Spring-ing to life

The much sought-after 529 Broadway, a two-story building on the northwest corner of Spring Street in the middle of a busy shopping district, has been sold for $150 million to Jeff Sutton, Joe Sitt, the Adjmi family and Bobby Cayre’s Aurora Capital.

The 22,500-square-feet property, the subject of an off-market bidding war, will be emptied and razed. A new building of about 40,000 square feet will be built on the site, sources said.

Vornado, Ivesco and Crown Acquisitions lost out in the bidding.

Goldstone Realty was the seller and the deal closed today.

Read More..

For the New York Stock Exchange, a sell order

NEW YORK --
The Big Board just isn’t so big anymore.

In a deal that highlights the dwindling stature of what was once a centerpiece of capitalism, the New York Stock Exchange is being sold to a little-known rival for $8 billion – $3 billion less than it would have fetched in a proposed takeover just last year.

The buyer is IntercontinentalExchange, a 12-year-old exchange headquartered in Atlanta that deals in investing contracts known as futures.

Intercontinental Exchange, known as ICE, said Thursday that little would change for the trading floor at the corner of Wall and Broad streets, in Manhattan’s financial district.

But the clout of the two-centuries-old NYSE has gradually been eroded over decades by the relentless advance of technology and regulatory changes. Its importance today is mostly symbolic.

The NYSE dates to 1792, when 24 brokers and merchants traded stocks under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street. But today most trading doesn’t require face-to-face meeting at all. It’s done on computers that match thousands of orders a second.

Three decades ago, the floor of the New York exchange was full of bustling traders. Today, one of its largest booths belongs to the cable news channel CNBC, which broadcasts there for most of the business day.

The introduction of negotiated, rather than fixed, commissions for securities transactions, in May 1975, marked the start of a gradual decline in brokerage fees for traditional stock trading.

It also gave rise to so-called discount brokerages, like Charles Schwab, that offered to trade for customers at lower rates.

While brokerage fees have declined, futures exchanges have retained profit margins, said James Angel, an associate professor in finance and an expert on stock exchanges at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.

Futures contracts are written by exchanges and must be bought and sold in the same place – as opposed to stocks, which can be bought and sold on any exchange, Angel said. That gives futures exchanges more pricing power.

Stock trading is a “dog-eat-dog business where the profit margin per share is measured not in pennies, not in tenths of pennies, but in hundredths of pennies,” said Angel, who also sits on the board of Direct Edge, a smaller stock exchange.

NYSE Euronext was formed in a 2007 merger when NYSE Group, parent company of the exchange, got together with Euronext, which owned stock exchanges in Europe.

It has been looking for a partner. Last year, ICE and Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., which competes with the NYSE for stock listings, made an $11 billion bid to buy NYSE Euronext. But that deal fell apart after regulators raised antitrust concerns.

Deutsche Boerse AG, a German company, made a bid for NYSE Euronext, but that was scuttled by European regulators.

ICE was established in May 2000. Its founding shareholders represented some of the world’s largest energy companies and financial institutions, according to the company’s most recent annual report.

Its stated mission was to transform the energy futures market by providing more transparency. The company has expanded through acquisitions during the last decade and went public – on the NYSE – in November 2005.

Analysts forecast that ICE’s revenue will reach $1.4 billion this year, more than double the $574 million it reported in 2007.

ICE plans to pay for the cash part of the acquisition with a combination of cash and existing debt. It added that the deal will help it cut costs and should increase its earnings more than 15 percent in the first year after the deal closes.

The deal has been approved by the boards of both companies, but still needs the approvals by regulators and shareholders of both companies. It’s expected to close in the second half of next year.

Read More..

Religious leaders in Miami-Dade to help remember tragedy in Newtown

South Florida religious leaders will be remembering in the coming days the 20 children and six adults killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

On Friday, all Archdiocese of Miami schools will have a moment of prayer at 9:32 a.m. The archdiocese’s churches also will ring their bells 26 times in observance of those killed.

On Sunday, Temple Judea in Coral Gables will offer an interfaith service that will be open to anyone. Rabbi Edwin Goldberg said the idea was to offer a chance for the community to come together after what happened in Newtown.

“The point of the service is to come together and find comfort and hope,” Goldberg said.

The service will be start at 4 p.m. at Temple Judea, 5500 Granada Blvd. in Coral Gables.

Read More..

