US paper round-up: Fannie Mae, GE, Goldman Sachs

LONDON (ShareCast) - Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM - news) is asking for an additional $15bn in government aid after posting another big loss in the third quarter as the taxpayer bill from the housing market bust keeps rising, according to USA Today.

The LA Times adds that Fannie Mae said it would throw a lifeline to some people losing their homes to foreclosure by allowing them to lease those properties back for up to a year at market rental rates.

The biggest insider-trading case in a generation expanded Thursday as federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against 14 investment professionals in a $20m scheme in which they allegedly swapped tips on corporate mergers, writes the Chicago Tribune.

The Wall Street Journal adds that the expanding insider-trading scandal is drawing attention to a breed of private investment firms responsible for heavy daily trading that operate largely out of Wall Street's limelight. Schottenfeld Group and Incremental Capital have joined Galleon Group and New Castle Funds on the list of trading firms under scrutiny by a federal insider-trading investigation.

One of the federal government's most opaque methods for bailing out the banking system allowed a handful of giant institutions to save up to $25bn on their borrowing costs, a Congressional panel estimated on Friday. Seven companies received about 82% of those benefits, the panel estimated. General Electric (NYSE: GE - news) Capital was able to reduce its borrowing costs by about $1.9bn, while Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS - news) saved an estimated $606m. The other big beneficiaries were Citigroup (NYSE: C - news) , Bank of America (NYSE: IKJ - news) , JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS - news) and Wells Fargo, reports the NY Times.

Congress gave final approval Thursday for an additional $24bn to help the jobless and support the housing market as climbing unemployment poses a growing liability for elected officials, according to the Washington Post.

After a long stretch of avoiding, postponing or scrapping initial public offerings altogether, companies are starting to take a chance on raising money through IPOs of their stock. And investors seem more willing to buy. Thursday was a good example. Hyatt Hotels, a dominant hotel chain, and Ancestry.com, a throwback to the dot-com era, both launched IPOs, says USA Today.

Three major retailers have agreed to pay nearly half a million dollars to settle a lawsuit stemming from the companies' sale of toys containing excessive amounts of lead, the California attorney general's office said. Under the agreement, Target Corp., Toys R Us and Kmart would pay a total of $454,000 in civil penalties and other fines, writes the LA Times.

Beijing reacted strongly against the US decision to slap preliminary anti-dumping duties of up to 99 percent on some Chinese oil pipe imports, according to the FT.

Borders Group (NYSE: BGP - news) , the second-largest US bookstore chain, said it would shutter more of its small-format Waldenbooks stores in January as it focuses on its more profitable superstores. The company is closing 200 Waldenbooks and Borders Express stores and cutting 1,500 jobs in January to make the chain smaller and more profitable, reports USA Today.

A proposal to use federal stimulus dollars to finance a Chinese-backed wind project in Texas is under attack from some members of Congress, the latest sign of tension in Washington over foreign-owned firms' efforts to secure US money for alternative-energy projects, writes the Wall Street Journal.

A former General Motors (NYSE: GM - news) executive who was a fugitive abroad for more than a year returned to the United States Wednesday and pleaded guilty Thursday to federal charges relating to an $80 million kickback and fraud scheme involving GM's sale of bulk aluminum to third parties, federal authorities said, according to the Chicago Tribune.