Cold weather kills 61 people in Poland since Oct.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Police in Poland have appealed to residents to dress warmly and look out for elderly and homeless people, after saying that 61 people have died of the cold weather since October.
Another 41 have been killed by carbon monoxide inhalation from coal or other ways of heating their homes since temperatures started falling.
The Interior Ministry said Friday the death toll from sub-freezing temperatures that set in in December was 49 people so far, compared to 19 in the whole of December last year. Another 15 people died of cold in October and five in November.
In most cases the victims are homeless people, or people under the influence of alcohol that fell asleep outside.
Sub-freezing temperatures and snow are usual winter conditions in Poland.
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French leader honors troops home from Afghanistan

PARIS (AP) — President Francois Hollande on Friday declared "mission accomplished" for French combat troops in Afghanistan, hailing their 11-year military commitment even as the fight goes on for France's NATO allies.
After his election in May, Hollande announced a fast-track pullout of French combat troops from NATO's mission in Afghanistan by year-end — a goal now achieved. Increasingly, France has turned its focus to helping rebuild civilian sector institutions and foster diplomatic initiatives, including hosting a secretive meeting of rival Afghan factions north of Paris as the president spoke.
The Socialist leader has argued that France has done its part in Afghanistan and achieved its goals, and reiterated that theme as he hosted at the presidential palace dozens of soldiers who recently returned home.
"I say to you all: 'mission accomplished.' I also say to you: 'exemplary action'. I say to you: 'congratulations,'" he told them.
U.S. President George W. Bush infamously used the term "mission accomplished" in 2003 after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq, though some of the worst bloodshed in that war was yet to come and U.S. troops remained in Iraq for 8 1/2 more years.
While Hollande was speaking to French troops, NATO forces overall are still very much engaged in combat against the Taliban and other insurgents fighting Afghanistan's government.
France, which has lost 88 soldiers in Afghanistan, still has 1,500 troops there who are repatriating equipment or working in roles like providing medical care or helping operate Kabul's airport. Hollande said the numbers will decline to 500 by mid-2013. France had a peak deployment of some 4,000 troops in Afghanistan under former President Nicolas Sarkozy.
"There are no more French combat troops in Afghanistan — this is an important moment for you, for our country, and for Afghanistan," Hollande said. "We have now a part to play, but a different one." He said France's financial contribution will reach €300 million ($396 million), to help Afghanistan transition from war to peace in the coming years.
Meanwhile, in the town of Chantilly about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Paris, representatives of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, the Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami Islamic militant groups, as well as the political opposition, were meeting for a second straight day. They are discussing their country's long-term future — well beyond 2014, when the majority of NATO forces, including those of the United States, are set to leave.
Hosted by a French think tank in the presence of some French officials, the 20-odd delegates have been discussing since Thursday three topics to better understand each other's positions: The political balance in Afghanistan into 2020, the nature of Afghan sovereignty and the necessary parameters for long-lasting peace, according to Mahmoud Saikal, a high-level member of opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah's party.
"I doubt there will be a definite resolution of any kind emerging from this gathering," Saikal said. "It will definitely help building up confidence between the armed opposition forces of this country and the political opposition groups."
"The sheer fact that we do have a couple representatives of the Taliban is an achievement," he said.
Among the most significant delegates was Shahabudin Delwar, who served as Afghanistan's ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan under the Taliban regime that was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. French hosts declined to specify the guest list, or provide access to the participants to journalists during the closed-door meeting. Police blocked off access to the luxury hotel where the Afghans were meeting.
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Russian parliament passes anti-US adoption measure

MOSCOW (AP) — The lower house of the Russian parliament on Friday overwhelmingly passed a bill that would ban adoption of Russian children by Americans, sending the controversial legislation a step closer to President Vladimir Putin's desk.
Putin hasn't said whether he will sign the measure into law if it passes its next stage of being approved by the upper house.
Some top government officials including the foreign minister and the education minister have spoken flatly against the bill, one part of a larger measure by angry lawmakers retaliating against a recently signed U.S. law that calls for sanctions against Russians deemed to be human rights violators.
It nonetheless received strong approval in Friday's third reading in the State Duma, passing by a vote of 420-7-1. The upper house, the Federation Council, is likely to consider the measure on Wednesday, vice-speaker Alexander Torshin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Torshin said there is "serious basis for supposing the draft bill will be supported by the Federation Council."
