberus Capital Management LP with $237.5 million; and ABN Amro with $230 million, according to court documents.

The cost of borrowing in dollars for three months in London fell the most in almost four weeks as central banks drenched money markets with cash to spur lending.

The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, for such loans slid 10 basis points to 1.16 percent today, the steepest decline since Dec. 17, British Bankers’ Association data showed. The drop sent the Libor-OIS spread, a measure of money-market stress favored by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, to the least since the September failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

“It finally gives an indication of movement among risky asset classes,” said Michael Rottman, head of fixed-income research at Unicredit Markets & Investment Banking in Munich. “Complete normalization is not in the pipeline, but at least this should help.”

Policy makers are providing cash to banks and cutting interest rates to spur lending, which began to seize up in August 2007 after BNP Paribas SA halted withdrawals on three funds because it couldn’t value their holdings, and worsened following the demise of Lehman.

The Libor-OIS spread, the difference between the three-month Libor for dollars and the overnight indexed swap rate, dropped to 98 basis points today, from a peak of 364 basis points on Oct. 10. The last time it ended the day at less than 100 basis points was Sept. 12, the last working day before Lehman filed for bankruptcy.

Housing Slump

The spread averaged nine basis points in the year before the credit freeze started in 2007. Greenspan said in June last year that the spread should serve as a measure for determining when markets have returned to normal.

The U.S. housing slump, which began in 2007, turned into a crisis that prompted policy makers worldwide to cut interest rates to unlock credit markets and spurred governments to bail out their biggest banks amid $1 trillion of losses. The Fed cut its target to a range of zero to 0.25 percent last month.

In a sign credit remains scarce, overnight deposits placed with the European Central Bank by financial institutions jumped to a record of more than 315 billion euros ($421 billion) at the end of last week. The daily average in the first eight months of last year was 427 million euros.

European leaders haven’t grasped the depth of the coming slump in the region, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in an interview in Washington. The IMF may need another $150 billion to help counter the slowdown to emerging markets from the economic crisis, he said.

The Libor-OIS spread may narrow to about 80 basis points in the next three months as the downward trend continues “in almost linear fashion,” Rottman said.

TED Spread

A narrowing to 25 basis points would be viewed as positive, according to Greenspan. Forward markets signal the spread will shrink to 32 basis points by September 2010.

The TED Spread, the difference between what the U.S. government and banks pay to borrow for three months, fell 11 basis points to 109 basis points, the lowest level since Sept. 5.

The euro interbank offered rate, or Euribor, that banks say they charge each other for three-month loans fell to the lowest level in almost three years today, the European Banking Federation said. The rate dropped four basis points to 2.65 percent, the lowest level since Feb. 24, 2006, the EBF said.

Libor, the benchmark for $360 trillion of financial products worldwide, according to the British Bankers’ Association, is set by a panel of banks in a survey by the group typically before noon each day in London. Euribor is released by the EBF earlier in the day.

General Motors Corp. will open a lithium-ion battery factory, the first for a large U.S. automaker, to assemble the power packs for the Volt plug-in electric car.

The plant will create the packs from cells supplied by Compact Power Inc., a unit of Seoul-based LG Chem Ltd., GM said today in a statement. GM’s new facility will be located in Michigan.

The contract ends a review of cells from Troy, Michigan- based Compact Power and a Continental AG unit using technology developed by GM and A123Systems Inc., and moves GM a step closer to the November 2010 start of sales for the Volt. GM is counting on the car to close a technology gap with Toyota Motor Corp.

“This is a further demonstration of our commitment to the electrification of the automobile,” Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner told reporters at the Detroit auto show. He said Detroit-based GM has committed more than $1 billion to the Volt.

Compact Power will make the battery packs until GM’s plant is operating. The first batteries likely will be built in China and South Korea, Wagoner said. The location of the new GM factory is subject to state and local negotiations in Michigan, and should be determined this quarter, Wagoner said.

Tests of battery packs for the Volt with cells from LG Chem, South Korea’s biggest chemical maker, have been under way for the past 16 months, GM said.

Battery Research

GM, the largest U.S. automaker, said it will keep working with battery suppliers including A123Systems and Tokyo-based Hitachi Ltd. for cell development. The automaker will also start an automotive battery lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in conjunction with the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering.

