Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

When you set up that secret Swiss account of yours, you assumed that you could totally count on the bank to defend your privacy no matter what the cost, right? If it didn't, what else would Switzerland have to boast about, with the exception of solid skiing, pocket knives, and cough drops? It looks like the world's blandest nation will now have to come up with a new bullet point to add to its tourism brochures. And a trip to a Zurich bank vault will no longer be a staple of international crime capers.More

The Hot New Blacklist | If you missed out on the chance to brag to all your friends that you fell victim to a Ponzi scheme targeted to high net-worth individuals, you may still get to see your name appear on a list of really rich people who now find themselves in a world of trouble.More

• Employees at Goldman Sachs can expect the "biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year." [Guardian]
• Banks like Merrill Lynch, UBS and Citigroup are "hiking pay for their top investment bankers in an attempt to stop an exodus of talent." [FT]
• Bill Gross of Pimco has "emerged as one of the nation's most influential financiers." How do we know this? Tim Geithner has him on speed-dial. [NYT]
• Russian-American billionaire Len Blavatnik is suing JPMorgan for allegedly mismanaging an investment account with $1 billion in assets. [NYT]
• Jack Welch is lending his name to a new online MBA program. [WSJ]
• Warren Buffett auctions off lunch every year for charity. The bidding is open, but it's not expected to rake in the fortune it did in years past. [Guardian]

• About 10 of the 19 largest banks that have undergone "stress tests" will be notified by Washington that they need to raise more capital. [WSJ, BN]
• JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon isn't expecting to be one of the 10: He said he thinks "there are still too many banks in the United States," and will happily acquire some of the institutions that can't survive on their own. [WSJ]
• UBS announced a first-quarter loss of $1.8 billion as the bank took more writedowns on risky investments and client withdrawals continued. [Reuters]More

• It looks like Chrysler will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today after last-minute negotiations with creditors failed to result in a deal. [BN]
• Good news: fewer Americans filed first-time applications for unemployment insurance last week. Bad news: personal spending is down. [BN, WSJ]
• UBS has eliminated 2,000 U.S. jobs as part of a round of job cuts. [DB]
• Hedge funder Phil Falcone has been sued by his former right-hand. [NYP]
• State Street Corp. is now under investigation by state regulators. [WSJ]
• Financier Danny Pang has been given $1 million bail. He'll be under house arrest, though, so presumably he won't be heading off to China. [DB]
• Changing AIG's name to AIU has done little to redeem the company's rep or distract from its previous failings, you'll be shocked to hear, we're sure. [NYT]

• John Thain is striking back at Bank of America in an effort "to restore his sullied reputation," and accusing BofA's CEO, Ken Lewis, of lying. [WSJ]
• Thanks to rising profits, employees at several banks are on track to earn as much money this year as they did before the financial crisis. [NYT]
• UBS's head of investment banking, Jerker Johansson, is stepping down. [DB]
• Steve Rattner caught a break on Friday when Quadrangle Group investors decided not to shut down his scandal-plagued fund. [NYT, NYP] More

• Government officials—the people who essentially run Citigroup these days—have had talks about replacing CEO Vikram Pandit. About time! [FT]
• UBS is considering selling all or part of its hedge funds business. [Reuters]
• The Treasury Department's plan to rescue banks by having the government link up with private investors is "inherently vulnerable to fraud," says a government investigator, which is not very reassuring news. [WSJ, NYT]
• All the financial institutions that reported better-than-expected results may have also undermined investors' confidence in the sector. [NYT, DB]  More

• Stocks are down in early trading today as investors brace for disappointing earnings as well as signs the recession is getting worse. [WSJ, BN]
• Bank of America reported first quarter profits totaled $4.2 billion and revenues almost doubled, not that any of that will do much to soothe angry investors, who are pushing for a change in management. [NYT, WSJ, [NYT]
• Citigroup's first quarter profit of $1.6 billion last week? That may have been the product of creative accounting more than anything else. [NYT] More