Originally the bill was more or less a tit-for-tat response, providing for travel sanctions and the seizure of financial assets in Russia of Americans determined to have violated the rights of Russians.
But it was expanded to include the adoption measure and call for the banning of any organizations that are engaged in political activities if they receive funding from U.S. citizens or are determined to be a threat to Russia's interests. In addition, it calls for anyone with dual Russian-U.S. citizenship to be banned as members of political organizations.
The U.S. said the adoption law would needlessly stop hundreds of Russian children from finding families.
"The welfare of children is simply too important to be linked to other issues in our bilateral relationship," U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul said in a statement.
The bill is a dramatic demonstration of two strains of animosity toward the United States. The Russian political establishment resents the United States for allegedly meddling in the country's internal affairs; Putin has charged that opposition protests over the past year were the work of U.S.-funded troublemakers. Many Russians are angered by cases of adopted children abused in America and by the alleged lenience of courts in these cases.
The Duma bill is named in honor of Dima Yakovlev, a Russian toddler who was adopted by Americans and then died in 2008 after his father left him in a car in broiling heat for hours. The father was found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
Anger over abuse peaked in 2010 when an American woman sent her 7-year-old adopted Russian son back to Moscow on a plane alone, saying he had emotional problems and she could no longer care for him.
Despite abuse cases, Russian critics of the bill say it would ultimately victimize orphans by depriving them of an opportunity to escape often-dismal Russian orphanages. There are about 740,000 children without parental custody in Russia, according to UNICEF. Russians historically have been less inclined to adopt children than in many other cultures.
More than 60,000 Russian children have been adopted in the United States in the past 20 years, McFaul said.
But Russia's children's ombudsman Pavel Astakhov, one of the strongest critics of U.S. abuse cases, says the solution is for Russia to adopt a national program to improve orphans' prospects.
"It's necessary to strictly hold to the principle of priority for Russian adopters," he told Interfax after the Duma vote.
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UK doctor stripped of license over death of Iraqi

LONDON (AP) — A British doctor was stripped of his medical license Friday for misconduct and dishonesty over the death of an Iraqi man who was beaten and killed while in the custody of British troops.
The latest fallout from Britain's troubled occupation of Iraq came as defense officials confirmed they have paid 14 million pounds ($23 million) to settle claims of abuse from more than 200 Iraqis.
Dr. Derek Keilloh treated Baha Mousa, a hotel clerk who died at a British base after being detained in Basra in September 2003 during a sweep for insurgents. Keilloh, then a 28-year-old captain in the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, tried unsuccessfully to revive Mousa, but denied knowledge of the scale of the man's injuries.
A public inquiry found that Mousa had sustained 93 injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose, in an "appalling episode of serious gratuitous violence" by British troops.
Dr. Jim Rodger of the Medical and Dental Defense Union of Scotland — which supported Keilloh — said the doctor was "extremely disappointed" by the ruling and was considering what to do next. He has 28 days to submit an appeal.
Last week, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service ruled that Keilloh knew of the injuries and failed to adequately examine Mousa's body. It said he also failed to inform senior officers of what was going on and protect other detainees from further mistreatment.
The tribunal also ruled that Keilloh engaged in "misleading and dishonest conduct" by maintaining under oath that he had seen no injuries to Mousa's body.
On Friday, the tribunal said that even though Keilloh had not harmed Mousa — and had tried his best to save him in a "highly charged, chaotic, tense and stressful" situation — the doctor should be barred from practicing medicine for at least five years.
"The panel has identified serious breaches of good medical practice and, given the gravity and nature of the extent and context of your dishonesty, it considers that your misconduct is fundamentally incompatible with continued registration," said Dr. Brian Alderman, a member of the tribunal.
Baha Mousa's father, Daoud Mousa, said he wished the doctor had been banned for life.
"He did not have humanity in his heart when he was supposed to be caring for my son," Daoud Mousa said. "He did not do his job properly."
The death of Mousa and mistreatment of other detainees blighted Britain's six-year deployment in southern Iraq, which ended in 2009.
Britain's defense authorities eventually apologized for the mistreatment of Mousa and nine other Iraqis and paid a 3-million-pound ($4.9-million) settlement. Six soldiers were cleared of wrongdoing at a court martial, while another pleaded guilty and served a year in jail.
The defense ministry said Friday that Britain has paid 14 million pounds to settle 205 damages claims since 2008, including 162 this year. A further 196 claims are being negotiated.
