PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Dec 27
Dec 27 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
* Banks, hedge funds and commodity merchants are stashing tens of millions of tons of aluminum, copper, nickel and zinc in a hidden system of warehouses that span the globe. These facilities are known to some in the industry as "shadow warehouses" because they are unregulated and don't disclose their holdings. ()
* Treasury bond prices fell Thursday, pushing the yield on 10-year notes to 3 percent, a threshold that may signal a new baseline for higher interest rates. ()
* Textron Inc agreed to pay $1.4 billion to acquire Beechcraft Corp, a deal that would combine the small U.S. plane maker into an industrial conglomerate that also produces Cessna planes and Bell helicopters. ()
* McDonald's Corp has pulled the plug on its "McResource" website, an informational and budget-assistance website for employees that has become a target of derision from a group seeking higher pay for hourly workers. ()
* Wireless venture LightSquared Inc is seeking to exit bankruptcy-court protection with backing from private-equity firms Fortress Investment Group and Melody Capital Advisors LLC. ()
* Royal Dutch Shell PLC on Thursday said that it has renewed an option to buy the site of a proposed $2 billion ethylene plant in western Pennsylvania. ()
* Wall Street made millions of dollars taking Chinese banks public during the boom years when the economy was riding high and the country's lenders were reaping big profits. Those same investment banks are raking in fees again, but this time by helping China's financial system raise capital as it grapples with bad debts and thin capital bases. ()
* Starting in 2014, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc (ISS) is changing guidelines to recommend ousting directors who don't implement a shareholder proposal that got a majority of the votes cast at the 2013 meeting. Previously, ISS recommended "no" votes on directors only if the proposal received a majority of all the shares outstanding. ISS is a proxy advisory firm, in which hedge funds, mutual funds that own shares of multiple companies pay it to advise and often vote their shares regarding shareholder votes. ()
* Toshiba Corp , one of Japan's biggest diversified electronics companies, is aiming to buy a majority stake in U.K. nuclear consortium NuGeneration Ltd as it looks to foreign demand after interest at home waned following a nuclear accident in 2011. ()
* The Turkish owner of Godiva chocolates, Yildiz Holding AS, is bulking up in the confection business with a $221 million deal to acquire DeMet's Candy Co, the U.S. maker of Flipz chocolate pretzels and Turtles covered nut clusters. DeMet's is owned by Brynwood Partners, a Connecticut buyout firm known for plucking consumer brands from larger companies. ()