Google launches ‘scan and match’ music service

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Google is turning on a “scan and match” service for Google Music users to store copies of their songs online, offering for free what Apple charges $ 25 a year for.

The service, which launched Tuesday, cuts uploading time for those who want to save their music libraries online. It scans a user’s computer and gives them online access to the songs it finds, as long as they match the songs on its servers. Otherwise, it will upload songs to a user’s online locker.

The service is similar to Apple Inc.‘s iTunes Match, which includes online storage for 25,000 songs. Google Inc. allows storage for 20,000 songs and allows users to re-download the songs only at the same quality as they were at previously. Apple upgrades songs to iTunes quality.

Amazon runs a similar matching and uploading service called Cloud Player. It costs $ 25 a year for 250,000 songs. A free version is limited to 250 songs.

Google is still a fledgling entrant into music sales since debuting its store in November 2011, though it expects to benefit from the hundreds of millions of devices that use its Android operating system on mobile devices.

According to the NPD Group, Apple accounted for 64 percent of U.S. music sales online, followed by Amazon at 16 percent. Google has no more than 5 percent, according to NPD. Other services make up the rest.

Google had sold songs at a discount at the start, but that is less so the case now. For example, it was selling the top-ranked Bruno Mars song “Locked Out of Heaven” for $ 1.29 on Wednesday, the same as iTunes, and above the 99 cents on Amazon. But its album price was lower at $ 10.49 versus $ 10.99 at both iTunes and Amazon.

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Google launches ‘scan and match’ music service
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Five Things You Don't Know About Daniel Day-Lewis

This two-time Academy Award winning actor is getting Oscar buzz again for his lead portrayal in Steven Spielberg's Abraham Lincoln biopic Lincoln. Here are five things you probably don't know about Daniel Day-Lewis. 

1. While playing the role of Bill the Butcher in 2002's Gangs of New York, said he listened to rapper Eminem on the set to keep up his "level of aggression."

RELATED: Lincoln Sweeps Critics' Choice Nominations

2. Was considered for the role of Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's drama The Passion of the Christ (2004), but was found to be "too European" for the part, which eventually went to James Caviezel.

3. Is a skilled woodworker and also learned the trade of shoe making.

VIDEO: Daniel Day-Lewis Talks Lincoln Appeal

4. While filming 1992's The Last of the Mohicans, he built a canoe, learned to track and skin animals and mastered the use of a 12-pound flintlock gun.

5. Dedicated his Best Actor SAG Award for 2007's There Will Be Blood to Heath Ledger, one of his favorite actors.

VIDEO: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Says Daniel Day-Lewis Is Unlike 'Anything I've Ever Seen'

Read More..

Mom left school gunman Adam Lanza alone for days before school massacre: report

AP

A police cruiser sits in the driveway as crime scene tape surrounds the home of Nancy and Adam Lanza.

Mass murderer Adam Lanza spent two and half days home alone with his mom’s arsenal of weapons, giving him plenty of time to hatch one of America’s worst school shootings, according to broadcast report today.

Before Lanza slaughtered 20 kids and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Friday, he killed mom -- an avid gun collector -- Nancy Lanza in their home that morning.

MORE THAN 1,000 MOURNERS SAY GOODBYE TO HERO TEACHER

KILLER'S BASEMENT HIS EERIE LAIR OF VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES

27 DEAD, INCLUDING 27 CHILDREN IN SANDY HOOK SHOOTING

Nancy Lanza had just arrived home early Thursday evening, following a two-night getaway to Bretton Woods, NH, according to Headline News.

She checked into the Omni Mount Washington Resort at 12:10 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 11, and checked out at 12:27 p.m. on Thursday, HLN said.

It’s 290 miles — nearly a five-hour drive — between Bretton Woods, NH, and Newtown, Conn.

Lanza had visited Bretton Woods before and had always driven herself there, according to HLN.

She had chatted with friends during her two nights in New Hampshire and appeared to be in good spirits, the cable news network reported.

Nancy Lanza often took mini-vacations by herself, friends said. She trusted leaving Adam alone, but didn't want him cooking, so she always prepared all his meals before her trips.

Yesterday, it was reported that Adam Lanza studied photos of guns and obliterated virtual victims in violent video games for hours on end, alone in his windowless basement den.

The unhinged Sandy Hook Elementary School gunman was enthralled by blood-splattering, shoot-’em-up electronic games, which he played in the basement of his mother’s spacious $1.6 million home in Newtown, Conn., according to a person familiar with the layout.

