• Retail-focused firm bought Staples for $6.9 billion last month
• Fund would be 60% bigger than predecessor if target is reached

• Losses at Turnberry more than doubled in 2016 after revamp
• Trump has propped up his two Scottish courses with cash

Accor SA, Europe’s biggest hotel operator, offered to buy Australia’s Mantra Group in a deal valuing the hotel and resort operator at A$1.2 billion ($930 million)…

France’s Accor Offers A$1.2 Billion for Hotel Group Mantra

• Principles delivered to Congress would call for more agents
• Move follows Trump-requested, multi-agency review of laws

President Donald Trump’s administration has laid out a string of demands on what must be done in return for allowing so-called “Dreamers” — young people brought illegally to the U.S. as children — to stay in the country…

White House Lays Out Immigration Demands, Including Wall Funding

A federal agency on Thursday imposed tough new restrictions on so-called payday lending, dealing a potentially crushing blow to an industry that churns out billions of dollars a year in high-interest loans to working-class and poor Americans.

The rules announced by the agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, are likely to sharply curtail the use of payday loans, which critics say prey on the vulnerable through their huge fees…

Payday Lending Faces Tough New Restrictions by Consumer Agency

• Banks find it hard to ignore as clients clamor to buy
• But the pros of bitcoin are accompanied by a host of cons

At first, bitcoin was a way to make payments without banks. Now, with more than $100 billion stashed in digital currencies, banks are debating whether and how to get in on the action…

Bitcoin’s Rise Happened in Shadows of Finance. Now Banks Want In

• CEO thinks $750 million price tag is what these assets deserve
• West High Yield has no revenue; traded at 36 cents Tuesday

• Without margin of safety, bears see big selloff on Fed unwind
• Pimco says term premium to stay below norm, contain yields

Wells Fargo’s chief executive, Timothy J. Sloan, on Tuesday faced blistering attacks from Republican and Democratic senators, who voiced frustration with his response to a series of scandals that have rocked the bank.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, accused Mr. Sloan of promoting an aggressive sales culture that led bankers to create millions of fake accounts. She called for his ouster.

“At best you are incompetent, at worst you were complicit,” Ms. Warren said. “Either way you should be fired.”

She added that all Wells Fargo directors who served on the board during the years of the fake account scandal should be removed…

• The idea that states could stiff investors spooks Wall Street
• Puerto Rico bonds take record plunge after ‘Hannity’ interview

FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. — It was 9 p.m., and about 60 financial executives chattered nervously outside a barrack full of bunk beds at this United States Army training post in central Pennsylvania.

They had come from New York, Toronto, Philadelphia and beyond at the behest of Wesley R. Gray, an investment manager and former Marine Corps officer, to trek 28 miles through the mountains. The truly motivated would lug 30-pound packs.

“We are here to march for the fallen,” Mr. Gray shouted, describing the next day’s hike as a “haze ex,” Marine jargon for a hazing exercise. He distributed dogtags of troops who had died in battle, ordering that they be worn on the march…

Nestlé can pre-empt the activist Dan Loeb’s next move. Directors at the $265 billion Kit Kat maker are light on consumer and digital expertise. Half the 14-member board is from Switzerland, the company’s home market but one that’s worth just 2 percent of sales. Nestlé’s latest plans to revamp are far from radical, and Mr. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, may next seek boardroom changes. Nestlé could head off a fight by beating him to it.

• House may vote on aid package next week, one lawmaker says
• Puerto Rico official estimates building cost up to $60 billion

The Trump administration will ask Congress to provide $29 billion in disaster aid and national flood insurance for hurricane-recovery efforts, a Republican lawmaker said Tuesday…

Trump to Seek $29 Billion in Disaster, Flood Funding

Sometime between fighting the global financial crisis and averting the breakup of the eurozone, central bankers began to be viewed as superheroes. They are in danger of becoming victims of their own success.

Global rate-setters’ omnipotent status has less to do with firefighting and more to do with conquering the soaring inflation of the 1970s and ’80s. Granted, luck as well as skill had something to do with annual price increases falling toward the 2 percent that most of them target…

Low Inflation Could Put Central Bankers’ Superhero Status at Risk

• Ex-Equifax CEO will testify before House committee on Tuesday
• Wells Fargo chief also will speak with lawmakers about scandal

Wells Fargo & Co. is wrapping up one of its worst years ever by passing a baton to Washington’s new favorite financial-industry villain: Equifax Inc...