The Volt will be powered by electricity in its lithium-ion battery pack for as far as 40 miles, after which a small engine- generator kicks in to extend mileage, GM said. The lithium-ion battery pack in the car will be roughly 6 feet (1.82 meters) long, and about 400 pounds (181 kilograms).

Toyota, the world’s largest maker of gasoline-electric vehicles, is working on a plug-in version of its Prius hybrid to match the Volt’s projected range on one battery charge.

Citigroup Inc. may book a gain of as much as $10 billion by selling control of its brokerage to Morgan Stanley, helping to replenish capital depleted by the biggest losses in the bank’s history, a person familiar with the talks said.

The worst banking crisis since the Great Depression forced Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit, 51, to abandon his pledge not to sell Smith Barney. For the past decade, the unit has been at the center of the bank’s plan to provide bond- underwriting, savings accounts and investment advice under a single umbrella.

“You’re selling out the future to get through the crisis of the present, and unfortunately they don’t have a lot of other choice,” David Trone, an analyst at Fox-Pitt Kelton Cochran Caronia Waller in New York, said in a Jan. 9 interview.

The pretax gain would come from writing up the value of Citigroup’s Smith Barney unit to a new price set by the deal, said the person, who declined to be identified because the talks are confidential. The gain of $5 billion to $6 billion after taxes would flow into Citigroup’s capital, a loan-loss cushion so eroded that the New York-based bank had to get $45 billion of rescue funds last year from the U.S. government.

Citigroup spokesman Michael Hanretta declined to comment. Jim Wiggins, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley, didn’t return calls seeking comment. Citigroup fell 11 percent to $6.02 as of 12:13 p.m.; Morgan Stanley rose 4.2 percent to $19.86.

‘Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’

Talks on the plan to combine Smith Barney with Morgan Stanley’s brokerage in a $20 billion joint venture progressed over the weekend, another person briefed on the talks said. The deal may be announced as soon as mid-week, this person said.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, 70, who joined the company in 1999 and had opposed calls to break it up, said Jan. 9 that he plans to quit the board.

Under the plan being considered, Morgan Stanley would pay $2 billion to $3 billion to Citigroup to obtain 51 percent of a venture that would combine both firms’ retail brokerage arms, people familiar with the plan said.

The new firm, tentatively named Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, would have about 22,000 brokers, exceeding the network created by Bank of America Corp.’s Jan. 1 takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co., which have about 20,000 brokers between them.

Citigroup posted $10.4 billion of net losses in the first nine months of 2008, putting the bank on track to post its worst year since predecessor City Bank of New York was founded in 1812. Beleaguered by writedowns on mortgage-related bonds, losses on commercial real estate loans and costs related to the bankruptcy of chemicals maker LyondellBasell Industries AF, Citigroup probably lost another $5.82 billion in the fourth quarter, Sandler O’Neill & Partners analyst Jeff Harte estimated in a Jan. 9 report.

German Sale

That figure doesn’t include a $4 billion one-time gain that Citigroup expects from the sale, completed last month, of its retail banking operations in Germany. That unit was also sold by Pandit in an effort to free up capital.

Citigroup, which has 352,000 employees and 200 million customers and does business in more than 100 countries, was pieced together through acquisitions during a 17-year span by former Chairman Sanford “Sandy” Weill, who stepped down from a full-time role in October 2003.

Pandit, hired in December 2007 following the ouster of Weill’s handpicked successor, Charles O. “Chuck” Prince, vowed to conduct a “dispassionate” review of Citigroup’s business mix, and whether the company was too big to manage, as some analysts and investors contended. Pandit, who turns 52 this week, concluded that while cost cuts were needed and some assets should be sold, Smith Barney should remain united with the bank’s other operations of branch banking, securities trading and underwriting and payment processing.

Government Help

Pandit told employees on a Nov. 21 conference call that he didn’t plan to break up the company, singling out Smith Barney as a business he wanted to keep. Later that day, the bank’s share price plunged to a 15-year-low of $3.77, and Pandit spent the ensuing weekend huddled in talks with officials from the U.S. Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. over a plan to receive $20 billion of government bailout funds in addition to the $25 billion it had already received, and $306 billion of guarantees on troubled assets.

