J.C. Penney sale talks stall, pushing retailer to brink [Reuters]Discussions between the Plano, Texas-based retailer and a duo of mall owners Simon Property Group Inc and Brookfield Property Partners LP stalled over the weekend, Joshua Sussberg, a J.C. Penney lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, said during a Monday court hearing…. Sussberg said lenders were still prepared to rescue the 118-year-old company and more than 70,000 jobs depending on negotiations over the next 10 days….“I hope everyone realizes how serious I am about this. I know where this is headed,” Jones said during Monday’s hearing. He told a shareholder that declining to allow J.C. Penney to continue talks with lenders would result in all the company’s stores closing and “the death of an entity.”

“His politics appall me, too, really appall me,” [Bob Mnuchin] replied, according to Mr. Saunders. “But he’s my son….”

Robert Mnuchin’s wife, Adriana, has reminded people that she is not Steven’s biological mother. (The couple married when he was a toddler.) She reluctantly attended Steven’s 2017 wedding to the Scottish-born actress Louise Linton. Ms. Mnuchin pretended her arm was injured in order to avoid having to shake hands with Mr. Trump, according to her grandson Zan Mnuchin Rozen.

Even Ms. Linton has said people shouldn’t assume she shares her husband’s politics.

Mr. Rozen, 22, wrote on Facebook in June that “my uncle has been complicit in, and in some cases directly culpable for, many years of the marginalization, persecution and stereotyping of black people in the United States.” His actions “cannot and will never be defensible…."

Mr. Mnuchin said in one of two recent interviews for this article that he tried to avoid discussing politics with...

Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, has a new side gig: He’s starting a hedge fund…. The angle? Buying stock in banks and other financial firms based on his knowledge of financial regulation….

“Politics is going to be a very turbulent thing for the near future, and I think it creates opportunities for those who understand how Washington works to provide an advantage over everybody else,” he said on the podcast…. It’s not clear how Mulvaney will divide his time between the hedge fund and promoting peace in Northern Ireland.

A quick check of JetTracker.xyz shows plenty of flights to and from Chicago, Teterboro and a variety of airfields on the east end of Long Island, more or less settling the question of where Griffin has chosen to base himself during the pandemic. There are a handful of flights to Colorado and, yes, Florida, as well as one earlier this month to one of the only countries in the world that will have us, Croatia.

And then there are the Wisconsin flights: Waukesha, Kenosha (before last week, for what it’s worth) and Sheboygan.

Multiple sources confirmed to The Post late Friday night that the hedge fund billionaire is in exclusive talks to buy the Mets in a deal that is rumored to be in the ballpark of $2.4 billion, a figure that would be roughly $200 million less than what the $14 billion man offered the last time he agreed to buy the team, all the way back in December 2019…. Another source told The Post that Cohen’s bid was at least $100 million more than the next closest bid submitted by former Yankee Alex Rodriguez and entertainer Jennifer Lopez, who announced they had pulled out of the process in a statement.

M.B.A.s Are Usually Swimming in Job Offers by Now. Not This Year. [WSJ]PricewaterhouseCoopers, say there will be no jobs on offer to second-year M.B.A. candidates looking to lock down a position before they graduate in 2021…. Consulting giant Bain & Co. is reducing the number of second-year M.B.A.s it plans to hire but has made offers to this summer’s entire M.B.A. intern class…. EY, one of the largest professional services firms in the world and the umbrella organization for its U.S. affiliate, Ernst & Young LLP, is waiting to see how a potential second wave of Covid-19 infections plays out before it finalizes hiring plans for the year….Students who weren’t able to land a summer internship—or had their offer rescinded—fear they could have a tough time finding the job they thought the pricey degree would give them upon graduation. RelishCareers said in a recent survey more than a third of 2021 M.B.A. candidates have had job and internship offers rescinded or changed...

Neiman is seeking more than $60 million in damages from the hedge fund. The retailer is also asking a judge to subordinate Marble Ridge’s claims against Neiman during its bankruptcy proceedings. Because unsecured creditors aren’t being paid in full, ranking the hedge fund’s claim below the other creditors would essentially wipe out its Neiman holdings…. Because of Marble Ridge’s illegal actions, the lawsuit says, Neiman’s creditors lost out on the opportunity to cash out their MyTheresa shares for $42 million to $54 million.

Fed’s Elevation of Employment Goal Reflects a Changed World [WSJ]The new framework replaces “deviations” with “shortfalls,” implying unemployment can be too high but never too low. Two factors have driven this. The first is that the Phillips curve has flattened since the early 2000s. As unemployment fell to 50-year lows in the last year, inflation also stayed low. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell explained that the change in wording “may appear subtle, but it reflects our view that a robust job market can be sustained without causing an outbreak of inflation….” This is harder than it sounds. With a flattened Phillips curve, even getting unemployment below its natural rate isn’t guaranteed to boost inflation. But it’s the only lever Fed officials have.

