The news at a glance

last updated 8 January 2015

Markets: A stock market’s disastrous IPO

“The stock market claimed an unlikely victim” last week, said Michael J. de la Merced and Ben Protess in The New York Times. “One of its own.” BATS Global Markets, the third-largest electronic stock exchange in the U.S., was forced to withdraw its initial public offering hours after its debut when a series of technical glitches gummed up its trading system. The errors, which affected stocks with symbols A through BFZZZ, not only pushed the stock price of BATS (which stands for Better Alternative Trading System) from $16 to less than a cent per share; it also led to a temporary trading halt in Apple shares after they plummeted 9 percent. It was a stunning turn of events for the high-frequency exchange, which handles 11 percent of U.S. trading volume. “My heart goes out to the guys,” says Larry Tabb, who runs a financial research firm. “On the biggest day of their corporate history, their own platform backfired.”

BATS’s reputation took a serious beating, but “the good news is that the stumble didn’t catalyze a broader market meltdown,” said Antony Currie in Reuters.com. The market circuit breakers put in place after the flash crash in May 2010, when the market crashed 700 points in mere minutes, “appear to be working well.”

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Jobs: Bernanke says market remains weak

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke remains cautious about the economic recovery, said Martin Crutsinger in the Associated Press. He said this week that the economy would need to grow faster to maintain recent job growth. The unemployment rate has dropped to 8.3 percent, from 9.1 percent in September, but “the job market remains far from normal,” Bernanke said. Some analysts saw Bernanke’s remarks, which pushed the market higher, as a signal that the Fed may take more steps to boost consumer and business spending if the economy falters.

World Bank: Praise for a surprise nominee

President Obama’s nominee for World Bank president last week came as a surprise, said Howard Schneider and Zachary Goldfarb in The Washington Post. Jim Yong Kim, the president of Dartmouth College, lacks the typical finance background of previous nominees, but has experience working as a physician and public health expert in the developing world. “It’s time for a development professional to lead the world’s largest development agency,” Obama said.

Companies: Kraft snacks get a name change

Kraft Foods will rename its snacks division when the company splits in two later this year, but the new moniker is a head-scratcher, said David Welch in Bloomberg.com. The first problem with Mondelez, the proposed name, is how to pronounce it. (It’s mohn-dah-LEEZ.) The second is the nonintuitive meaning. It’s a combination of the word “monde,” French for “world,” and “delez,” meant to call to mind the word “delicious.” Mondelez will be the umbrella name for snack brands like Oreo and Trident Gum, while the grocery division will remain Kraft Foods. “It will take a while to get used to,” said company spokesman Michael Mitchell.

Banks: Dodging Dodd-Frank regulations

European banks are maneuvering to make sure their U.S. subsidiaries don’t have to comply with new financial regulations, said David Enrich and Laura Stevens in The Wall Street Journal. In February, Germany’s Deutsche Bank sidestepped pending rules on minimum capital cushions by switching its U.S. arm’s legal classification from “bank holding company” to “domestic entity—other.” British bank Barclays recently made a similar move. The switch allows the banks to avoid having to pump billions of dollars of extra capital into their U.S. subsidiaries.