P2JW033000-5-A00100-1--------XA CMYK Composite CL,CN,CX,DL,DM,DX,EE,EU,FL,HO,KC,MW,NC,NE,NY,PH,PN,RM,SA,SC,SL,SW,TU,WB,WE BG,BM,BP,CC,CH,CK,CP,CT,DN,DR,FW,HL,HW,KS,LA,LG,LK,MI,ML,NM,PA,PI,PV,TD,TS,UT,WO TODAY IN JOURNAL REPORT Your Tax-Return To-Do List MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2015 ~ VOL. CCLXV NO. 26 ***** Last week: DJIA 17164.95 g 507.65 2.9% i NIKKEI 17674.39 À 0.9% STOXX 600 367.05 g 0.9% 10-YR. TREASURY À 1 8/32 , yield 1.679% OIL $48.24 À $2.65 i Business & Finance G M’s victims-compensation fund stopped taking new claims over faulty ignition switches. The cost isn’t expected to exceed the total set aside by the auto maker. B1 n Refinery workers at nine plants went out on strike after talks broke down over salaries and safety concerns. B1 n RadioShack is in talks with hedge fund Standard General to serve as lead bidder at a bankruptcy auction for the electronics retailer. B3 n Three auto makers are recalling more than two million vehicles with air bags that open inadvertently. B2 n Amazon is teaming up with three universities to run co-branded websites selling textbooks and other items. B3 n Qualcomm’s chip won’t appear in a new Samsung smartphone due to competing technology from the South Korean company. B7 i i i World-Wide n Obama is making an opening bid on overhauling corporate taxes and linking it to infrastructure spending in his 2016 budget plan. A1 n Medicare will begin releasing physician-payment records every year, cementing public access to how billions of dollars are spent. A1 n A video was released purporting to show the beheading of a Japanese journalist held by Islamic State. A6 n Nigerian soldiers and vigilantes repelled a Boko Haram attack on a northeast city, in a rare defeat to the rebels. A7 n Cease-fire talks broke down between Ukraine and Russian-backed rebels, while Kiev reported 28 soldiers killed over the weekend. A8 n Iran’s economy can’t recover without a nuclear deal, the Treasury’s sanctions czar said, increasing U.S. leverage. A6 n Up to $60 billion is illegally moved out of Africa each year by companies and government officials, a report said. A7 n France backed the Greek government’s demand to renegotiate bailout terms, adding pressure on Germany. A8 n A federal plan to track how well new teachers fare in the classroom won backing from a teachers’ coalition. A3 n California recorded its driest January ever, stoking fears that the state’s drought may not end anytime soon. A3 n An Australian reporter for Al Jazeera jailed in Egypt for over a year was deported. A6 CONTENTS Abreast of the Market C1 Corp. News....... B2,3,6,7 Global Finance............ C3 Heard on the Street C6 Law Journal................. B5 Markets Dashboard C4 Media............................... B4 Moving the Market C2 Opinion................... A11-13 Sports.............................. B8 U.S. News................. A2-4 Weather Watch........ B7 World News........... A6-9 > s Copyright 2015 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved Kathy Willens/Associated Press DEFLATING: New England defensive back Malcolm Butler intercepts a pass from Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson Sunday. The Seahawks were poised to win, with the ball at the New England 1-yard line in the final minute. Instead of trying to run the ball in, Seattle tried to throw. B8 As Regulators Focus on Culture, Wall Street Struggles to Define It BY EMILY GLAZER AND CHRISTINA REXRODE “Culture” is the buzzword of the moment at banks—and a puzzle that regulators and Wall Street firms are wrestling to solve. As they emerge from years of bruising fines, layoffs and losses, big banks are trying more than ever to monitor employee attitudes and values to avoid future Obama Opens Bidding On Taxes problems. But they also have little choice: Senior officials with the Federal Reserve and other agencies in recent weeks have made it clear that they believe bad behavior at banks goes deeper than a few bad apples and are advising firms to track warning signs of excessive risk taking and other cultural breakdowns. Still, even regulators acknowledge culture is a difficult thing to measure. “I confess that proof is hard to come by,” said Thomas Baxter, general counsel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in a speech last month. “Yet I am not