It said most of the 120,000 British troops who served in Iraq "conducted themselves with the highest standards of integrity and professionalism."
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NATO: Syria using Scud-type rockets again

BRUSSELS (AP) — The Syrian military has continued to fire Scud-type missiles, NATO's top official said Friday, describing the move as an act of desperation of a regime nearing its end.
Although none of the Syrian rockets hit Turkish territory, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmusen said the use of the medium-range ballistic rockets showed that NATO was justified in deploying six batteries of Patriot anti-missile systems in neighboring Turkey.
The United States, Germany and the Netherlands will each provide two batteries of the U.S.-built air defense systems to Turkey. More than 1,000 American, German and Dutch troops will man the batteries, likely from sites well inland in Turkey.
Syria's use of missiles are "acts of a desperate regime approaching collapse," Fogh Rasmussen told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
A week ago, U.S. and NATO officials said the Syrians had used the ground-to-ground rockets for the first time in the nearly two-year conflict. Damascus immediately denied the claims.
Syria is reported to have an array of artillery rockets, as well as medium-range missiles — some capable of carrying chemical warheads. These include Soviet-built SS-21 Scarabs and Scud-B missiles, originally designed to deliver nuclear warheads.
On Thursday, NATO's supreme commander U.S. Adm. James Stavridis said the Patriot batteries will be shipped to Turkey within the next few days. He said he expected them to achieve initial operational capability next month.
Stavridis said the chain of command starts with himself as the operational commander, through NATO's air component command in Ramstein, Germany, and down to the commanders of the Patriot batteries at their locations in southern Turkey.
The operation will be closely coordinated with the Turkish air defense system, he said.
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Analysis: In ICE-NYSE deal, one CEO steps back, the other rises

(Reuters) - Duncan Niederauer, the chief executive of New York Stock Exchange operator NYSE Euronext, once boldly proclaimed that his company could not be acquired.
Last year, even when Niederauer was prepared to sell his company to Deutsche Boerse, he insisted that he be chief executive of the combined company. The deal ended up being quashed by German regulators.
But with the agreement by IntercontinentalExchange to buy NYSE Euronext for $8.2 billion, Niederauer has accepted he will have to at the very least play second fiddle. He will become president at the combined company, while still running the New York Stock Exchange, and report to ICE CEO Jeff Sprecher.
"In a sense he must be very frustrated because some of the big things he was trying to do did not work out," said Andre Cappon, president of CBM Group, a New York-based consultant for global exchanges.
To an extent, the world may have left Niederauer behind. His expertise was in stock trading, a business that now has razor-thin margins and is increasingly left to computers.
Sprecher, on the other hand, has ascended as derivatives have become a key part of financial markets and the financial crisis made listed derivatives relatively more important.
Born in Indiana near the Kentucky border, and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, he has a down-to-earth aura that belies his ambitious type-A personality, say people who know him.
Sprecher has not met with constant success, but when something goes wrong, he moves on.
"He's not afraid to fail," said one person who knows Sprecher well.
Among his misses: a failed bid to buy the Chicago Board of Trade in 2007, not to mention a failed joint bid for the NYSE with Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.
He made his move for the CBOT at the annual meeting of the Futures Industry Association, in Boca Raton, Florida, where CME Group officials had expected to deliver a progress report on their planned acquisition of their smaller rival.
Sprecher slipped the formal offer under the hotel doors of CBOT Chairman Charles Carey and CBOT CEO Bernard Dan, at about 6:30 in the morning of the conference's first day.
CME Group later raised its bid for CBOT and clinched the deal in mid-2007 - but Sprecher would still finish the year with two key acquisitions, the New York Board of Trade commodity market and Canada's biggest grains exchange.
This summer both Sprecher and Niederauer bid for the London Metals Exchange and lost. Within four months they were talking to each other about a much larger deal.
LETTING GO OF EGO
There was some bad blood between Sprecher and Niederauer last year, when Sprecher's ICE was part of the group that made an unsolicited bid for NYSE Euronext.
NYSE Euronext was instead focused on a different deal: selling itself to Deutsche Boerse. Sprecher admitted in an interview with Reuters that he tried to wreck the Deutsche deal by "calling out every wart and pimple" on the transaction.
The two men stopped talking for about six weeks.
But after ICE posted good fourth-quarter results in February, Niederauer extended an olive branch with a surprising three-word email to Sprecher: "Hey, great quarter."