Equifax Is Taking Over From Wells Fargo as the Financial Industry’s Villain

• Kelley sentenced to three years probation in pay-to-play case
• Gifts to fund manager included, ski trip, McCartney tickets

A former bond broker persuaded a federal judge to spare her from prison after pleading guilty to conspiring with a portfolio manager of New York’s main pension fund to funnel state business to her firm in exchange for bribes including concert tickets and luxury vacations.

Deborah Kelley, 59, a former managing director at Sterne, Agee & Leach Inc., pleaded guilty in May to a single count of conspiracy for spending more than $19,000 to entertain the portfolio manager, Navnoor Kang, with a vacation in New Orleans that included VIP seats to a Paul McCartney concert and a ski trip in Park City, Utah…

• FHFA’s Watt says he’s talking with Treasury on capital buffers
• Companies’ profitability could be threatened by new tax plan

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may one day stop paying billions of dollars in dividends to the U.S. government. But not today…

Fannie-Freddie Keep Giving Profits to U.S. Amid Talks on Changes

• In four recent debt deals, borrowers had to pay up or pull out
• Too soon to say market is turning, as exuberance persists

Credit market investors who’ve been piling on the risk in search of higher returns are showing they’re not going to roll over completely…

Credit Investors Start to Say ‘Enough.’ At Least Sometimes.

• Liabilities include $2.2 trillion of reserves held by banks
• Uncertainty as to how banks choose to replace cash at the Fed

While market participants were watching the myriad of Federal Reserve speakers this week to gauge the likelihood of a rate hike in December, the more interesting discussion was taking place in Europe on the risks surrounding the unwind of the central bank’s $4.5 trillion balance sheet…

Fed’s Balance-Sheet Unwind Could Expose Global Funding Strains

• OTP exploiting banking consolidation in Europe, Csanyi says
• Majority of revenue to come from abroad after purchases

Hungary’s largest commercial lender is planning at least five bank takeovers in the next two years, seeking to profit from a wave of consolidation across the industry…

CEO of Hungary’s Top Bank Vows to Buy Five Lenders by 2019

• Reduction aims to help entrepreneurs and farmers obtain credit
• Central bank repeats prudent, neutral monetary policy pledge

China’s central bank said it will reduce the amount of cash lenders must hold as reserves from next year, with the size of the cut linked to the flow of funding to parts of the economy where credit is scarce…

China’s Central Bank Unveils Targeted Lending Plan to Aid Growth

• Administration had been touting effort to tap private capital
• Senate committee working on its own infrastructure bill

Donald Trump’s infrastructure guru spent part of Sept. 26 at a conference in Washington promoting the president’s $1 trillion plan to rebuild the nation’s crumbling roads, bridges and airports relying in part on public-private partnerships. The same day, across town, Trump was telling lawmakers that those kinds of deals don’t work…

Trump’s Change of Heart Puts $1 Trillion Building Plan in Limbo

• University of Pennsylvania’s endowment valued at $12.2 billion
• Peter Ammon has been chief investment officer since 2013

The University of Pennsylvania’s endowment posted a 14.3 percent investment return for the 12 months through June, with equities fueling gains just like at other large college funds…

Penn’s 14.3% Return Was Boosted by ‘Notable’ Stock Performance

• Big futures trade adds to steepening momentum amid selloff
• 10-year yield exceeds 200-day average, first time since August

Funds at Berkshire Hathaway companies have concentrated, stock-heavy portfolios.

For Warren Buffett, taking the road less traveled has often led to better investment returns. One often overlooked example: how he’s approached the $15 billion in pension plan assets at his conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Over the next several weeks, subsidiaries such as the Buffalo News and Geico will likely file detailed reports to the U.S. Department of Labor about their plans. The documents make for dry reading. But they reveal a strategy that’s unlike just about any other company’s…

When Warren Buffett Runs Your Pension Plan

• $9 billion South Korean pension fund also looking at Australia
• ‘It’s the thirsty man who digs the well,’ POBA’s CIO says

Student housing in Europe and Australian infrastructure are luring global funds out of their comfort zone, as a South Korean manager of local government employee savings joins peers around the world getting creative overseas in search of better returns…

This $9.1 Billion Korean Fund Is Eyeing Europe Student Housing

• ‘Bondholders’ proposal is not viable,’ fiscal agency says
• Offered swap of $1 billion of debt for $850 million new bonds

Puerto Rico rejected an offer from Electric Power Authority bondholders to lend the utility $1 billion in the wake of Hurricane Maria, saying the deal would hamper the agency’s recovery.

Investors holding about $3 billion of power utility bonds said the loan was made to help the island meet local matching requirements to receive Federal Emergency Management Agency funds. They also proposed exchanging $1 billion of outstanding power utility debt for $850 million of new bonds.

