Breakingviews

M&A lawyers lob stones at Goldman from glass house

By Reynolds Holding
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

M&A lawyers tossed stones at Goldman Sachs from a glass house. Debate over how the bank played both sides of the El Paso sale to Kinder Morgan drowned out other hot topics at this week’s dealmaker jamboree in New Orleans. Bankers and chief executives took beatings over other conflicts of interest, too. For an event organized by and for mainly attorneys, however, there was surprisingly little self-reflection.

Bankers behaving badly are no black swans

By Antony Currie

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

It’s hard to feel too sympathetic for wealthy financiers caught behaving badly. But considering the stress of the job, and simple statistics, it shouldn’t be too shocking to hear of Wall Streeters stabbing a cabbie or defecating in public. More surprising is that such tales are so rare.

Some 170,000 people are employed in the securities industry in New York City, many of them working in high-pressure roles overseeing or advising others about vast sums of money. Traders, especially, seem prime candidates for becoming social miscreants. Academic studies have even mined the traits they share with psychopaths.

Quotas for female directors are a necessary evil

By Christine Murray

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Modern liberals wax lyrical about equality but turn queasy at the mention of quotas for women on boards. In a perfect world regulation would not be needed, but the softly-softly approach delivers inadequate results, too slowly. Reform will be hastened by sensible rules.

Fortune 500 plays tough for home-court advantage

By Reynolds Holding

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

U.S. companies are playing tough for home-court advantage. Weary of fighting shareholders in multiple states, the Fortune 500 is forcing M&A lawsuits into its preferred forum, Delaware. But investors deserve a say in the matter. As the hot-button issue plays out before judges, deal-making lawyers and bankers will give it a hearing at their annual New Orleans confab this week.

Apple needs good, not just better, supply chain

By Richard Beales
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Apple has taken its share of criticism lately over working conditions at the Chinese factories of suppliers like Foxconn Technology. Despite the bad press, workers preparing the iPad 3 – which Apple is widely expected to unveil on Wednesday – are treated less badly than many in the electronics business. The sector in turn provides a noticeably better environment than, say, toy or clothing makers do, in the eyes of labor groups. But with Apple’s iconic brand, roughly $500 billion market capitalization and $100 billion of cash, doing things relatively well isn’t enough.

Peugeot’s $1.3 bln cash call inspires confidence

By Chris Hughes

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

PSA Peugeot Citroën has squared two circles with the 1 billion euro ($1.3 billion) cash call backing its alliance with U.S. peer General Motors. The French carmaker has welcomed a major new shareholder without taking control away from the founding Peugeot family. Plus it has got a firm commitment to fund capital spending on a speculative venture in a challenged industry.

Who cares how many jobs Apple has created?

By Daniel Indiviglio

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Apple shareholders must be scratching their heads after the gadget king commissioned a study showing it produces around half a million jobs in the United States. After all, subjective reports like this miss the point. Apple has created $400 billion of stock market value over the past three years. That’s good for the American economy and capitalism.

Apax finds French twist on bankruptcy tourism

By Neil Unmack

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Restructuring specialists have a lot to thank the UK for. The country’s creditor-friendly legal framework has drawn companies from across Europe to restructure in London. European Union law states that companies should use the insolvency regime relevant to their centre of main interest, or “comi” for short. But the concept is elastic; a Greek mobile telecoms company, Wind Hellas, was able to restructure in London by relocating one of its companies from Luxembourg to the UK.

Zynga has less to fear from mobile than Facebook

By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Zynga’s investors worry about the company’s dependence on Facebook. So it’s no wonder they warmly greeted the company’s plans to diversify away from the social network, currently the source of more than 90 percent of Zynga’s revenue. But one trend affecting its giant symbiotic partner shouldn’t worry them much – the shift to mobile devices. Ad-dependent firms like Facebook, Pandora and Yelp could lose out, if only temporarily, but Zynga’s revenue model is different.

More and more people access the Internet on smartphones and tablets. Sales of these devices have now eclipsed desktops in the United States. Yet advertisers haven’t yet followed, for reasons ranging from conservatism to a lack of tools to measure the effectiveness of mobile advertisements. Facebook and Yelp, for example, still receive almost no revenue from mobile advertising even though half Facebook’s users access it on the go and about 6 million people use Yelp’s service on their phones.

Yelp IPO: four reviews, 2 stars out of 5

By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Here are four ways to think about Yelp’s initial public offering, which set a price range earlier this month of $12 to $14 a share. At the top end of the range, the company would have a market value of nearly $850 million. All told, using the online review site’s own methodology, the stock sale merits just two stars out of five.