Anbang Insurance Group, the Chinese insurer that surprised many with its nearly $2 billion purchase of the Waldorf Astoria 2 years ago, made an equally startling unsolicited bid to acquire Starwood Hotels for [a pricey] $12.8 billion—a $2 billion premium on Starwood’s announced merger with Marriott – NYTimes and WSJ

Activist investor Canyon Capital Advisors started a board of directors rumble today at Ambac Financial, initiating a proxy fight after Ambac promoted its interim CEO to the permanent position. Canyon was not pleased with CEO Nader Tavakoli’s stewardship of the company, whose stock dropped 42% last year – NYTimes

Big Billy Gross’ $200 million suit against form firm Pimco may proceed after Orange County superior court judge Marsha Gooding ruled yesterday that BBG’s claims were sufficient to survive Pimco’s motion to dismiss – Law360

Our financial industry term of the week: “dot plot”—the Fed’s closely watched dots graph that “shows where central bankers project interest rates of short- and long-term horizons.” Not that that quarterly updated chart is all that reliable (generally the Fed gets a bit optimistic with it), but still, good to know –WSJ

Some of the fuss over Bitcoin is the promise of its underlying blockchain technology—the peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology that could offer a secure and transparent mechanism for “storing, tracking, trading and verifying assets and information” without the involvement of central authorities – Law360

Undeterred by, you know, the financial collapse of 2008 and resulting Great Recession, JPMorgan is attempting “to revive a debt market that has been largely left to the government since the financial crisis” with its attempts to sell nearly $2 billion in residential mortgage backed securities in its first house transaction [entirely backed by JPM-owned mortgages] in almost 8 years – WSJ

Perhaps the truest statement in this fascinating piece on the varying temperaments of babies: “Every child is a different assignment.” Also, this helps, too – “Sooner or later, almost everyone accepts potty training, gives up the pacifier, sleeps through the night.” [Love that “almost”] – NYTimes