Lanza, 20, especially liked “Call of Duty” — a wartime role-playing game where participants use high-powered assault rifles, machine guns and other weapons to slaughter scores of people, according to a published report.

And the basement walls were covered with military- and weaponry-themed posters, said one of the home’s few visitors.

“It was a beautiful house but he lived in the basement. I always thought that was strange,” said plumber Peter Wlasuk, who did work on the house and saw Lanza’s subterranean lair, The Sun newspaper of Britain reported.

“They had one poster of every piece of military equipment the US ever made,” Wlasuk said.

“The kids could tell you about guns they had never seen from the 40s, 50s and 60s,” the plumber said of Lanza and his older brother, Ryan, who had also lived in the basement before moving away for college.

Once Ryan moved out, “Adam then moved down there. The boys were fans of the military. They had posters all over the wall in the basement,” the plumber said.

“The kids who play these games know all about them. I’m not blaming the games for what happened. But they see a picture of a historical gun and say ‘I’ve used that on Call Of Duty.’”

Read More..

UBS agrees to pay $1.5 billion in settlement of Libor probe

In the largest fine issued so far in a probe of interest-rate manipulation by major banks, UBS has agreed to pay $1.5 billion in a settlement with U.S. and European authorities.

The Switzerland-based bank said it had reached settlements with the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the U.S. as well as with British and Swiss authorities. A division of the bank in Japan also agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud related to the scandal.

The settlement is the latest concerning the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, a benchmark interest rate that is supposed to be an average of certain rates offered by major banks. Authorities say that during the financial crisis, banks manipulated their submissions to the group that calculates Libor, in part to make the banks appear healthier.

UBS is paying much more than the $450 million that Britain’s Barclays Bank agreed to pay in the scandal. Days after that agreement was announced in June, most of Barclays’ top management, including Chief Executive Bob Diamond and Chairman Marcus Agius, resigned.

UBS issued a statement Wednesday blaming its interest-rate manipulations on “certain employees.”

“Their misconduct does not reflect the values of UBS nor the high ethical standards to which we hold every employee,” UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said in the statement. “We have cooperated fully with the authorities and taken decisive and appropriate actions to correct the issues and to strengthen our control processes and procedures.”

Britain’s Financial Services Authority released information Wednesday indicating that UBS traders “routinely” made requests to people at UBS responsible for submitting Libor data, urging them to adjust the rates to benefit the traders. At least 45 people at the bank were aware that manipulation was going on, the authority said.

“The findings we have set out in our notice today do not make for pretty reading,” said Tracey McDermott, the FSA’s director of enforcement and financial crime. “They manipulated UBS’ submissions in order to benefit their own positions and to protect UBS’ reputation, showing a total disregard for the millions of market participants around the world who were also affected by Libor.”

Authorities seem to be stepping up prosecution of individuals related to the Libor scandal. Last week, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office arrested three men, including a former UBS trader, in connection with the rate-rigging scandal.

The agreement with UBS marks the second billion-dollar settlement in recent days for alleged financial misconduct. Last week, HSBC agreed to pay a $1.92 billion fine after a probe of laundering drug money.

Read More..

Return to sender: Christmas card didn’t come from Governor’s Mansion

TALLAHASSEE --
It is definitely not the Governor’s Mansion. There are no stately white columns on the modest house 3 miles east of the state Capitol.

But that’s the return address on envelopes containing a Christmas card and a $25 historical Christmas ornament sent to several thousand of Gov. Rick Scott’s supporters.

The mail is from Let’s Get to Work, the political committee raising money for Scott’s 2014 campaign, but the name of the committee appears on the envelopes as “Let’s Go to Work.’’

Scott’s committee has raised about $5 million toward 2014. Scott spent more than $70 million to win the job in 2010 but has indicated he will not spend as much of his own money to win re-election.

Steve Andrews, a Tallahassee lawyer embroiled in a bitter lawsuit against the governor, says his wife received one of the packages.

“It’s a typical intimidation tactic,’’ Andrews told the Tampa Bay Times. He says his wife has not donated to the governor’s campaign or his political committee and should not be on his list to receive anything.

Andrews went to the return address listed and discovered young tenants who were steadily tossing out all of the packages postal authorities were returning as undeliverable. Andrews collected a dozen of them and left them with a Tampa Bay Times reporter.

