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President Barack Obama is considering two women for senior economic positions, weighing Ruth Porat, chief financial officer at Morgan Stanley, for deputy Treasury secretary and Wal-Mart Foundation President Sylvia Mathews Burwell for budget director, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. For the number two position at Treasury, Porat would bring more market experience than Jack Lew, Obama’s choice for Treasury secretary, according to observers. The deputy Treasury secretary will be a point of contact between the administration and the financial-services industry as Obama presses Congress to raise the government’s $16.4 trillion debt ceiling in the coming weeks.

Peregrine Financial Group's former chief executive, who pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $100 million from customers of his futures brokerage, will be sentenced on Jan. 31, Reuters reported yesterday. Russell Wasendorf Sr., who founded the now-defunct firm, faces a potential maximum sentence of 50 years in prison after pleading guilty in September to mail fraud, lying to regulators and embezzling customer money. Wasendorf has been awaiting sentencing in a jail in Iowa, where Peregrine Financial was based. The Jan. 31 hearing is in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi signed off on the sale of consulting firm Monitor Co. Group LP's assets to a subsidiary of Deloitte Touche, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported today. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd. is paying $116.2 million for Monitor, which was founded by a pair of Harvard Business School professors.

Direct Markets Holdings Corp, parent of broker-dealer Rodman and Renshaw LLC, filed for bankruptcy on Friday and said that it would liquidate, Reuters reported yesterday. Direct Markets, along with its affiliates Rodman and Renshaw LLC and Direct Markets Inc, filed a chapter 7 petition. The company listed total assets of $1 million and liabilities of $10.6 million as of Jan. 9. In September, Rodman and Renshaw informed the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority that it was no longer in compliance with regulatory capital rules and would cease conducting its securities business. Direct Markets was previously Rodman and Renshaw Capital Group Inc, a small investment bank. It changed its name in May to focus on developing financial technology applications and operating the DirectMarkets platform.

Penson Worldwide Inc., once a securities clearing broker that has since divested most of its operations, filed for chapter 11 protection, Reuters reported on Friday. Last year the company sold its futures division to Knight Capital Group Inc. and its broker-deal subsidiary to Apex Clearing Corp. The company said in court filings that it was unable to successfully streamline is business after the asset sales. It was also dogged by questions from the Securities and Exchange Commission about its accounting and a class action lawsuit by shareholders. The company listed both assets and liabilities of between $100 million and $500 million.

A key financial regulator has interviewed the executive team that ran Peregrine Financial Group Inc. in an effort to improve its oversight of the industry, which was heavily criticized in the wake of the broker's collapse last July, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Investigators working on behalf of the National Futures Association (NFA) talked with most of Peregrine's senior ranks—including jailed founder and Chief Executive Russell Wasendorf Sr.—over the past month. The Chicago-based NFA drew scrutiny from investors and policy makers after the revelations of fraud at Peregrine. Directors of the industry-funded agency, which federal futures market regulators depend upon for day-to-day policing of brokers, last summer ordered an external review of its practices while putting on hold potential management changes and bonus payments to top officials.

Bank of America Corp. has been fighting in a New York court this week to avoid as much as $3 billion in liability for defaulted Countrywide mortgage securities, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In a two-day hearing Wednesday and yesterday, Bank of America argued that it structured its 2008 deal with Countrywide Financial Corp. in a way that allowed it to avoid liability for certain Countrywide assets, branded "too toxic" in one internal bank email. MBIA maintained the deal was a merger in which Bank of America absorbed 19,000 Countrywide employees, technology and operations to enhance its mortgage capabilities. The insurer introduced videotaped deposition testimony from executives including former Chief Executive Ken Lewis and current CEO Brian Moynihan to bolster its case.

A California federal judge has delayed the sentencing of Philip Horn, a Wells Fargo broker who pleaded guilty to defrauding more than a dozen clients, the New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. Judge Gary A. Fees on Monday postponed Horn's sentencing to March 4 to give the various parties more time to determine how much money was pilfered from customer accounts, according to lawyers representing the broker's clients. Horn was a broker for Wells Fargo in Los Angeles. For more than two years, he executed and canceled trades in clients' portfolios, pocketing the profits. Wells Fargo said that it uncovered the fraud in the fall of 2011. Horn, who last year pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, was supposed to be sentenced on January 7.

Unsecured creditors of MF Global Holdings Ltd on Thursday proposed a liquidation plan that could pay the brokerage's former customers in full, Reuters reported yesterday. The ad hoc group, led by distressed debt investors Silver Point Capital, Knighthead Capital and Cyrus Capital Partners, filed the proposal in bankruptcy court saying that former traders who held accounts at the commodities broker could receive full payback, while some unsecured bondholders of the MF parent could recover as much as 42 percent of their claims. MF Global declared bankruptcy in October 2011 after its exposure to risky European sovereign debt spooked investors. The proposed liquidation plan comes weeks after the MF parent and two key affiliates settled billions of dollars in intercompany claims, providing a clearer picture of what each unit will have at its disposal to pay back creditors.

The preferential tax rates that private-equity managers pay on some profits survived Congress’s Jan. 1 budget deal, but that victory may not last, Bloomberg News reported today. For private-equity managers, changes in the tax treatment of so-called carried interest may affect them more than tax increases now on the books. Congress faces a series of deadlines in the next few months over spending cuts, the debt ceiling and the annual budget. Democrats including President Barack Obama want to raise more revenue, and carried interest is an obvious candidate. “There continues to be no rationale whatsoever for people to pay at a vastly lower tax rate when they are managing other people’s money,” Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) said. “This is an issue of fairness that we should address as we seek a balanced approach to deficit reduction that involves both additional revenues and spending cuts.” The share of profits in buyout deals, known as carried interest, is often taxed as capital gains, which receive preferential rates under the tax code compared to levies on wages. In the budget deal, lawmakers increased the top rate on long-term capital gains to 20 percent from 15 percent and the maximum rate on ordinary income to 39.6 percent from 35 percent.