The decision to sell majority control of Smith Barney is an acknowledgement by Pandit that relinquishing responsibility for the unit may simplify the task of managing Citigroup’s remaining businesses, one of the people familiar with the plan said.

Citigroup had the worst stock performance for two years in a row among large U.S. banks, as measured by the KBW Bank Index. The stock closed at $6.75 on Jan. 9 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

‘Right-Sizing’

“There’s a growing dissatisfaction with the slowness with which Citi seems to be dealing with its issues, particularly in terms of right-sizing the company,” said Bert Ely, chief executive officer of banking industry consultant Ely & Co. in Alexandria, Virginia. That requires “not only substantial downsizing of the balance sheet, but also disposing of and selling off activities that are not crucial to its long-term strategy.”

Richard Parsons, 60, Citigroup’s lead outside director, told the Wall Street Journal that the board has confidence in Pandit’s leadership. Parsons may be named later this month to replace board Chairman Win Bischoff, 67, the Journal reported yesterday, citing unidentified people familiar with the plans.

At a time when central banks are attempting to prevent deflation, the hottest investments in the government bond market are securities that protect debt holders against rising consumer prices.

Inflation-linked debt from the U.S. to Japan returned 5.77 percent since November, including price gains and reinvested interest, compared with 1.55 percent for the government-bond market, according to indexes compiled by New York-based Merrill Lynch & Co.

Pacific Investment Management Co., Vanguard Group and Fifth Third Asset Management, which oversee a combined $1.8 trillion, are scooping up so-called linkers on speculation efforts by policy makers to reignite the global economy will lead to faster inflation than is currently priced into the securities. Yields on U.S. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPS, indicate almost no rise in consumer prices for the next decade.

“They’re breathtakingly cheap,” said Mitchell Stapley, who oversees $22 billion as chief fixed-income officer for Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Fifth Third. “This one’s going to take a while to come to fruition but I’m buying them so dirt cheap I’m willing to have a little patience.”

Last year, inflation-linked securities lagged behind the rest of the government bond market through November, losing 5 percent, as the U.S., Europe and Japan entered simultaneous recessions for the first time since World War II and commodities prices as measured by the Standard & Poor’s/Goldman Sachs Commodities Index tumbled 60 percent from their peak July 11. Treasuries returned 14 percent in 2008, the most since 1995, according to Merrill indexes.

Hedge Fund Sales

At the same time, hedge funds that purchased the debt with borrowed money were forced to sell as lenders reined in credit, according to Kenneth Volpert, who oversees $180 billion in taxable bonds for Vanguard in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The world’s biggest financial institutions reported more than $1 trillion in losses and writedowns since the start of 2007.

“There’s been a lot of selling related to de-leveraging hedge fund stuff that just caused TIPS to get unbelievably cheap,” Volpert said.

TIPS due in 10 years yield 0.58 percentage point less than Treasuries, compared with an average of 2.11 percentage points since 2000. In November, TIPS yields rose as much as 0.08 percentage point above Treasuries.

The U.S. securities pay interest on a principal amount that rises with the Labor Department’s consumer price index. The difference in yield, or break-even rate, between yields on TIPS and Treasuries of the same maturity represents traders’ expectations for the rate of inflation over the life of the bonds.

Kokusai Shuns TIPS

The benchmark 2.125 percent 10-year inflation-indexed Treasury note ended last week 102 27/32 to yield 1.81 percent, according to BGCantor Market Data. The breakeven rate rose 46 basis points last week.

The rally in inflation-linked debt left them more in line with inflation forecasts, according to Masataka Horii, one of four managers for the $51 billion Kokusai Global Sovereign Open fund in Tokyo, the biggest bond fund in Asia. U.S. consumer prices may rise 0.65 percent this year, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists.

“U.S. domestic demand is declining,” said Horii, whose fund avoids TIPS. “Inflation will stay low for a while.”

The U.S. Labor Department may say Jan. 16 consumer prices fell 0.9 percent in December, after tumbling by a record 1.7 percent in November, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Prices excluding food and energy in Japan rose at a 1 percent rate in November, down from 2.4 percent in August. The European Union’s rate fell to 1.1 percent in December from 3.5 percent in July, according to a Bloomberg survey.

Wal-Mart Cuts

Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest retailer, and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in Sunnyvale, California, the second-largest producer of personal-computer processors, said they lowered prices as the economy slowed.