"He and I had a preexisting friendship and I wondered if it was going to survive my trouble making," Sprecher told Reuters. Then the email arrived.
"He was very magnanimous and so I knew that he saw through what I was doing and we were still very cordial."
Niederauer took over as NYSE Euronext CEO at the end of 2007, just after his predecessor, John Thain, had completed the landmark deal to buy Franco-Belgian Euronext.
After a 22-year career at Goldman Sachs, mostly in equity trading, and just nine months as head of NYSE's trading operations, he took control just before the 2008 financial crisis triggered a seismic shift in the exchange world, one that seemed ill-suited to his background.
Equity investors, burned by scandals and volatility, were trading less and less; meanwhile new regulations would drive more derivatives onto exchanges like ICE and CME.
The answer, Niederauer thought, lay in Deutsche Boerse. But when regulators nixed the deal in February this year, he quickly laid out a new strategic plan for shareholders: clearing and technology - two areas in which ICE already excelled.
By June, Niederauer was saying it was "make-or-break time" for NYSE's nascent U.S. futures operation, which was clearly failing to thrive in the shadow of established rivals.
In working together at the merged venture, Sprecher and Niederauer may each find a comfortable way to co-exist, each playing to his respective strength, some say. But several people, including a NYSE investor and a board member of a rival exchange, questioned whether the partnership can last.
In an interview, Niederauer said he would remain at least through 2014 as an "important senior member" of Sprecher's management team.
He added: "People get too caught up in titles. Let's just worry about making it work and my guess is that if it's still fun for both of us in 2014, or 2015, or whatever, we will keep doing it."
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Stocks fall sharply after Republicans cancel vote

NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks are opening sharply lower on Wall Street.
The big drop comes after House Republicans called off a vote on tax rates. That left federal budget talks in disarray 10 days before sweeping tax increases and government spending cuts take effect.
The Dow Jones industrial average is down 116 points at 13,195. The Standard & Poor's 500 index is off 13 points at 1,430. And the Nasdaq composite index is down 54 at 2,996.
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RIM shares fall at the open after earnings

TORONTO (Reuters) - Research In Motion Ltd fell in early trading on Friday following the BlackBerry maker's Thursday earnings announcement, when the company outlined plans to change the way it charges for services.
RIM, pushing to revive its fortunes with the launch of its new BlackBerry 10 devices next month, surprised investors when it said it plans to alter its service revenue model, a move that could put the high-margin business under pressure.
Shares fell 16.0 percent to $11.86 in early trading on the Nasdaq. Toronto-listed shares fell 15.8 percent to C$11.74.
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Stocks open sharply lower after GOP cancels vote

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks opened sharply lower Friday on Wall Street after House Republicans called off a vote on tax rates and left federal budget talks in disarray 10 days before sweeping tax increases and government spending cuts take effect.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 140 points to 13,171 in the opening minutes of trading, a decline of 1 percent. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 15 points to 1,428. The Nasdaq composite index fell 52 to 2,997.
The House bill would have raised taxes on Americans making at least $1 million per year and locked in decade-old tax cuts for Americans making less. Taxes will rise for almost all Americans on Jan. 1 unless Congress acts.
House Speaker John Boehner had presented what he called Plan B while he negotiated with the White House on avoiding the sweeping tax increases and spending cuts, a combination known as the "fiscal cliff."
But Boehner scrapped a vote on Plan B on Thursday night after it became clear that it did not have enough support in the Republican-led House to secure passage. He called on the White House and the Democratic-led Senate to work something out.
The House will not meet again until after Christmas, if then.
Technology stocks were among the hardest hit Friday in early trading. Tech stocks in the S&P 500 were down 1.5 percent as a group. Apple, the most valuable company in the country, fell $10.04, or 2 percent, to $511.69.
It was not the first time that Wall Street expressed worry about "fiscal cliff" talks.
On the day after the election, when voters returned divided government to power, the Dow dropped 312 points. On Nov. 14, when President Barack Obama insisted on higher tax rates for the wealthy, the Dow dropped 185 points.
Stocks closed sharply lower Friday in Asia after House Republicans canceled their vote. The Nikkei index in Japan fell almost 1 percent, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index dropped 0.7 percent. Stocks were also lower in Europe.
In the bond market, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell 0.06 percentage point to 1.74 percent, an indication that investors were moving money out of stocks and into safer government bonds.
