Monday morning headlines

Feds looking into insider sale: The SEC is investigating sales of stock by L.A. billionaire and Societe Generale board member Robert A. Day and two foundations. Also, according to the WSJ, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., has opened a criminal probe related to the bank, although its focus wasn't known. Day and the foundations sold $140 million of Societe Generale stock about two weeks before the bank notified its board about the billions of trading losses. Day and the bank have insisted that the sales were made within an acceptable window of time. Footnote: Some of the proceeds apparently went towards a $200 million donation to Day’s alma mater, Claremont McKenna College in Claremont.

Google entering the mix?: CEO Eric Schmidt called Yahoo Inc. CEO Jerry Yang to offer his company's help in any effort to thwart Microsoft's unsolicited takeover bid. An alliance with Google could be Yahoo's best shot at defending against the hostile bid. (FT)

"Strike is over": That's what News Corp.'s Peter Chernin was apparently telling folks at the Super Bowl, as reported by Nikki Finke. That must really thrill the Writers Guild folks, who are trying to keep the picket lines in place because, well, the strike is not over until the guild signs off on the deal. And there's no deal to sign off on quite yet. Meanwhile, the NYT's Michael Cieply reports that a post-strike world could become a lot tougher for writers, with more imports from foreign television, more reality programming, and most of all, less spending on expensive pilot episodes. From the NYT:

“I’m worried that studios are basically preparing to extend that kind of regime,” said Linda Lichter, an entertainment lawyer whose clients have included prominent filmmakers like Guillermo Arriaga (“Babel”) and Marc Forster (“The Kite Runner”), speaking of what she saw as increasingly tight-fisted practices that preceded the strike. Ms. Lichter said she was concerned that companies, squeezed by a three-month disruption, would now “try to cut prices, try to use the economic climate to make people take what they’re offered.”

Actors break ranks: The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has decided to negotiate a new contract separately from the Screen Actors Guild. The two unions have been jointly negotiating contracts for the past 27 years, so this gives you a sense of the ongoing frictions. SAG doesn't like splitting its votes with the smaller AFTRA, while AFTRA says that SAG is being run by a bunch of militants. (LAT)

Amgen deals with Japanese: The biotech giant is selling the rights to up to 13 of its experimental drugs to Takeda Pharmaceutical of Japan for more than $1 billion. It's an effort by the company to help bring its experimental drugs to market without overloading its staff. From the NYT:

For Takeda, Japan’s largest pharmaceutical company, the deal will help move it more strongly into biologics, drugs made of proteins that are manufactured in living cells. Takeda, based in Osaka, has focused until now mainly on pills made from chemicals. Under the deal Takeda will pay Amgen $200 million up front. It will also chip in up to $340 million to help develop the drugs worldwide over the next several years, helping to defray Amgen’s cost of testing the drugs for use in the United States and Europe.

Super Bowl could be record: Several big markets are missing, including L.A., but viewership is likely to be up sharply over a year ago - perhaps the most-watched Super Bowl of all time. (AP)