Deflation can hinder investment and spending, delaying an economic recovery. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker said Dec. 3 he was open to purchasing government debt to keep borrowing costs low and ward off deflation. Central banks are slashing interest rates and governments are earmarking trillions of dollars to pump up the economy.

The Fed cut its target interest rate for overnight loans between banks to as low as zero last month from 4.25 percent at the start of 2008, while U.S. policy makers flood the world with an extra $8.5 trillion through 23 plans designed to bail out the financial system. The European Central Bank lowered its benchmark rate to 2.5 percent last month from 4.25 percent in October.

Obama’s Plan

President-elect Barack Obama urged Congress on Jan. 8 to pass a stimulus package that may total $775 billion or risk having the U.S. sink deeper into economic crisis. “If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years,” he said in an address at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Credit markets show the freeze is starting to thaw. It costs banks on average 1.20 percentage points more than the U.S. government to borrow for three months, down from 4.64 percentage points in October. The so-called TED spread is the narrowest since before Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, though it’s still about three times higher than before markets started to collapse in July 2007.

The amount of U.S. commercial paper outstanding, or corporate debt due in nine months or less, rose $83.1 billion during the week ended Jan. 7 to a seasonally adjusted $1.76 trillion, the most since Sept. 10, the Fed said last week.

Gross Says Buy

Pimco co-Chief Investment Officer Bill Gross, who manages the world’s biggest bond fund, recommended inflation-linked debt last week.

TIPS “can benefit if and when the government’s efforts to reflate begin to take hold,” Gross, head of Newport Beach, California-based Pimco’s $128.4 billion Total Return Fund, wrote in a note to clients on Jan. 8. While break-even rates suggest consumer prices will fall an average of 1 percent a year for 10 years, that’s “possible, but not likely,” Gross said.

Pimco turned bullish on TIPS in October, covering a July bet that the debt would fall. The firm started the wager as crude oil rose to a record $147.27 a barrel, said Mihir Worah, who oversees the $11.1 billion Real Return Fund for the firm. Oil ended at $40.83 in New York trading on Jan. 9.

‘Unreasonable’ Outlook

Barclays Wealth, which manages about $215 billion, estimates TIPS are pricing in 11 percent deflation, according to Kevin Lecocq, the firm’s London-based chief investment officer.

“While we may get small deflation in 2009,” he told Bloomberg Television last week. “But to get an 11 percent drop is unreasonable.”

Demand for TIPS soared at the Treasury’s auction last week of $8 billion of the securities. Investors bid for 2.48 times the amount sold, the most since Jan. 12, 2000, when the so- called bid-to-cover ratio was 3.07, according to Treasury data.

The next TIPS sale, a 20-year auction, is scheduled for Jan. 26.

Inflation-linked debt issued by the U.S., U.K., and Germany had its best month in December, and the second-best in Japan, Merrill Lynch indexes show.

The securities returned 10 percent in the U.K., compared with a 5.4 percent gain for all gilts. German inflation- protected debt rose 5.6 percent, compared with 1.7 percent for all the country’s sovereign debt. U.S. TIPS rose 5.8 percent, and Japanese linkers rallied 3.1 percent, the most since returning 3.2 percent in August 2004, according to the indexes.

In the U.K., the 10-year breakeven rate fell to 1.77 percentage points from 4.15 percentage points in July. The comparable rate in Germany declined to 1.6 percentage points from 2.7 percentage points in July.

“TIPS are a great buy,” Vanguard’s Volpert said. “The economy will start coming back, and risk will be taken again, and inflation expectations will work their way up.”

President-elect Barack Obama asked the Bush administration to notify Congress he plans to seek the remaining $350 billion in financial-rescue funds, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20, called President George W. Bush this morning about 20 minutes after Bush said in his final White House news conference that he hadn’t been asked by the president-elect to act on his behalf and that he was willing to do so.

“President Bush agreed to the president-elect’s request,” Perino said. “We will continue our consultations with the president-elect’s transition team, and with Congress, on how best to proceed in accordance with the requirements of the statute.”

The request will trigger a 15-day period when Congress can vote to deny the release, and comes as Obama’s aides draft plans for broadening the program beyond the Bush administration’s focus on buying stakes in banks. The changes are likely to include a new initiative to stem mortgage foreclosures; some analysts also advocate removing assets from banks’ balance sheets and making further injections of capital into financial companies.

