Trading Markets – Morgan Stanley is looking at scaling back its prime-brokerage operation, selling assets or buying a faltering regional bank, the New York Post said citing sources.

The firm may also try to work out a way to piggyback on to the $1.3 trillion deposit base of Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, the paper said citing people familiar with the matter.

Mitsubishi UFJ took a 21 percent stake in Morgan Stanley for $9 billion earlier this week.

The firm is also eyeing trimming its balance sheet and exiting, or scaling back, from businesses that don’t provide high returns, like prime-brokerage, trading of corporate bonds and high-yield debt, the paper added.

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Reuters – The commodity half of oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens’s BP Capital hedge fund lost 35 percent of its value in July, the New York Post said, citing sources.

The fund is believed to be down about 10 percent for the year, the paper said.

A Pickens spokeswoman told the paper that commodity-fund investors were informed that the steep decline in natural gas and oil prices has had an adverse impact on its performance.

"We continue to analyze the market and adjust accordingly," the spokeswoman was quoted as saying.

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