The price of oil fell $2.02, or 2.2 percent, to $88.12 per barrel.
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Insight: Wall Street, facing fiercer watchdog, flees U.S. power markets

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When federal regulators proposed a six-month penalty on JPMorgan Chase & Co's electricity trading arm last month, they took aim at what is now a rare sight on Wall Street: a large and growing power sales business.
After five years of rapid and lucrative growth, the world's biggest investment banks are now dramatically scaling back their U.S. power operations, a Reuters analysis of electricity sales has found.
In 2008, when they were most active in the market, the 15 biggest banks sold enough electricity in the United States to power two out of every five residential customers for a year, Reuters found. By last year, their sales would only power about one out of every five customers.
The pull-back means fewer deep-pocketed players in an already shrinking $200 billion U.S. physical power market and strongly invites the question of who will fill the banks' role of cushioning the risks of buying and selling in one of the world's most volatile commodities.
"If big banks leave the market . . . it means that somebody else has to absorb those risks. And it could be utilities or consumers - those would be the two leading candidates," said Craig Pirrong, a University of Houston professor and expert in energy trade regulation.
Others cheer the exit as a potential win for consumers.
"All the banks are doing is feasting on overly complicated market rules to find vulnerabilities, which they pounce on to make large short-term profits," said Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.
Regardless, some electricity buyers are already expressing nervousness about JPMorgan's penalty. The bank had been one of just four banks, alongside Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Australia's Macquarie Group and Germany's Deutsche Bank, to sell more electricity in 2011 than in 2008, according to quarterly data sellers are required to provide to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the country's top power market regulator.
Others have pulled back sharply. Total power market sales reported by Goldman Sachs in 2011 fell to one-sixth of their peak in 2005. Total sales by the banks have continued to slide in the first nine months of 2012 and are almost half the level of a year ago.
There are many reasons for the decline. Power prices have fallen to 10-year lows across most of the United States thanks to an abundance of cheap natural gas. With decades worth of cheap fuel ahead, fewer utilities have been looking to hedge their output; tough new capital requirements and regulations banning proprietary deals have cut into commodity trading; and some European banks, facing a persistent debt crisis back home, have fled dollar-intensive businesses.
But many bankers and analysts see a more alarming cause for the pull-back by banks: the risk that a more aggressive FERC may target them for anything suggestive of nefarious trading.
BANKS' SLICE SHRINKS FASTER THAN PIE
While the total value of the U.S. physical power market has shrunk in recent years, the banks' share has fallen faster.
At their height in 2008, banks sold $46.2 billion worth of electricity across all products, or about 15 percent of the U.S. physical power market. In 2011, they sold $17.5 billion, or about 9 percent. In the first quarter of this year, their share was down to just under 7 percent, FERC data show.
Reuters gauged each bank's footprint in the power sector by analyzing quarterly logs of physical power transactions they have filed with FERC since 2002. Reuters shared the data with each bank represented in the filings, and while all declined to comment publicly for this article, none disputed the figures.
"The pie is definitely shrinking and has been for a few years," said the global head of one bank's power operations. "Our hope is that we are nearing the bottom."
Some of that gap has been filled by hedge funds or merchant traders not facing the same limitations as banks; but, say traders, some of that liquidity has simply evaporated.
ANXIOUS CUSTOMERS
FERC's stepped-up enforcement has grown increasingly apparent since 2005, when Congress beefed-up its penalty powers to help prevent another Enron scandal.
In November, the agency imposed the temporary ban on JPMorgan's physical power trading - over no more than a document discovery dispute in an investigation that is not yet finished. The ban will limit JPMorgan's ability to sell power at profitable rates for six months starting in April 2013.
Asked about the ban by Reuters, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon brushed it off this month as "not that big a deal" for the bank, which is contesting the punishment.
Not everyone is so blasé.
Several customers of the bank -- which includes a range of local utilities from Palo Alto to Seattle -- expressed worries about the impact on their routine power purchases.
"I don't think we are going to get any bid (from JP Morgan) because it takes away their vested interest in getting into these trades," said Yakov Levin, manager of the power department for the Town of Hudson, Massachusetts, which has bought power from the bank.
The California city of Palo Alto "took steps immediately to ensure we wouldn't set up any more deals with (JPMorgan) during the ban," said Debra Katz, who handles communications for the city's utility. It wasn't ideal since "we've been very happy with our transactions with JPMorgan in the past."