Lawmakers from both parties have criticized the Treasury for its shifting strategies for the $700 billion rescue fund, called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which Congress passed in October.

House Democrats

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Jan. 9 he is working with Obama’s team on changes House Democrats are seeking in exchange for agreeing to release the money, including allocating as much as $100 billion to stem foreclosures.

Larry Summers, Obama’s top economic adviser, sent a letter today to leaders of both parties in Congress detailing some of the measures the new administration wants to take to ensure oversight of TARP.

Obama will ask his Treasury Department to enact “strict and sensible conditions” on executive compensation until tax money is repaid, and direct more money to community banks and small businesses as well as individuals and homeowners, Summers wrote.

Summers promised the administration will give a full and public accounting of how the money is used, including repayments from financial institutions that get assistance.

Too Little Accountability

“President-elect Obama believes there has been too little transparency and accountability; too much upside for financial institutions and executives who acted irresponsibly without providing enough help for small business owners, families who are struggling to keep their jobs and make ends meet, and innocent homeowners,” the letter says.

Obama is directing his advisers to work with Congress on “smart aggressive policies” to cut the number of foreclosures and rework bankruptcy laws to revive the housing market.

The action on TARP came in a flurry of messages and phone calls between Obama’s team and the Bush administration.

At his news conference today, Bush said he hadn’t gotten a request from Obama. “I told him that if he felt he needed the $350 billion, I would ask for it,” Bush said.

The news conference ended at 10:04 a.m. and Perino said the call from Obama came at 10:25 a.m. The letter from Summers was released two hours later.

Notification

Bush’s request to Congress, on Obama’s behalf, “would be a report to Congress with a formal notification of intent to exercise the authority” and tap the remaining $350 billion, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said in response to an e-mail. Fratto said the timing was still being decided. The Bush administration and Obama’s transition team have been coordinating their steps as the government grapples with a recession.

The two managers of the TARP fund, Neel Kashkari and James Lambright, have agreed to Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner’s request that they stay for as long as two months to help ease the transition to the Obama administration, a person familiar with the matter said Jan. 10.

“We’ve had a very, very good dialogue during this transition,” departing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in an interview on Bloomberg Television Jan. 9. “There’s a lot of work that’s been done, but the only thing that matters now is what the next administration is going to decide.”

Paulson allocated most of the first $350 billion of TARP for buying stakes in banks, with other distributions for propping up Citigroup Inc.,American International Group Inc. and automakers General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

The legislation Frank has proposed would require Obama to put in place a plan to limit mortgage foreclosures by April 1. The bill would also direct the Treasury to require lenders to report quarterly on how they are using the bailout money.

Paulson said in the Jan. 9 interview that he thought at least some of the rest of TARP should be used for further injections of capital into banks.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Israeli troops will keep on fighting in the Gaza Strip until Hamas rockets no longer pose a threat as representatives of the militant Islamic group headed to Cairo for more cease-fire talks.

Israel’s priority isn’t to reach a cease-fire with Hamas even though the United Nations Security Council called for an immediate truce. Instead, the goal is to reach new security arrangements with Egypt to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza, Livni said.

“I don’t need Hamas to sign on a piece of paper,” Livni said in discussing efforts to broker a truce during an interview with Army Radio. What’s more important, she said, is that when Palestinians fire rockets into Israel, “they know they will be hurt.”

Egyptian and European diplomats are trying to mediate between Israel and Hamas in order to stop the fighting that has left more than 900 Palestinians dead. Demonstrations against Israel’s military operation in Gaza took place across Europe over the weekend, while rallies were held in cities including New York in support of Israel’s efforts to stop rocket fire from Gaza into the Jewish state’s southern cities.

Calls for “Operation Cast Lead” to be ended are also growing within Israel where Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the 1993 Oslo peace accords, called Livni’s remarks “unforgivable,” and said the government should actively seek a truce.

Israel should focus on getting Egypt to stop arms smuggling into Gaza by doubling its border force to 1,500 and cease the military assault on the Palestinian territory, Beilin said.

Cease-Fire

“We must be ready to cease fire,” Beilin, a former justice minister, said in a phone interview from Tel Aviv. “If the other side breaches the cease-fire, we will have freedom of movement to fight back, but they’ve shown in the past they can observe a cease-fire.”

