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* * * * * WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2014 ~ VOL. CCLXIII NO. 17 WSJ.com HHHH $2 .00

it one of the hot-test stock offer-ings in the city’shistory. The pro-spective buyersare betting thatthe stock of thenightclub chain

will skyrocket when it startstrading on Thursday.

As with any coveted IPO, bro-kers give their best customersthe first crack at the shares sothey can earn quick profits if thestock pops when trading starts.

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Late on a Sat-urday night, theline to get intothe Magnum Clubcan sometimesstretch down theblock. As busy asMagnum gets, farmore people want to buy intothe company’s IPO than to danceamid its flashing walls and useits diamanté-encrusted toilets.

Investors placed orders forover 3,000 times the number ofshares available in the HK$126million ($16 million) IPO, making

from the discotheques of the1970s into a modern form of so-cial gathering with lively music,elaborate lighting and a dancefloor, supplemented by both al-coholic and non-alcoholic bever-ages,” the IPO-prospectus over-view begins.

And it describes the scene:“The aura and atmosphere of themodern clubbing scene is filledwith images of people moving inunison to the beat of synthesisedremixed dance and electronicmusic spun out by a DJ perchedupon an elevated stage.”

When a company is goingpublic, it is important that pro-spective investors understand itsbusiness.

Magnum, a Hong Kong night-club, is launching an initial pub-lic offering on Thursday, and itsprospectus explains the follow-ing: how a nightclub works, thepopularity of the Jagerbomb andthat, sometimes, people drinkwhile dancing.

“Clubbing is a popular nighttime activity which has evolved

In the Fight for Syria,Food and MedicineAre Weapons of War

CIVILIANS IN CROSSFIRE

DJIA 16414.44 g 44.12 0.3% NASDAQ 4225.76 À 0.7% NIKKEI 15795.96 À 1.0% STOXX600 335.76 À 0.1% 10-YR. TREAS. À 2/32 , yield 2.823% OIL $94.99 À $0.62 GOLD $1,242.30 g $9.40 EURO $1.3561 YEN 104.30

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What’sNews

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World-WidenMilitary leaders proposedkeeping 10,000 U.S. troops inAfghanistan after 2014 butwithdrawing nearly all forcesby the end of Obama’s term. A1nVirginia ex-Gov.McDonnellwas chargedwith illegally tak-ing gifts in exchange for pro-moting dietary products. A4nA Pentagon advisory panelcalled for stepped-up sur-veillance capabilities to tracknuclear proliferation. A4nPakistan’s polio crisisthreatens to spread, health of-ficials said, as militants killedthree vaccination workers. A10nAt least 22 Shiite pilgrimswere killed in a bus bombingin southwest Pakistan. A16nTwo Islamistswho issued avideo claiming responsibilityfor deadly attacks in Russiapromised more violence. A12nAl Qaeda-linkedmilitantsare imposing religious rules onthe Iraqi city of Fallujah andstrong-arming local leaders. A8nA Beirut car bomb killedfour. An Islamist group said itwas retaliating for the role ofHezbollah and Iran in Syria.A10nThailand’s government de-clared a state of emergency inBangkok in response to anti-government protests. A16nThe Supreme Court heard achallenge to public-sectorunions collecting fees fromworkers who refuse to join. A2n Prospective jurors can’tbe excluded based on sexualorientation, a court ruled. A2n A Vatican cleric chargedwith trying to smugglemoney into Italy was ar-rested in a separate case. A13

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Big banks, including Bankof America, Citigroup and

J.P. Morgan, are passing on fi-nancing deals as regulatorstarget excessive borrowing. A1nPimco’s CEO abruptly quit.The firm has struggled to holdon to investors as demandfor its bond funds wanes. C1nU.S. stocks finishedmixedas earnings news failed to givethe market a direction. TheDow fell 44.12 to 16414.44. C4n Geithner warned S&P thatit would be held accountablefor its 2011 U.S. debt down-grade, a legal filing alleges. C1n Activist investor Loebcalled on Dow Chemical to sep-arate its petrochemicals andspecialty-chemical units. B1nAmazon has approachedentertainment firms aboutlicensing channels for a pos-sible online-TV service. B1n Peltz won a board seat atMondelez but relinquished ef-forts tomerge the firmwith thesnacks business of PepsiCo. B3n IBM said fourth-quarterrevenue slid 5.5%. The firm’shardware business is erod-ing faster than expected. B2n Target will end health cov-erage for part-time workers,citing insurance exchanges. B3n J&J plans to cut $1 billion incosts over three years, inpart by shedding jobs. B4nDowJones CEOFenwick leftthe company. William Lewiswas named interim chief. B6nThe IMF raised its forecastfor global growth, with theU.S. leading the recovery. A6

Business&Finance

Regulatory pressures arepushing many of the biggestbanks to pass on financing lucra-tive deals, as Washington targetsexcessive borrowing.

Bank of America Corp., Citi-group Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase& Co. are among lenders thathave in recent months decidedagainst financing some corpo-rate takeovers partly out of con-cern the deals will run afoul ofnew guidelines. Those guidelinesare designed to keep banks awayfrom deals regulators feel aretoo laden with debt.

Starting late last summer, theOffice of the Comptroller of theCurrency and the Federal Re-serve sent letters to about adozen big banks saying theyneed to comply with the guid-ance—regulators’ latest effort toreduce risk in the banking indus-try following the financial crisis.

The new push could makedeals more costly for private-eq-uity firms, which rely on banksto lend much of the borrowedmoney that helps fuel their cor-porate takeovers. It could alsocreate opportunity for otherfirms, such as some securitiesdealers, that aren’t regulated likebanks and thus aren’t subject tothe same strict regimen of regu-lation over lending. And it couldcrimp the fees banks generatefrom providing financing for pri-vate-equity deals in the U.S.,which last year totaled $7.1 bil-lion, according to Dealogic.

