PRIME FINANCE: A momentous chapter in monetary-policy history

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Janet Yellen

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Federal Reserve Board Chairwoman Janet Yellen arrives for testimony before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee July 15, 2014 in Washington, DC.

Prime Finance is Business Insider's midday summary of the top stories of the past 24 hours.

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The Federal Reserve is set to exit a historic monetary-policy era and enter a new one.

The FOMC - the Federal Reserve's policy-setting committee- is expected to announce on Wednesday that it is raising interest rates for the first time in nine years.

You can follow all of Business Insider's coverage of the announcement here.

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In other news, hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman has said this could be his firm's worst year ever, and has laid out how he could dig himself out of a huge hole with one killer trade.

And short-seller Andrew Left called software company Mobileye the 'short of the year' for 2016, sending the stock tumbling.

Here are the top Wall Street headlines at midday -

Wall Street's marquee boutique firm is handing out huge pay deals - Centerview Partners, the hugely successful boutique firm advising on big corporate takeovers, handed its top UK partner an £8 million ($12 million) profit share in 2015.

This is just like 1994, and investors lost $600 billion that year - The year 1994 was a disastrous one for bonds. Dubbed the "Bond Market Massacre," a Federal Reserve interest-rate hike sent bond yields skyrocketing, crushing fixed-income investors.

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It has been a horrible year for IPO performance - Most of the big offerings this year are now trading lower than their IPO price. That means investors who bought into these deals in the hope of a rising share price are instead sitting on losses.

Jefferies got hammered again ? and lost money trading on 23 out of 63 days last quarter - Investment bank Jefferies reported earnings for its fourth quarter, and the numbers are not pretty.

A Federal Reserve board member explains what happens when the Fed hikes rates - If you want to know what happens once the Fed hikes interest rates, you'd do well to ask one of the senior executives within the central bank's decision-making body.

Google is going after Uber by turning its self-driving-cars division into its own business - Google is turning its self-driving-cars unit into a standalone business under the parent company Alphabet next year.

Elsewhere on the web -

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Wall Street's Short Sellers Are Turning On Their Own - Bloomberg

BATS Makes Second Attempt at IPO - The Wall Street Journal