BNP Paribas Q3 Profit Falls 72% on Writedown

BNP Paribas SA, France’s largest bank, said third-quarter profit fell 72 percent because of a writedown on Greek sovereign debt and losses from selling European government bonds.

Net income declined to 541 million euros ($741 million) from 1.91 billion euros a year earlier, the Paris-based company said in an e-mailed statement today. That missed the 1.24 billion-euro average estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The bank took a 2.26 billion-euro pretax writedown on Greek sovereign debt in the period.

“The new plan of Greek debt restructuring weighed on the results,” Chief Executive Officer Baudouin Prot said in the statement. Still, the company “is profitable and is keeping its solvency ratio at a high level,” he said.

BNP Paribas (BNP) said today it expects about 1.2 billion euros in losses from disposals and one-time costs as it speeds up asset cuts to comply with new capital rules. The bank, along with smaller French rival Societe Generale SA, is racing to shrink its balance sheet after the firm’s stock plunged and U.S. money-market funds became reluctant to lend to it in dollars, making it harder to refinance international businesses.

Obama Campaign Replaces Wall Street Defectors to Help Funding

The high technology Internet industry and trial lawyers are helping President Barack Obama avoid a potential fundraising liability caused in part by a drop in support from his biggest 2008 industry backer: Wall Street.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) employees rank first among Obama’s business givers, taking the spot investors at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) held in the 2008 presidential cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group.

Goldman on Way to Top Nomura as No. 1 Japan Takeover Adviser

The New York-based firm was hired for $54.1 billion of acquisitions announced this year involving Japanese companies, surpassing Nomura’s $47.1 billion,

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) is on its way to taking the top spot among advisers on Japanese takeovers for the first time in five years, supplanting Nomura Holdings Inc. (8604), as companies striving to compete globally turn increasingly to foreign investment banks.

The New York-based firm was hired for $54.1 billion of acquisitions announced this year involving Japanese companies, surpassing Nomura’s $47.2 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In 2010, Nomura held the top spot with $47.6 billion in deals, while JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) was second with $27 billion and Goldman Sachs at No. 7 with about $10 billion.

State Revenue Under Forecasts to Produce Cuts From New York to California

New York, California and Florida are among states reporting revenue collections trailing forecasts in the fiscal first quarter, prompting preparations for a fresh round of budget reductions.

California’s receipts fell more than 3 percent short of estimates for the three months through September, raising concern that school aid may be cut. In fiscal 2013, New York state may face a $2.4 billion deficit because of smaller Wall Street bonuses and job cuts, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said Oct. 11.

States are projecting combined budget gaps of $31.9 billion in fiscal 2013, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver. A 14 percent third-quarter drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, the worst performance since the end of 2008, and concern that Europe’s debt crisis may spread have dented consumer and business confidence, curbing tax receipts.

“It’s going to be quite a while before happy days are here again for many state legislatures,” John J. Pitney Jr., a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, said by telephone. “There is such weak job growth and income growth. Everything that should be up is down.”

Russia Stocks Rise 3rd Day This Week on EU Bailout; Kalina Jumps

Russian stocks climbed for the third day this week as prospects improved for containing Europe’s debt crisis. OAO Concern Kalina, a Russian cosmetics maker, jumped to its highest on record.

OAO Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, gained 1.5 percent, while OAO Novolipetsk Steel added 1.2 percent. Kalina surged 40 percent to the strongest price since its shares started trading in 2004 after the Wall Street Journal said Unilever NV is close to acquiring the company in a deal worth $850 million. The 30- stock Micex Index added 0.7 percent to 1,398.25 as of 10:39 a.m. in Moscow.

Cain’s Sales Tax Would Hurt Consumer Spending ’For Some Years’

Rachelle Bernstein, vice president of the National Retail Federation, speaks during a Bloomberg Television Interview in Washington, D.C.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s plan to create a national sales tax would hurt retailers, threaten economic growth and shift the tax burden onto the middle class and poor, tax experts and business groups said.

Cain’s so-called 9-9-9 plan, which would replace the current tax code with a system of three separate taxes of 9 percent each, has boosted his popularity among voters. The former chief executive officer of Godfather’s Pizza has surged in polls in recent weeks, and a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week put him in the lead.

Rajaratnam, Goldman Sachs, Brocade, Amaranth in Court News

Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon Group LLC co-founder whom prosecutors called “the modern face of illegal insider trading,” was sentenced to 11 years in prison, one of the longest terms ever for insider trading, though less than half of the maximum sought by the government.

Rajaratnam, 54, is the central figure in what U.S. investigators called the largest hedge fund insider trading case in U.S. history. The probe, which leveraged the widespread use of FBI wiretaps for the first time in such an inquiry, led to convictions of more than two dozen people.