Reverse Spin: Former jet-setter Frankel pleads guilty

Don’t look for Martin R. Frankel’s next home to be featured on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

The financier accused of stealing more than $200 million from insurance companies pleaded guilty Wednesday to 24 federal corruption charges.

Mr. Frankel, who once ran his insurance empire from his two-mansion compound in Greenwich, Conn., could face up to 150 years in prison and $6.5 million in fines. Prosecutors, however, said they would support a more lenient sentence if he helps recover the missing money.

The one-time playboy was accused of gaining control of small insurance companies in Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee and stealing cash from the company reserves to buy private planes and expensive wine and give women lavish gifts.

Consumers get happy again

U.S. consumer sentiment rose in early May to its highest level in 18 months, thanks to slowly improving market conditions and a slew of optimistic economic reports.

The University of Michigan’s preliminary May consumer sentiment index climbed to 96.0, a level not seen since December 2000, according to reports on Friday. The index had fallen to 93 in April and was expected to drop to 92.7 in May.

“The report is encouraging in terms of reflecting a steady improvement in consumer attitudes, which should bode well for spending in the second quarter,” Anthony Karydakis, senior financial economist at Banc One Capital Markets in Chicago, reportedly said.

Like bees to honey

They don’t call her the Money Honey for nothing.

Stocks mentioned by CNBC personality Maria Bartiromo tend to trade heavily before she mentions their names on air – suggesting that traders with non-public information on the shares are setting up positions so they can make a quick buck on her stock reports, a study finds.

According to the study, conducted by two professors at Emory University’s business school, those trading the shares were people Ms. Bartiromo talked to in gathering information for her reports.

“We always speculated someone she was getting information from realized that she was about to mention a company on the air,” said Dr. Jeffrey Busse, one of the study’s authors. “Of all the people she talked to, maybe a fraction of them traded on that information.”

Wall Street gadfly James Cramer reportedly told The New York Times on Monday that he sometimes traded on information ahead of Ms. Bartiromo’s reports, but he later denied making such remarks.

Better late than never

File under: too little too late.

Janus Capital Management LLC, the Denver-based fund company that lost a ton of money when tech stocks crashed, cut its stake in two of its top holdings, New York’s AOL Time Warner Inc. and Nokia Corp., according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

“AOL and Nokia are two of the stocks that really put wind in their sails in the 1990s, but these large positions have hurt performance more recently and they’re unwinding them,” said Brian Portnoy, an analyst at Morningstar Inc., the Chicago-based fund tracker.

Janus cut its stake in AOL to 155.67 million shares at the end of March, compared with 183.33 million shares at the end of December. The company’s stake in Nokia dropped to 130.92 million, from 164.51 million at the end of December, according to the filing.