We’ve all learned a great deal more than we probably ever wanted to about our supply chains over the last few months—specifically, just how brittle and fragile they are, most especially those delivering toilet paper and face masks. Well, those newfound busybodies over at the SEC are also learning about supply chains, and how they are financed. As it turns out, this is often accomplished by something called, well, supply-chain finance: A bank or someone else pays a company’s suppliers, getting them a little bit less money than they’re owed in exchange for getting it to them a bit faster than otherwise, before turning around to the company and collecting the full bill. This seems like quite an important thing. But, as the SEC has learned, you’ll have a hell of a time finding anything about it in a company’s financials, and this strikes the regulator as something of a problem.

The Justice Department said OneCoin accounts show it took in some $4 billion from the fourth quarter of 2014 to the third quarter of 2016, sucking in investors from Africa to the U.S., Venezuela to China…. Ruja Ignatova, a 40-year-old Bulgarian, started OneCoin in 2014 with Mr. Greenwood. Unlike more established cryptocurrencies, OneCoin wasn’t actively traded. The coins couldn’t be used to buy anything. Their price was determined solely by Ms. Ignatova, who promised big financial rewards. Federal prosecutors would later allege that OneCoin was less of a cryptocurrency and more of a pyramid scheme, where money from new purchasers would flow up to Ms. Ignatova and others who sold the currency in the early days.

Such trades “can often constitute front-running,” the two largest lobby groups for global hedge funds, the Managed Funds Association and Alternative Investment Management Association, told regulators. “Pre-hedging essentially places the proprietary interest of the broker ahead of the de facto client….”

The Association for Financial Markets in Europe, the main lobby group for banks and brokerages, told ESMA that there is no need for new rules and that price requests don’t typically constitute inside information.

At issue in the current ESMA review is trading done primarily through request-for-quote, or RFQ, systems in which an investor typically asks several dealers for the price of an asset, such as stocks or exchange-traded funds.

Brokers anticipating an order will “pre-hedge” by buying or selling the same or similar securities or derivatives. This can happen in split seconds or minutes before the dealer actually needs to fill the position were it to win the...

Bridgewater Is Having a Bad Year. David McCormick Has a Plan. [II]“If you look at the history of Bridgewater since 1991, we’ve had five drawdowns — including our drawdown of March — of equal magnitude,” McCormick says, referencing the firm’s dreadful pandemic performance. “And if you look at the period that followed each of them, you’ll see a pretty significant compounding of return over that period.” The dark periods also spur “reflection, innovation, a series of things that came as a consequence of reassessment. That’s the process we’re in now….”“There is a shift coming,” he says. “Part one of that shift is to narrow the scope of the clients that we’re going deeper with in these custom advisory relationships. Even if our assets grow substantially, the number of clients will likely decrease.”

Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs president and Trump administration adviser, joined Wall Street’s latest buyout fad as he moved to raise $600m through a listing of a blank cheque company…. The company, known as Cohn Robbins Holdings Corp, said it would “capitalise” on Mr Cohn and [ex-KKR dealmaker Clifton] Robbins’ relationships and experience in the investment world. It said it had not started discussions with a would-be target, but that it would attempt to clinch a deal with a large private equity- or venture-backed company, or buy a business being carved out of a company.

“Our founders have expertise and experience investing across virtually all industries and sectors and we may pursue an acquisition in any business industry,” the company said in its filing. It added that it believed there were “attractive trends” in the consumer, software and financial technologies sectors.

A company tied to billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin paid $37 million for a double-lot on Miami Beach’s Star Island…. Star Island — home to celebrities including Sean “Diddy” Combs, Gloria and Emilio Estefan, and most recently, Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez — is experiencing some resident turnover. Lopez and Rodriguez last week spent $32.5 million for the mansion at 13 Star Island Drive, next to the property that Miller just sold.

For some time now, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries—like many other pharmas recently—has been having the occasional chat with the Justice Department about what the latter sees as some pretty wide-ranging price fixing. While this is fairly widespread in the industry, it is also illegal, and according to the Feds, Teva’s been doing a whole lot of it: On arthritis, blood clot, cholesterol, cystic fibrosis, hypertension, pain, seizure skin condition drugs. Oh yea, and brain cancer. That, too. All the tune of $350 million extra in the bank.

Fed’s Esther George sees risks building of double-dip recession [CNBC]“Financial conditions are very accommodative. We have low rates, we still have capacity in those credit facilities,” George said. “So I think it’s too soon to try to speculate on whatever else might be needed, other than to say the Federal Reserve is going to be very vigilant on that and be prepared to respond if they would have to….”“I’m not an advocate of letting inflation run hot, because I’m not sure what people mean by that,” she said. “I think we are bound to achieve price stability. That’s part of our mandate.”