JPMorgan spokeswoman Jennifer Zuccarelli said the bank has been in contact with its clients regarding the ban and sought clarification from FERC to make sure it will not impact pre-existing contracts.
The bank's trading counterparties are also taking notice. One trader who has bought power from JPMorgan said any future deals with the bank must be "reviewed by our legal and regulatory departments".
FERC spokeswoman Mary O'Driscoll said the Commission is not worried about banks scaling back their electricity trading operations.
"Power markets ebb and flow and change all the time. Banks have their own reasons for leaving the market," she said.
BOOM AND BUST
Most banks entered the power sector after the California power crisis in 2000-2001, when several energy marketers like Enron were driven from the market by manipulation scandals, bankruptcy and other credit concerns. That left a financing gap in an industry that had recently become deregulated.
Wall Street sensed opportunity.
Between 2001 and 2005, FERC granted power marketing authority to at least eight banks. Others bought their way in: UK-based RBS launched a joint venture with trading powerhouse Sempra Energy in 2008.
"Everyone was seeing how much Goldman and Morgan (Stanley) were making," said one executive at a large bank that wound down its electricity operations after 2008. So banks started "chasing revenue" by poaching top traders from Wall Street's dominant duo and hiring promising up-and-comers from utilities, he said.
Banks make money in the sector by buying electricity from power generators or plants they own or operate. These often long-term agreements help make costs more predictable and projects more bankable for power providers. The deals also make sense to banks, who can then turn around and sell the power to utilities, cities and industrial users at a slight mark-up.
In all, the value of banks' physical power sales surged three-fold from 2003 to 2008, FERC data show. But the 2008 financial crisis - and its regulatory aftermath - accelerated Wall Street's retreat from the market.
RBS was forced to sell its Sempra Energy venture in 2010 after it was bailed out by the UK government. Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, both with large power books, were sold to rivals. Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.
Others simply found the costs exceeded the benefits of staying in the market. Credit Suisse lost over $100 million on Texas power trades that went sour at the peak of the financial crisis, according to a person familiar with the bank's operations at the time.
By 2009, Credit Suisse had decided to pull out of power trading because it was too capital intensive and as they faced restrictions on trading for the bank's own book, according to a person familiar with the firm's thinking.
'JIHAD' OR JUST BUSINESS?
Now, some in the industry worry the retreat is accelerating. Amid a glut of natural gas supply, the market's economics haven't improved much. But the potential costs have.
When FERC proposed fining Barclays for alleged market manipulation in October, the record $470 million penalty more than eclipsed all the bank's physical power sales revenue for the first nine months of 2012, FERC data show. Even Barclays' penalties for manipulating Libor - the global interest rate benchmark - were smaller.
"It used to be that they didn't have significant penalty authority. So if you messed up, whatever ill-gotten gains you got, you gave back," said Barbara Bourque, the former head of FERC's quarterly electric sales reporting, who helped Reuters analyze the agency's data.
"Now, they can put people out of business," said Bourque, who runs Energy Compliance Consulting in Phoenix, Arizona.
Besides Barclays and JPMorgan, FERC has also accused Deutsche Bank of market manipulation, though the agency is only seeking to impose a $1.5 million fine on the bank.
Deutsche Bank this month made deep cuts in its U.S. power trading division; Barclays stopped trading West Coast Markets a year ago. Both banks are contesting FERC's charges.
David Perlman, former chief counsel to Lehman's commodity trading business who is now a partner at the law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani, thinks the proceedings could further dampen banks' enthusiasm toward the power business.
"People are looking at the Deutsche Bank case and they are looking at the JPMorgan case and they are wondering what the rules are," Perlman said.
Former FERC Commissioner Marc Spitzer, now a partner at the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson, says the agency is simply doing its job.
"The argument that FERC is on a Jihad or a crusade against banks is not accurate," he said. Spitzer said FERC is just following up on tips it receives from the marketplace, which could come from regional regulators or even rival traders.
For now, at least, more cases like Barclays could be on the way. FERC has increasingly gone after market manipulators under the tenure of current enforcement chief Norman Bay.
During the last three years, 56 percent of 43 investigations opened by FERC involved market manipulation, according to a Reuters review of the agency's enforcement data. That compares with 42 percent of the 93 investigations opened by FERC in the three years prior to Bay's tenure.
Asked earlier this month by Reuters whether the agency is trying to push banks out of the power markets, FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff brushed off the suggestion.
"We're an equal opportunity enforcer.
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