United Continental shareholders (two hedge funds in particular) are not pleased, and they’re looking to former Continental CEO Gordon Bethune to do something about it. Bethune is one of a slate of 6 director candidates put forward by the funds—just one of the big issues facing current CEO Oscar Munoz when he returns to work next Monday after undergoing a heart transplant 2 months ago – NYTimes and WSJ

Wall Street’s 5-day rally fizzled yesterday, with falling oil prices and disappointing Chinese trade data dragging US markets down with their global counterparts – WSJ

The SEC has barred former S&P ratings official Frank Parisi—who developed criteria for rating MBS and “penned an allegedly flawed in-house report that figured into last year’s mammoth $77 million settlement” between the rating agency and authorities—from “associating with any nationally recognized statistical ratings organization.” It also slapped Parisi with a $25k fine – Law360

With the Fed’s open market committee set to meet next week, the latest rate hike speculation is already off and running.  Current conventional wisdom is that the rough start to the year makes a March increase unlikely, but April or June could be in play – WSJ

The potential promise [maybe?] of China’s bond market, which is likely to be more open to foreign investors before too long – WSJ

A British court has denied former Citi and UBS trader Tom Hayes’ appeal of his Libor manipulation conviction, though an earlier appeal effort was successful in knocking 3 years off of his original 14-year sentence – NYTimes and Bloomberg and Law360

Today in “you can bundle anything into a bond these days” news, Verizon’s reportedly considering offerings backed by monthly mobile phone financing payments – Bloomberg

Gibson Dunn’s self-proclaimed “SEC nerd,” Marc Fagel, gives us a year-in-review for the agency, which kept itself quite busy in 2015—filing a record number of enforcement actions (807) and an increased focus on financial reporting fraud – Law360

Berkshire Hathaway’s in the midst of a $9 billion bond offering—its largest on record—and “is having little trouble” finding willing buyers – WSJ and Bloomberg

The Journal’s reporting that gangs traditionally associated with “street crime” are donning white collars and mixing it up in the world of financial crime, with check fraud and identity theft schemes leading the way “because they are more lucrative, harder to detect, and carry lighter prison sentences” than drug and violent crimes – WSJ

So, I guess it’s true.  You slap the Drumpf name on anything, and it practically sells itself – NYTimes