The Israeli military, reinforced by newly called-up reservists, pressed ahead with its operation against Hamas today, striking at least 25 targets from the air and sea, and clashing with Palestinian gunmen on the ground, the army said in an e- mailed statement. Israeli troops, who had been holding positions outside Gaza City, pushed into its southern neighborhoods yesterday.

In one incident, Palestinian gunmen opened fire at Israeli ground forces from a mosque and were then attacked by Israeli aircraft, the army said. Later, the Israeli troops found Qassam rockets and mortar shells inside the mosque.

Rockets Fired

The army said about 20 rockets were fired into Israel today, the 17th day of the conflict. The number of rockets fired has been cut to around 20 a day from more than 70 before the war, the military said. About 500 rockets and 200 mortar shells have been fired since the start of the operation.

For now, the main job of Israeli reservists will likely be to replace regular soldiers “who need a rest after operating in Gaza for more than a week,” Ephraim Kam, military analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said in a telephone interview.

A delegation of Hamas officials will return to Cairo today to continue talks with Egyptian officials on how to achieve a cease-fire, Egypt’s presidential spokesman said.

“They left to Damascus today and they are coming back tonight for more talks,” Suliman Awad said in an interview from Cairo. “They took the terms of the Egyptian proposal with them.”

While seeking to cement understandings with both sides to end the conflict, Egyptian officials reminded Hamas that the bloodshed could have been avoided.

Egyptian Warning

“Egypt has repeatedly warned that a refusal to renew the truce would prompt Israel to attack Gaza and that attempts to thwart Egypt’s efforts to extend the truce was an open invitation to Israeli aggression,” the Egyptian government said in a statement from the Information Ministry.

Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by the U.S., Israel and the European Union, refuses to recognize Israel or any peace agreements with the Jewish state. The organization seeks the lifting of the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza after the group seized control of the seaside strip in June 2007 and ended a partnership government with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.

Hamas “will not accept any negotiations for a cease-fire while we are under fire,” Khaled Mashaal, the Damascus, Syria- based Hamas leader, said at the weekend. “Let Israel withdraw first and our people live rightfully without a siege and with open crossings.”

Food Shortages

The Israeli assault on Gaza has killed 905 Palestinians and left 3,950 wounded, according to Mu’awia Hassanein, chief of emergency medical services in Gaza. Thirteen Israelis have died, nine from combat, according to the army.

As the fighting continues, international aid groups have warned of a humanitarian crisis, with shortages of food, water and medicines in the impoverished Gaza Strip, where about 1.5 million people live in an area of 360 square kilometers (144 square miles).

The UN resumed aid distribution after working out a security arrangement with Israel to assure the safety of its drivers. One driver working for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees was killed and two were injured on Jan. 8. The UN said that Israeli gunfire killed the driver. Israel says it’s still investigating the incident.

Since Israel began bombing Gaza Dec. 27, its benchmark stock index, the TA-25 Index, has gained about 8 percent. Government bonds have dropped 1 percent, while the shekel fell 0.3 percent against the dollar.

Morgan Stanley may pay Citigroup Inc. as much as $3 billion for control of a venture that would combine their brokerage units and overtake Bank of America Corp. as the largest financial adviser to individuals, a person with knowledge of the discussions said.

Morgan Stanley, led by Chief Executive Officer John Mack, may get 51 percent of the new company and an option to acquire the rest over three to five years, according to the person, declining to be identified because the deal isn’t complete and the talks are confidential. The transaction may be announced as soon as tomorrow, the person said.

Citigroup, which reported $20 billion of losses in the past four quarters, would get cash for its Smith Barney brokerage, while Morgan Stanley would get recurring fee revenue and more potential banking customers. The joint venture would employ about 22,000 advisers, compared with the approximately 20,000 at Bank of America after its purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co. Morgan Stanley Co-President James Gorman, 50, may oversee the company, tentatively named Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, the person said.

“There’s been a lot of pressure for Citi to monetize some of their more valuable assets and Smith Barney is certainly one,” said Michael Nix, a money manager at Greenwood Capital Associates LLC in Greenwood, South Carolina. “There’s also been a lot of pressure for Morgan Stanley to look at how they can better lever their business units.”