John French, the lawyer who manages Scott’s political committee, says it was all a mistake made by the printer. The return address should have been his home just down the street, the official address of the committee.

Andrews filed suit against the governor earlier this year in an attempt to keep the state from taking over his office building near the Governor’s Mansion. Andrews had a contract to buy the building from the estate of former Gov. LeRoy Collins when Scott pushed to acquire it so he could expand access to the mansion.

French said no one was attempting to intimidate Andrews or his wife.

“I’m sorry if Mr. Andrews felt intimidated,” French said. “No one was attempting to do anything but recognize that his wife had been a contributor to Republicans in the past. Her name will be removed from the list.”

French added: “If the governor sent me a pretty ornament, I’d put it on my Christmas tree.”

Read More..

'Django ' Ugliness Required for Hero's Journey

While it's a thoroughly entertaining movie, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained doesn't pull any punches in its depiction of the horrors of slavery, and the film's stars tell ET that by facing the ugly truth of our shared history, we can grow to understand it and learn not to repeat it.

New Pics: Jamie & Leo Smolder in 'Django'

"Those things are supposed to create dialogue," says Jamie Foxx. "It puts it in historical context. If we hadn't done it this honestly, there's no need to do the film. If you sugarcoated it, it would have been absolutely … terrible."

"I also think what's great about the film is it's a story of a hero, and in every fairytale, in order to have a hero, you have to have some dragons to slay," says Kerry Washington. "So there had to be the ugliness of slavery in the film so that you understand that Django's rise into his own heroic story [is] coming from somewhere -- that he's up against some really ugly demons. And yet in that context, in this ugly world of slavery, love allows him to conquer all of that. We had to be willing to show the ugly stuff so that the hero's journey meant something."

In theaters Christmas Day, Tarantino's action-packed "Southern" tracks a former slave-turned-bounty hunter (Foxx) who sets out to rescue his wife (Washington) from a ruthless plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio) with the help of his mentor, German-born bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz).

Video: Tarantino's 'Genius' Revered at 'Django' Premiere

"I'm fully aware that [the story] is fiction – that doesn't mean that I doubt in any way any of the horrific details of history," says Waltz. "If we all of sudden claim we understand [slavery] by making a movie, I think we would sort of sidestep a little bit the responsibility of dealing with the real thing."

Don Johnson, Bruce Dern, Walton Goggins, James Remar, Franco Nero, RZA and Samuel L. Jackson round out the cast of Django Unchained.

Read More..

Nelson takes top editor slot at Time Inc.

Time Inc. named Martha Nelson as editor-in-chief, marking the first time in the publishing company’s 90-year history that a woman has held the top editorial spot.

CEO Laura Lang broke the news to staffers in an internal memo, although the move had been widely anticipated.

“Over the past year, I have come to appreciate Martha’s intellect, creativity, sense of humor and her directness,” Lang wrote in the memo. “Her insights have been very valuable to me as we chart our course for the future.”

Nelson was given a big ovation when she was introduced to the managing editors late Tuesday afternoon as the new EIC.

She succeeds John Huey, a 22-year Time Inc. veteran who earlier had announced his intention to retire at year-end. He is going to take a fellowship at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Nelson had been the launch editor of InStyle and People StyleWatch, two titles that helped the company broaden its appeal beyond its male-centric readership to women.

Like all leaders of legacy media companies, Nelson will grapple with declining print revenue and positioning the company for a digital future.

“I believe in the power of print, but we have to move to greater integrate the print and editorial staffs,” Nelson said in an interview. “We’re far down the path, we have a huge digital reach, but we still have a long way to go, figuring out mobile. I don’t think we’ve cracked the code on what the next generation of tablets can be.”

Nelson is also bringing Dan Okrent, a respected Time Inc. veteran, out of retirement to be an interim corporate editor.

Earlier in his career, he was the managing editor of Life magazine and the boss of Pathfinder, Time Inc.’s first big foray into the digital world. More recently, he served as the New York Times’ first public editor.

Nelson declined to comment on the rumored cutbacks that are said to be looming at Time Inc. for early next year.

Nelson was Huey’s No. 2 as Time Inc.’s editorial director, overseeing 17 magazines and websites in the Style and Entertainment Group.

She is the ninth editor-in-chief of the company founded by Henry Luce in 1922, when he launched Time.

kkelly@nypost.com

Read More..