AIG may have shrugged off Carl Icahn for now, but Xerox has succumbed to his calls for breaking up and is expected to announce sometime today [update: it did] that it will separate its legacy hardware side from its services business – NYTimes and WSJ
The Bank of Japan surprised many early today by announcing that it would adopt a negative interest rate policy for the first time in an effort to shore up a struggling economy and address “stubbornly low inflation” – WSJ and NYTimes
Feel free to enjoy the clip of the Prime Minister’s Question Hour embedded in this story, but the main point of this Times piece is the struggle Europe faces on the issue of taxing big (largely American) corporations: some want those back taxes on what they view as sweetheart deals while others would be thrilled to offer tax breaks if it meant prosperity – NYTimes
US markets’ wild ride on August 24, 2015—in which the Dow plunged 1000 points before rallying to a near-600-point loss and trading was halted over and over—has prompted the NYSE to call for markets to update their rules aimed at preventing “massive losses during volatile periods” – Law360
The Fed has indicated that its next round of big-bank stress tests will present a particularly nasty cocktail of a sever global recession, doubling of the US unemployment rate, and moderate deflation – Bloomberg
Alibaba announced strong Q4 earnings, and many are hoping that the e-commerce giant may be an acceptable proxy for the Chinese economy and help right the ship for Chinese stocks – NYTimes
Perhaps unsurprisingly, those solid numbers coincided nearly perfectly with a new chorus by Yahoo shareholders calling for the troubled internet company to “register as an investment company” and get rid of CEO Marissa Mayer in the process – Law360
Here’s the thing about forecasting oil prices—even if you’re an analyst at the world’s biggest banks: good luck – WSJ
More signs that the junk bond market is heading toward a crisis point, as default rates for junk-rated U.S. firms are outpacing those in emerging markets – WSJ
So, it’s one thing to discover an ancient Babylonian tablet. But man, is it another altogether to discover that the cuneiform on that tablet was anticipating integral calculus by calculating the distance Jupiter traveled in the sky over time. . . a solid 15 centuries before the same mathematical technique was credited to Europeans – NYTimes
And now, proof that I’ll use basically any excuse to drop a little 80s classic on you early on a Friday morning – CNN
Have a good weekend