Bailout

Spokespeople for Morgan Stanley and Citigroup declined to comment. Both firms are based in New York.

The worst financial crisis since the 1930s has recast rivals in the financial industry as merger partners and transformed the U.S. government into one of the biggest investors in Wall Street firms, including Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.

As Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sank into bankruptcy in September, crippled by the frozen credit markets, Merrill, then the biggest U.S. brokerage, agreed to be taken over by Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America. Morgan Stanley converted from a securities firm to a bank holding company and Citigroup, led by Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit, took $45 billion of U.S. bailout money.

Under the deal being negotiated now, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup would contribute their brokerage units to the joint venture, two people with knowledge of the talks said. Morgan Stanley would also pay Citigroup $2 billion to $3 billion, or 20 percent of the total value of Smith Barney, to gain majority control, one of the people said. The venture may be led by Morgan Stanley managers and a board with a majority of Morgan Stanley appointees, the person said.

Rubin Resigns

The news came as Citigroup announced that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who joined the company in 1999 and has opposed calls to break it up, plans to quit the board.

Directors have also discussed replacing Win Bischoff, Citigroup’s chairman, the Wall Street Journal reported today, citing unidentified people familiar with the talks.

The U.S. government’s taxpayer-funded cash injections into the nation’s biggest banks may cause regulators to pressure some firms to break up or restrict activities that could threaten the financial system’s stability, analysts say.

Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest U.S. securities firm before converting to a bank in September, would draw on its existing cash to pay for the brokerage merger and wouldn’t raise new money for the deal, a person familiar with the matter said.

77 Percent Drop

Morgan Stanley received $10 billion from the U.S. Treasury last year. The firm, which lost 70 percent of its market value in 2008, has been trying to attract retail deposits from brokerage customers to help reduce its reliance on debt markets for funding.

Citigroup, which is expected to post a fifth consecutive quarterly loss when it reports fourth-quarter results later this month, has received $45 billion from the U.S. Treasury and $306 billion of government guarantees for troubled mortgages and toxic assets. The bank suffered a 77 percent decline in its stock price last year.

Citigroup was formed in 1998 by the $37.4 billion merger of Travelers Group Inc., led by Sanford “Sandy” Weill, and Citicorp, led by John Reed. Travelers, which owned brokerage Smith Barney Holdings Inc., had a year earlier paid about $9 billion for Salomon Inc., the parent of Salomon Brothers Inc., to form Salomon Smith Barney Inc.

Some analysts and investors have called for the company to be broken up, saying that Citigroup is too large to manage.

Breaking Up

“Morgan Stanley has been much more efficiently run because it really wasn’t a combination of so many different things,” said Richard Lipstein, a managing director at Boyden Executive Search in New York, which specializes in financial services. “Smith Barney was having difficulty getting their arms around the cost cutting on the broker side.”

Pandit, who has been Citigroup’s CEO for more than a year, told employees on a conference call in November that he didn’t plan to dismantle the company and didn’t want to sell Smith Barney.

He and Chief Financial Officer Gary Crittenden instead said they wanted to sell businesses that weren’t crucial to the bank’s main operations. In July the company agreed to sell its German retail bank, Citibank Privatkunden AG & Co., for $6.6 billion, and last month it sold a processing business in India with about 12,000 employees for $512 million.

In a memo this week, Crittenden said the firm had sold 21 businesses over the past year and that divestitures would “again be critical in 2009.”

Dean Witter

Pandit, 51, in September replaced Sallie Krawcheck, the head of the wealth-management division, which includes Smith Barney. Taking her place was Michael Corbat, a 25-year veteran of the bank. At Morgan Stanley, Ellyn McColgan was named president of the wealth management business in December 2007, reporting to Gorman.

Smith Barney has 14,133 financial advisers in about 600 offices in the U.S., according to Citigroup’s Web site. It had about 9 million U.S. client accounts as of Nov. 3, oversaw $1.32 trillion of client assets, and generated $7.94 billion in revenue during the first nine months of 2008.

Morgan Stanley gained its retail brokerage in the company’s 1997 combination with Dean Witter, Discover & Co. The business had 8,426 financial advisers at the end of November, $546 billion in total client assets, and generated $6.3 billion in revenue during 2008 when the gain from an asset sale was excluded, according to a company report last month.