alone in the fundamental belief that a strong ethical culture will lead to better behavior.” In October, New York Fed President William Dudley warned bank executives that regulators would consider breaking apart the big banks if executives didn’t do enough to root out wrongdoing. Mr. Dudley mentioned the word “culture” 44 times in the speech. “Risk takers are drawn to finance like they are drawn to Formula One racing,” Mr. Dudley said then. The issue is taking on added urgency as U.S. banks await feedback expected around March from the Fed’s annual “stress tests” to ensure large banks can handle a Please turn to page A8 WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama is making an opening bid on overhauling corporate taxes and linking it to boosting infrastructure spending, a move that could clear a rare path toward common ground in a deeply divided capital. Mr. Obama wants U.S. companies to pay a 14% tax on the approximately $2 trillion of overseas earnings they have accumulated, a White House official said Sunday. They would face a 19% minimum tax on future foreign profits. Companies could reinvest those funds in the U.S. without paying additional tax. In making the pitch in his 2016 budget plan due Monday, the president is elevating two issues that previously gained traction with lawmakers of both parties: changing the tax code on overseas profits and raising spending on highways and transit systems. Doug Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist and former adviser to GOP presidential candidates, said the proposal appears to be a starting point for broader negotiations with lawmakers. “The good news seems to be that the administration has agreed that lockout [of overseas profits] is an important phenomenon,” said Mr. Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. Please turn to page A4 Medicare To Publish City of Ruin Remains After Islamic State Defeat Payment Data Yearly PRICE OF VICTORY BY AYLA ALBAYRAK AND JOE PARKINSON BY CHRISTOPHER S. STEWART AND JOHN CARREYROU The U.S. government will begin releasing Medicare physician-payment records every year, cementing public access to how tens of billions of dollars are spent annually on everything from office visits to radiation therapy. Last April, a year’s worth of the data was released for the first time in more than three decades after Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones & Co. challenged a 1979 injunction that prohibited Medicare from disclosing its payments to doctors. It was unclear at the time if any more records would be released. The data provided the first comprehensive look at a central part of the taxpayer-funded program for the elderly and disabled. It detailed payments to 880,000 individuals and organizations totaling more than $77 billion from the Medicare program in 2012, covering more than 5,000 different procedures. The records had been kept secret through legal efforts by the American Medical Association, which argued a doctor’s right to privacy outweighed the public’s interest in how tax dollars were spent. A federal judge in March 2013 vacated the 1979 injunction. A spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that runs Medicare, said the government had decided “to update the data annually” despite the concerns of doctors’ groups. The agency didn’t say when it expected to release the next batch of records. The AMA, the main physicians’ group in the U.S., has urged the Department of Health and Human Please turn to the next page Composite n Morgan Stanley’s sale of its oil-trading and -storage unit could profit from low oil prices as traders hoard crude. C1 YEN 117.53 BY NICK TIMIRAOS AND JOHN D. MCKINNON KOBANI, Syria—Kurdish commander Harun Kurdistan toured what was left of a neighborhood this weekend in a battered minivan, a Soviet-era sniper rifle propped on his seat, after his forces successfully ended a four-month battle to wrest control of this border town from Islamic State jihadists. “The fighting was face to face, inside buildings. Us shooting from downstairs as they were upstairs,” said Mr. Kurdistan, as he drove along the same thoroughfare used by militants to enter the town last year. “We only survived because we believed in our cause.” Victory seems to have come at the price of the town itself. Streets lie in ruins. Water and power systems are shattered. Decaying corpses of jihadist fighters remain, some stripped of footwear and clothing, and one still swaddled in a suicide vest. Thousands of people died, and another 200,000 remain refugees across the border in Turkey. Four months ago, this little-known town caught the world’s attention with televised images showing Islamic State fighters bombarding its streets and hoisting their black flag on a nearby hill. Now, tricolor flags of red, green and yellow fly over the city after Kurdish fighters— backed by the air power of a U.S.