♦ The Dow's huge drop yesterday led to an massive sell-off overnight in Asia. What will happen today is anybody's guess. [Marketwatch]
♦ Citigroup reported a $2.8 billion loss for the third quarter. [WSJ]
♦ Merrill Lynch did even worse, reporting $5.2 billion in losses for the quarter. [Bloomberg]

• Bristol-Myers Squibb is offering $4.5 billion for ImClone Systems, the drug maker controlled by Carl Icahn. [Dealbook]

• Ford announced an $8.7 billion loss for the second quarter—its worse ever—and an $8 billion write-down. [NYT]

• Did Goldman Sachs have a hand in the downfall of Bear Stearns? London-based traders at the firm are now under investigation for spreading negative rumors [WSJ]

• Federal prosecutors are investigating two ex-Credit Suisse brokers, Eric Butler and Julian Tzolov, over whether they lied to clients about their investments in auction rate securities. [WSJ]

Having cleared his name of obstruction-of-justice charges, former Credit Suisse tech investment banker Frank Quattrone is launching his own boutique firm, Qatalyst Partners. Several big Valley names volunteered quotes for the press release. It's not surprising that Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who's made his own moral missteps, would be forgiving of Quattrone. But Gideon Yu, Facebook's CFO, makes a more curious appearance. He gave a statement applauding Quattrone's partner Jonathan Turner, not Quattrone himself. But still, it amounts to an endorsement. Does Yu really think Quattrone did nothing wrong? Or, as a minister's son, is he just expressing the highest form of the Valley's belief in the power of redemption?

Samir Arora, the Valley's most talented flim-flam artist, has convinced investors to put in a fresh round of financing into Glam Media, his online-ad network. The deal could be announced as soon as tomorrow. The amount raised: Between $30 million and $100 million, we hear, valuing the company at as much as $400 million. A lofty figure, given Glam's scant sales — but Arora had sought a $200 million round, and a valuation in the range of $800 million to $1 billion. The premise of that valuation: The 25 million monthly visitors to sites in Glam's network, many of them female. But investors likely figured out that Glam doesn't own most of the sites those people visited.