Financial News

LONDON (ShareCast) - Even before the Obama administration formally tightened executive compensation at bailed-out companies, the prospect of pay cuts had led some top employees to depart. Many executives were driven away by the uncertainty of working for companies closely overseen by Washington, says the Washington Post (NYSE: WPO - news) .

With homebuyers rushing to complete their purchases before a tax credit for first-time owners expires, a report Friday is expected to show strong September sales, writes USA Today.

The paper adds that thousands of individuals claiming the first-time home buyer's $8,000 tax credit may have been trying to scam the system, including purported 4-year-olds and illegal immigrants, according to a watchdog report.

Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT - news) said that one of its longtime executives, Douglas Oberhelman, will become the company's CEO in July, a move seen as likely to reinforce the heavy equipment manufacturer's focus on global expansion, reports the Chicago Tribune.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System is reviewing its relationship with private equity firm Apollo Management in the wake of steep losses on investments placed with the New York asset manager, according to the LA Times.

Boutique investment banking firm Imperial Capital Group has filed to go public, hoping to tap investors' improved appetite for new stock issues. In a preliminary prospectus, the Century City firm proposed to raise as much as $150 million in a deal that would allow management to cash out a portion of its ownership stake, says the LA Times.

Lawmakers voted on Thursday to support the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which would regulate mortgages, credit cards and many other financial products, writes the FT.

A Senate bill to overhaul food safety and expand FDA oversight needs to be stronger and include more funding and authority, the head of the agency told lawmakers Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

New York's highest court ruled on Thursday that the owners of Manhattan's biggest apartment complex wrongfully raised rents on thousands of tenants, in a decision that analysts say will bring the property closer to default and could further rattle the commercial mortgage-backed securities market. The court said Tishman Speyer and BlackRock (NYSE: BLK - news) , which bought the Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town properties in 2006 for $5.4bn, and MetLife (NYSE: MET - news) , the former owner, should not have been able to raise rents for on nearly 3,000 tenants in rent-stabilised apartments while taking tax benefits for renovations, reports the FT.

The US travel industry appears to have survived the recession but has yet to recover from it, earnings results reported from the third-quarter indicate. Delta, the world's largest airline, and US Airways, the USA's sixth-largest, reported losses for the quarter on Thursday. But they said they saw signs that travel is beginning to pick up, reports USA Today.

Investors snapped up shares of Dole Food on Thursday when the world's largest produce company returned to the public equity market after a six-year absence, but the stock price was less than it had expected, according to the LA Times.

The tipster who investigators say touched off one of the largest insider-trading cases in recent years is the aunt of a friend of a former Moody's Investors Service analyst who allegedly passed information to her, according to the analyst. Prosecutors allege that an analyst at Moody's gave Roomy Khan -- identified by people familiar with the matter as the tipster -- confidential information in 2007, before the announcement of Blackstone Group's $26 billion takeover of Hilton Hotels, says the Wall Street Journal.