Eight years after the Great Recession officially ended, the fruits of economic growth are finally spreading to low-wage workers, racial and ethnic minorities and other groups that were largely left out of the early stages of the recovery.

But in a pattern that has become familiar in recent decades, the biggest gains continued to flow to the richest Americans…

Wealth Grew Broadly Over 3 Years, but Inequality Widened

• Purchase to triple reserves, more than double production
• Beach plans share sale, debt facility to fund acquisition

Australia’s Beach Energy Ltd. agreed to buy Origin Energy Ltd.’s conventional oil and gas business, Lattice Energy, for A$1.59 billion ($1.25 billion) in a deal set to triple the Adelaide-based company’s reserves.

Beach will fund the acquisition through a A$301 million share sale and a new A$1.58 billion debt facility, the company said in a statement Thursday. The agreement will boost Beach’s proved and probable reserves by 200 percent to 232 million barrels of oil equivalent, while lifting its 2018 production guidance by 150 percent to between 25 to 27 million barrels…

• Outsize punitive damages awards are often reduced by courts
• Bank found by jury to have mismanaged estate of Max Hopper

JPMorgan Chase & Co. was ordered by a Dallas jury to pay more than $4 billion in damages for mishandling the estate of a former American Airlines executive, but the verdict will probably be knocked down on appeal.

Jo Hopper and two stepchildren won the probate court verdict over claims that JPMorgan mismanaged the administration of the estate of Max Hopper, who was described as an airline technology innovator in a statement issued by the family’s law firm…

After years as a sleepy federal backwater, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission became one of Wall Street’s most aggressive watchdogs during the Barack Obama administration.

Now the agency — which is responsible for policing a broad swath of markets and financial machinery, from trading in commodities to digital currencies to the complex derivatives that helped torpedo the financial system in 2008 — is shifting its law enforcement strategy: It will increasingly look to banks and other financial institutions to come clean on their own about misconduct and problems in the market…

Regulator Wants Financial Industry to Self-Report Wrongdoing

• Grameen America lends to women, who then monitor each other
• Transparent approach could serve as public policy, Dalio says

On his first Saturday night as an Amazon best-selling author, Ray Dalio headed to one of Manhattan’s most famous party spots — the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The majestic setting is where Katy Perry once sang for the Costume Institute ball and Henry Kravisgranted a leadership award named for himself. For Dalio, the ancient Egyptian temple was the place to be honored alongside Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus at the first gala for Grameen America, a microfinance nonprofit that helps low-income women entrepreneurs…

When the Trump administration unveils new details of its tax plan, promised for next week, one group of taxpayers will be under the microscope: the rich.

That’s because they take advantage of so many tax breaks that few, if any, pay the top rate of 39.6 percent. Eliminating at least some of those breaks would make it possible to reduce tax rates for the highest earners (and everyone else) while raising the same or even more in total revenue…

Tax Reform for the Rich: Reduce the Rates but Lose the Breaks

• 74% of high-priced London homes are bought using loans
• Rising values and taxes are behind the jump in finance take-up

More home buyers are resorting to mortgages to purchase London’s most expensive houses and apartments as rising prices drag them into higher tax brackets.

Seventy-four percent of homes costing 1 million pounds ($1.4 million) or more in the U.K. capital were bought with a mortgage in the three months through July, up from 65 percent a year earlier, according to Hamptons International. The figure was as low as 31 percent during the depths of the financial crisis in 2009…

• UniSuper increases Asia equity allocation, buys U.S. banks
• Profit growth in emerging markets is key driver for UniSuper

John Pearce has returned to Sydney from a week in Hong Kong beaming, with one clear message of where to invest his next dollar: China.

The chief investment officer who’s in charge of A$60 billion ($48 billion) at Australian pension fund UniSuper Management Pty expects returns in Asian emerging-market equities to beat developed economy peers, extending an outperformance that’s already underway. The main reason: Chinese firms are driving profit growth set to exceed that in mature stock markets as it’s coming from a lower starting point…

Describing the results as “disappointing,” Harvard University reported on Tuesday that its $37.1 billion endowment earned an 8.1 percent return for its most recent fiscal year.

The endowment’s new chief executive, N. P. Narvekar, said that the fund was in the middle of a major revamping and that problems in the endowment would “require time to overcome.”

That return significantly trails the mean one-year return of 12.7 percent for more than 400 institutions tracked by Cambridge Associates, which manages money for many nonprofit organizations. And while many of the nation’s largest endowments have yet to report returns, this month the Massachusetts Institute of Technology posted a 14.3 percent return for its $14.8 billion endowment…