The venture arm of Cohen’s Connecticut-based hedge fund Point72 is backing a coterie of agents from Hollywood’s top three agencies — WME, CAA and UTA — as Tinseltown grapples with massive furloughs and pay cuts that are expected to last the rest of the year, insiders said….

The size and terms of Cohen’s investment couldn’t immediately be learned, but with Hollywood production stalled by a combination of COVID-19 and a writers strike, Cohen, worth $14 billion, has a huge opportunity to grab talent at a discount, sources said.

“People are not making a lot of money right now so they may figure this is the time to take a shot,” an insider said of the departing agents from CAA, UTA and WME.

Mr. Icahn… has made $1.3 billion on the trade…. “We periodically do shorts, and this is one of the best that I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Icahn said in an interview last week….

New CEO of $1.2 Trillion Sovereign Investor Drops Hedge Fund [Bloomberg][Nikolai] Tangen will transfer his 43% stake and dividend rights in AKO to the AKO Foundation, a charity; the agreement will “apply in perpetuity,” Norges Bank said [and] sell his personal holdings, including about 5 billion kroner ($550 million) in AKO funds, and deposit the proceeds in bank accounts. He already has about 2 billion kroner in bank deposits, he said at a press conference late on Monday…. The 54-year-old has repeatedly said he wouldn’t have applied for the CEO job at the wealth fund if he’d known he would need to exit AKO entirely. Since his appointment was made public in March, Tangen said he’s been through “the most intense, the most demanding, but also the most instructive” time of his life. He said the process had left him even more motivated to start the job.

General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital Are Key Drivers in Oracle Bid for TikTok [WSJ]The investment firms, which own large stakes...

“After much consideration, and in light of the operating environment, we have made the difficult decision to commence an orderly wind-down of the Marble Ridge funds,” the firm told clients in a letter seen by Reuters.

“Marble Ridge will manage the liquidation in the best interests of our investors and with the objective of protecting and enhancing the value of the funds’ assets….”

“While we understand that you may have questions, we are not able to comment on the contents of the report,” Kamensky wrote in Thursday’s letter.

[U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General] Denise N. George, informed a local court on Thursday that she would issue civil subpoenas to Mr. Black, a founder of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, and several entities connected to him, the chief clerk of the court said.

The subpoenas, copies of which were filed with the court, seek financial statements and tax returns for a number of entities, including Black Family Partners and Elysium Management, which oversee some of Mr. Black’s $9 billion fortune. Subpoenas will also go to Apollo and entities that help manage Mr. Black’s extensive art collection….

The requests represent a significant step in Ms. George’s efforts to unravel the mystery of how Mr. Epstein amassed an estate valued at more than $600 million. They are part of a civil forfeiture suit she filed against his estate in January, claiming Mr. Epstein had misled government officials in the Virgin Islands to secure lucrative tax breaks for his...

But at last we are able to report that David Solomon has solved Goldman’s image problem, and with it, all of the rest are sure to follow: the scandals, the existential crises, the talent drought, you name it. For Goldman has a new face to show the world, and that face is Goldman Sans.

The Median S&P Stock Has Never Been More Expensive [WSJ]“The only way to go higher on valuation is to duplicate the last few years of the 1920s or the 1990s,” said Barry Bannister, head of institutional equity strategy at Stifel, referring to periods when the economy was booming…. The valuation of the median stock in the S&P 500, measured by forward P/E, is now in the 100th percentile of historical levels, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., going back four decades—the highest level possible. The index itself is trading at the 98th percentile…. The last time that GDP was higher than the equities market’s total capitalization, adjusting both for inflation, was in 2009, when the stock market’s total capitalization was only about 93% of GDP.

Dan Shak, a hedge fund manager and professional poker player who once sued his ex-wife for 35% of her $1 million shoe collection, was fined $400,000 and prohibited from trading during settlement periods after being charged with abusing TAS. He paid an additional $100,000 after he was found to have traded during the settlement window for gold a year later. He said it was an accident.

Renaissance Technologies, one of the industry’s best performing hedge fund firms, is down 13.4% this year in its biggest fund open to the public despite the surging U.S. stock market.

While the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund gained 2.4% last month, it was still outpaced by equities for the year, a rarity in the four-decade history of the firm founded by Jim Simons….

The market-neutral Renaissance Institutional Diversified Alpha Fund fell 0.6% and the Renaissance Institutional Diversified Global Equities Fund rose 0.4% last month, according to a person familiar with the matter. They’re down about 20% and 18.6%, respectively, for the first seven months of 2020.