Not long after bowing out of talks over a possible $25 billion dollar settlement between state and federal officials and the country’s largest banks (including Bank of America Corp, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase & Co.) over alleged foreclosure abuses, California’s Attorney General’s office has subpoenaed BofA as part of…
Citigroup has consented to pay $285 million to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint accusing the bank of misleading investors in a $1 billion derivatives deal—a collateralized debt obligation called Class V Funding III. It was Citigroup that chose the assets for the portfolio that it then bet against.…
Once again, former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. executives want an insurance fund to cover their expenses stemming from securities-related misconduct they are accused of committing. This time, they want to use the money to cover their legal bills. On Monday, former Lehman Chief Executive Richard Fuld and other ex-executives submitted…
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is recommending a number of best practices for financial firms that work with Expert Networks and their Consultants. According to SIFMA, expert networks are entities that receive a fee to refer industry professionals, known as consultants, to third parties. Although the acknowledges how…
Raj Rajaratnam, a billionaire investor and co-founder of Galleon Group LLC, has been ordered to pay a $10 million fine and serve 11 years in jail for his key role in an insider trading scam that resulted in $63.8M in illegal profits. He must now forfeit $53.8M. A jury had…
The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed securities fraud charges against former United Commercial Bank executives accusing them of concealing loss from assets and loans from auditors that resulted in UCBH Holdings Inc., its public holding company, to understate its operating losses in 2008 by at least $65 million. As…
Two years after San Antonio broker was sentenced to prison for Texas securities fraud, FINRA has fined Merrill Lynch $1M for not properly supervising its former employer. These failures allegedly allowed Bruce Hammonds to run a Ponzi scam that defrauded investors of $1.4M. Hammonds persuaded 11 people to invest in…
House Financial Services subcommittee Chairman Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) is encouraging the Securities and Exchange Commission to refrain from rulemaking for establishing a uniform fiduciary standard that would apply to both broker-dealers and investment advisers unless the federal agency can come up with adequate evidence to support this action. Garrett made…
The federal government has filed a securities lawsuit against 23-ex Washington Mutual employees and a number of WaMu’s subsidiaries. The complaint contends that these persons signed off on documents that included misleading and false information that was used to sell billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities. The case stems from…
A district court has ruled that Belmont Holdings Corp. v. SunTrust Banks Inc., a putative class securities action claiming that a 2008 SunTrust (STI) securities’ offerings documents contained faulty financial disclosures, can proceed. According to Judge William Duffey Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia,…