Media Navel Gaze: November 26, 2012
The Week Unpeeled
The holidays did little to minimize headlines (big names in trouble) or slow markets (big gains all around), with pretty shocking news early last week that Hewlett-Packard was taking a $9-billion write down over an accounting “scandal” tied to its acquisition last year of Autonomy, the UK enterprise software company. (HP is claiming “serious” accounting improprieties; the former Autonomy chief mismanagement.) Stay tuned for a battle.
Elsewhere:
- UBS trader Adoboli received a seven-year jail sentence in the UK’s biggest bank-fraud case;
- Equity markets rallied late last week, with the Dow Jones climbing 3.3 percent during its holiday-shortened week to close Friday at 13,009;
- Black Friday saw large crowds shopping earlier than ever on reports of mixed results with analysts wondering if online sales may be taking a bigger part of the retail-sales pie;
- The EU ended its two-day summit with no budget deal;
- Rebekkah Brooks, former News International chief, and Andy Coulson, former communications director for UK Prime Minister David Cameron, were charged with conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office;
- BBC named the head of the Royal Opera House to its top spot amid ongoing stories about who knew what when on scandals surrounding “Newsnight” and Jimmy Savile;
- SAC Capital’s Steven Cohen has been “implicated” (WSJ, Nov 12) in insider-trading scheme; and
- JR Ewing, also known as Larry Hagman, died.