For banks, the pressure comesas Washington seeks to crackdown on behavior seen as poten-tially harmful to the broader fi-nancial system. Regulators, whowere criticized for lax oversight

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BY GILLIAN TAN

BanksSit OutRiskierDeals

WASHINGTON—U.S. militaryleaders have presented theWhite House with a plan thatwould keep 10,000 U.S. troops inAfghanistan after 2014, but thenstart drawing the force down tonearly zero by the end of Presi-dent Barack Obama’s term, ac-cording to senior officials.

The request reflects a farshorter time frame for a U.S. mil-itary presence in Afghanistanthan commanders had previously

envisaged after the current in-ternational mission ends thisyear. The new approach is in-tended to buy the U.S. militarytime to advise and train the Af-ghan army but still allow Mr.Obama to leave office saying heended America’s longest war, theofficials said.

Military leaders told Mr.Obama that if he rejects the10,000-troop option, then itwould be best to withdrawnearly all military personnel atthe end of this year because asmaller troop presence wouldn’t

offer adequate protection to U.S.personnel, said officials involvedin the discussions.

Any U.S. troop proposal couldbe shot down by Afghan Presi-dent Hamid Karzai, who has sofar refused to sign a security ac-cord that would clear the wayfor foreign troops after 2014.

The Obama administration hassaid it wants an enduring pres-ence in Afghanistan to supportthe Afghan army and to preventany regrouping of Islamist mili-tants that could once againthreaten the U.S. from the coun-

try, officials said.The debate over troop levels

in Afghanistan has taken on newurgency in light of a resurgenceof al Qaeda in Iraq following thewithdrawal of all U.S. troops fromthat country in 2011.

The Pentagon’s approach, dis-cussed in White House NationalSecurity Council meetings lastweek, encountered pointed ques-tions from some NSC officialswho asked what difference10,000 U.S. troops would makeon such a temporary basis, U.S.

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BY ADAM ENTOUSAND JULIAN E. BARNES

New U.S. Military ProposalSeeks Shorter Afghan Stay

DAMASCUS, Syria—Dozens ofemergency-aid workers waitedhours this weekend for govern-ment permission to evacuate hun-dreds of children, elderly and the

sick from among tens of thou-sands of residents trapped withlittle food and medicine in a rebel-held neighborhood here sealed offby regime forces.

A clutch of women, some onstretchers, finally emerged frombehind battle-scarred buildings.“Let everyone out. We are eatingcat and donkey meat, have mercyon us,” said 45-year-old QamarAzeema, who collapsed in tears.She and 26 others were allowed toleave the Yarmouk Camp districton Sunday.

Both sides in the conflict have

used access to food and medicineas a weapon, but it has beenmostly the Syrian government, ac-cording to human-rights groupsand interviews with more than adozen aid officials and workers.

The long-awaited diplomaticsummit in Geneva that begins onWednesday will likely focus onways to alleviate Syria’s continu-ing humanitarian disaster: thecivil war’s toll on civilian men,women and children.

Regime officials deny keepingfood from civilians. But severalgovernment soldiers and officerssaid in interviews that they aimedto starve opposition fighters andtheir sympathizers into submis-sion.

More than 500,000 civilians inrebel-held areas around Damascus,

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By Sam Dagherin Damascus

and Nour Malas in Beirut

The malicious software thatinfected Target Corp. popped upin January 2013 with a price tagof $2,000 and spent nearly ayear evolving in the Internet’sblack markets before an un-known attacker slipped it intothe retailer’s computer systems.

That life cycle, pieced to-gether by security firms thattrack down and identify danger-ous software, shows the new na-ture of the threat faced by Amer-ican retailers hoping to defendthemselves from attacks like thatat Target, which compromised40 million credit and debit cardsover the holidays.

Security experts say computerintrusion has evolved from oneof solitary hackers or groups ofhackers into an industry whererogue programmers are develop-ing tools they can sell on an in-creasingly formal online market-place. The buyers, often tied toorganized crime, are in turnbringing greater sophisticationand ambition to their efforts.

The targets, increasingly, areAmerican retailers, which con-tinue to rely on magnetic-stripecredit-card technology, which isless secure than the chip-basedcards that have been used foryears in Europe. Luxury retailerNeiman Marcus Group also suf-fered a data breach over the holi-days. On Tuesday, sporting-goods maker Easton-Bell SportsInc. said it too was attacked,with data from around 6,000 on-line shoppers stolen during De-cember.

The new trend “is to move di-Pleaseturntothenextpage

BY CHARLES LEVINSONAND DANNY YADRON

Card-TheftCode GrewIn the Net’sDark Alleys

Winter Packs Another Icy Punch

POLAR WEAR: A woman bundled up against the frigid cold on a Chicago beach on Tuesday, above, as a wave crashed into ice and snow.Meanwhile, a major winter storm struck the Northeast, prompting the governors of New York and New Jersey to declare states of emergency.

Jim

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uters

BY ISABELLA STEGER

With This Nightclub’s Initial Public Offering, There’s a Lot to Drink Ini i i

Hong Kong Stock Pitch Explains Scene: Jagerbombs Sell Big; Club Hopping Poses a Risk

Ex-Governor Is Charged in Virginia

INDICTED: Former Virginia GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife,Maureen, were charged with accepting gifts and loans from the then-CEOof a dietary supplement firm in exchange for promoting its products. A4

Getty

Images

Peace talks exclude powerfulparties to the conflict................ A8

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TODAYINPERSONALJOURNAL

A Perfectly Planned LifePLUSThe 24/7 Camera

Target to drop health coveragefor part-time workers................ B3

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