-led coalition—dealt Islamic State a humiliating battlefield defeat. The Syrian Kurdish victory stemmed from a combination of guerrilla tactics, the assistance of Iraqi Kurdistan’s Peshmerga forces and the airstrikes. Since September, coalition jets completed more than 700 strikes No Nose Dives: Airlines Hope A Scent Brings Relaxation, Bookings i i i Carriers Try Fragrances, but Some Passengers Aren’t On Board; Helps the Lavatories BY SUSAN CAREY launching its own aroma, and Alaska Airlines is working on one. Beyoncé’s latest perfume is The companies don’t plan to called Rise, “the scent of empow- bottle their scents for retail, but erment.” Lady Gaga, Pharrell Wil- they do see a commercial value in liams and Jennifer Aniston have them. United marketing manager signature scents, too. So does Mark Krolick says its new fraDelta Air Lines. grance, provisionally Delta’s offering is called “Landing,” in Calm, an eau d’aeroconcert with improveport that it sprays in ments like new lighting airplane cabins and inand redesigned gates, fuses in the hot towels “will create a more reit gives out in premium laxing environment. A classes. It has been good experience enspreading Calm for genders brand preferabout two years, joinence, which probably ing a handful of other will result in more carriers vying for olbooking,” he says. Airfactory distinction by lines also say they aim developing their own for subtlety, so passenindividualized odors. gers who are sensitive Scent diffuser The fragrant fliers into scents won’t recoil. clude United Continental HoldThen, there are more practical ings, Turkish Airlines and Air considerations. “We were trying Canada’s low-cost rouge opera- to improve the smell of our lavaPlease turn to page A10 tion. Spain’s Iberia is close to that helped kill more than 2,000 jihadists, according to U.S. Central Command. With Kurdish fighters spotting militants on a battlefield emptied of civilians, a senior U.S. official said, “We basically had free rein.” The absence of civilians in Kobani was an advantage unlikely to be repeated in larger cities held by Islamic State, including the Iraqi city of Mosul, another target of U.S. war planners and their Iraqi partners. Islamic State on Saturday conceded defeat in Kobani but said it would attack again. In a video published by pro-jihadist Aamaq News, two fighters blamed their defeat on the air campaign, diminishing the role of the Kurdish militiamen they called Please turn to page A10  Japanese hostage saga takes tragic turn... A6 An IRA should age like a fine wine. But without all that complexity. Your uncomplicated IRA Open a new IRA in just 15 minutes. Get step-by-step assistance from our retirement consultants too. It’s a rich bouquet of hasslefree, with delicate notes of simple. Call 877-tdameritrade or go to tdameritrade.com TD Ameritrade, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC. TD Ameritrade is a trademark jointly owned by TD Ameritrade IP Company, Inc. and The Toronto-Dominion Bank. © 2015 TD Ameritrade IP Company, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission. P2JW033000-5-A00100-1--------XA n An FCC regulator is objecting to Dish’s claim on over $3 billion in discounts in a wireless-license auction. B1 EURO $1.1291 Links Infrastructure, Corporate Overhaul n Small-firm shares are gaining, buoyed by the belief they will benefit from a growing U.S. economy as a strong dollar hurts large-cap stocks. C1 n Moody’s is under scrutiny by the Justice Department over the firm’s ratings of residential-mortgage securities before the financial crisis. C1 HHHH $3.00 WSJ.com Last-Minute Interception Seals New England’s Fourth Super Bowl Win What’s News i NASDAQ 4635.24 g 2.6% The Cellphone Divide Getty Images MARKETPLACE MAGENTA BLACK CYAN YELLOW