• UBS is cutting another 7,500 jobs after posting a $1.8 billion quarterly loss and clients pulled more than $20 billion out of the firm. [BN, NYT]
• Andrew Cuomo strikes again: Carlyle Group is now under investigation by the attorney general and the SEC over whether it illegally paid third parties to secure $1.3 billion in investments from New York's pension fund. [BN]
• BlackRock plans to raise $5-$7 billion to scoop up toxic assets. [Reuters]
• Scandal du jour: Danny Pang, who heads up the $4 billion fund Private Equity Management Group, has a few questions to answer, it would seem. [WSJ]
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• Stocks dropped at the opening bell this morning following the Commerce Department's report that retail sales fell 1.1 percent last month. [WSJ]
• The SEC is looking into whether Bank of America broke the law by not telling shareholders about Merrill Lynch's plan to pay out billions in bonuses. [FT]
• President Obama is expected to tap Fannie Mae chief Herb Allison to head up the government's $700 billion financial rescue program. [WSJ]
• From Dick Fuld to Tim Geithner, Steve Rattner to former AIG chief Bob Willumstad, the big guns of finance have a friend in Michael Bloomberg. [NYT]
• Lehman Brothers "is sitting on enough uranium cake to make a nuclear bomb as it waits for prices of the commodity to rebound." No, this is not a joke. [BN] 

• Wall Street retreated this morning after a four-week rally amid concern about the banking sector and after IBM's attempt to buy Sun unraveled. [WSJ, CNN]
• The latest Washington official facing questions about potential conflicts of interest: Larry Summers, who collected $5.2 million in 2008 working one day a week for D.E. Shaw before joining the administration. [NYT]
• Tim Geithner says that the Obama administration is prepared to oust top financial executives if their firms require more public aid. [FT, DB]
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• The unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since 1983, after a total of 663,000 jobs were eliminated. [NYP, BN]
• At the G-20 summit in London. world leaders agreed to pump $1 trillion into the world economy to help bail out developing countries. [NYT]
• Bank of America chief Ken Lewis says it may take a few quarters to pay bank the $45 billion it received in bailout money. Also: He says Countrywide and Merrill "will prove to be two of the best acquisitions we've ever made" [DB]
• Related: Another top Merrill banker is ditching the firm. [WSJ]
• It appears it's the end of the line for Daniel Zwirn's hedge fund. [DB]
• Hedge fund managers are paying more attention to customers after sustaining heavy losses. So they're, like, wearing ties to work and stuff. [BN]
• A Florida accountant became the first U.S citizen to be arrested as part of the investigation into Americans who hid assets with help from UBS. [AP]
• This can't bode well: American Airlines is in talks to raise cash from its credit card partner, Citigroup, by selling frequent flyer miles. [Reuters]
• It's not as fun being on top these days: The median salaries and bonuses for the CEOs of 200 big companies fell 8.5% to $2.24 million in '08. [WSJ]

• The private sector lost 742,000 jobs during the month of March, substantially more than analysts had been predicting. [WSJ, CNN]
• President Obama has indicated that he believes a "quick, negotiated bankruptcy" will be the most likely path for General Motors. [BN]
• The not-so-optimistic employment figures and increased concern about the future of GM may lead to a rough day in the markets. [BN]
• Mark Carhart and Raymond Iwanowski of Goldman's Alpha hedge fund are retiring. Rumor now has it they may end up at KKR. [Clusterstock]
• A dozen criminal investigations into bailout fraud are now underway. [FT]
• Remember when Cerberus founder Steve Feinberg was "hailed as a hero" who "might save the American car industry"? So much for that idea. [NYT]
• UBS is closing its "art banking" department, not surprisingly. [AP]
• This is a particularly dangerous time to be a CEO, clearly. [NYP]

• Washington is now playing hard ball: The Obama administration has forced out GM CEO Rick Wagoner and now says the company has 30 days to finalize its alliance with Fiat if it expects to get more bailout cash. [NYT, WSJ]
• UBS plans to lay off as many as 8,000 more employees worldwide. [Reuters]
• Working at Goldman Sachs has its perks: The bank spent tens of millions bailing out several senior execs facing a personal liquidity squeeze, including former COO Jon Winkelried and general counsel Gregory Palm. [NYT]
• Bank of America plans to increase some bankers' salaries by as much as 70 percent to offset reduced year-end bonuses. [BN]
• The Blackstone Group turned down a request from regulators to disclose the performance of its buyout and hedge funds; Fortress, however, caved. [BN]
• Timothy Geithner says some financial institutions will still need a lot more government aid in the future. You're stunned by that, we're sure. [BN]

• Is AIG officially the most despised company in America? Following the disclosure over the weekend that execs planned to go ahead with $165 million in bonuses to top execs comes word that a good deal of the billions in bailout money it received went to banks like Goldman Sachs ($12.9 billion), Merrill Lynch ($6.8 billion), and Bank of America ($5.2 billion). [BN, NYT, WSJ]
• Larry Summers: "There are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last 18 months, but what's happened at AIG is the most outrageous." [BN]
• UBS plans to cut another 5,000 jobs. [Reuters] More