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The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest U.S. pension fund, is weighing a policy to urge companies in which it invests to disclose sexual-harassment settlements, Bloomberg News reported. The pension system, which has about $350 billion in assets, would add the language to its corporate-governance policy amid growing fallout from the #MeToo movement, which has led to the ouster of executives who engaged in sexual misconduct and reached secret settlements in entertainment, travel and the news media among other industries. “CalPERS supports settlements, including sexual harassment, involving an executive or member of the board to be disclosed,” according to the proposed language posted this week on its website. The proposal calls for corporate directors to ensure that all settlements are disclosed to boards and that material settlements are publicly disclosed, including those involving harassment. The state pension system owned about $32.9 million of Wynn Resorts Ltd. shares, which tumbled in January after the Wall Street Journal reported founder Steve Wynn allegedly harassed numerous women and paid a $7.5 million settlement to one of them. Movie producer Harvey Weinstein’s company filed for bankruptcy protection after accusations against him surfaced. Read more. 

Don't miss the "Restructuring a Firm After Discrimination or Sexual Harassment Claims" panel at #ABISpringMeeting! Hon. Judith K. Fitzgerald (ret.) of Tucker Arensberg provides a preview.  Click here to register. 

Commodity trader Noble Group Ltd said yesterday that it is getting growing support for a $3.4 billion restructuring plan after more than 70 percent of creditors holding the majority of its senior debt accepted the initiative, Reuters reported. The proposed restructuring agreement requires approval by a majority of existing senior creditors representing 75 percent in value of its debt. Noble added that advisers to the ad hoc group and the company are in talks with about 10 percent of additional creditors who support the proposed financial restructuring, subject to accepting the restructuring and completing internal approval processes. “The company remains confident that the number of creditors acceding into the RSA (restructuring support agreement) will continue to rise,” said the Hong Kong-headquartered firm. Noble warned last month that it would begin insolvency proceedings if the debt restructuring was not approved.

Credit card and savings customers may not be the only ones who were misled by Wells Fargo & Co. Some clients of the bank’s wealth-management division were steered into investments that maximized revenue for the bank and compensation for its employees, Bloomberg News reported. Those investments weren’t always in the best interests of clients, the people said. They included estates, trusts and loans. Wealth advisers as recently as 2016 were given ambitious quotas and could earn extra pay by steering clients into loans and accounts with recurring fees. To hit certain goals, some advisers plugged data into financial planning software that they knew would recommend portfolios their clients already owned.

Lynn Tilton’s bankrupt investment vehicle, Zohar III, should be taken over by a trustee because of the “debilitating and entrenched acrimony” between Tilton and Zohar’s creditors, a government watchdog that monitors corporate bankruptcies said yesterday in a court filing, Bloomberg News reported. The U.S. Trustee also cited Tilton’s “apparent conflicts of interest” and asked the judge overseeing Zohar’s bankruptcy to either install a trustee to run the company, or to appoint an examiner to investigate the funds. Tilton put Zohar III into bankruptcy last month to resolve lawsuits involving the structured debt vehicles she used to finance distressed companies. The acrimony between Zohar III and its creditors, including MBIA Insurance Corp. and Alvarez & Marsal Zohar Management LLC, is disrupting the bankruptcy case, Brya Keilson, a trial attorney with the U.S. Trustee’s Office, said in court papers.

The Internal Revenue Service knocked down one way for hedge fund managers to dodge restrictions in President Donald Trump’s tax law, but for some managers, there’s still a way out, Bloomberg News reported. New limits on carried interest profits don’t apply to regulated futures contracts or contracts to trade foreign currencies. For managers who rely heavily on those strategies, a chunk of their assets can continue to be taxed at a much lower rate, even if they don’t hold them for three years as the law requires. Under the old tax regime, hedge funds and private equity managers had to hold their investments for one year to get the long-term capital gains rate of 20 percent. Otherwise, they had to pay individual income tax rates, which now top out at 37 percent. But those holding the futures or foreign currency contracts didn’t have to meet any time period — they could elect to have 60 percent of the trade qualify for the long-term rate. And despite the new tax law, they’ll still be able to do so, according to half a dozen tax experts.