A Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) brokerage unit must buy back almost $94 million in auction rate securities from the family who said their adviser misrepresented the investments. The claimants are the relatives of deceased newsstand magnate Robert B. Cohen, who founded the chain Hudson News. Cohen died in 2012.…
Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) has arrived at a $591 million mortgage settlement with Fannie Mae (FNMA). The arrangement resolves claims that the banking institution sold faulty mortgages to the government run-home loan financier and covers loans that Wells Fargo originated more than four years ago. Fannie Mae and Freddie…
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has barred ex-LPL Financial (LPLA) representative Gary Chakman over securities industry rule violations related to the sale of non-traded real estate investment trusts. Chackman was registered with the brokerage firm from 2001 until 2012. LPL then ended his registration with the firm for purportedly violating…
Deutsche Bank (DB) will pay the Federal Housing Finance Agency $1.9 billion to settle securities claims that it misled Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae about the quality of loans bundled with mortgage-backed securities. Of the settlement, Fannie will get $300 million and Freddie will get $1.6 billion. However, this MBS…
Deutsche Bank (DB) has announced that as part of a collective settlement, it will pay $992,329,000 to settle investigations involving interbank offered rates, including probes into the trading of Euro interest rate derivatives and interest rate derivatives for the Yen. Also paying fines as part of the collective settlement are…
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) is suing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for over $1 billion dollars related to the bank’s purchase of Washington Mutual (WMIH). The financial firm said that the FDIC did not honor its duties per the purchase agreement. When Washington Mutual suffered the biggest bank failure in our…
The New Jersey Attorney General John Hoffman is suing a Credit Suisse Group AG (CS) for securities fraud. The state’s regulator contends that the bank misrepresented the risks on over $10B in home loan-backed securities. According to the mortgage-backed securities lawsuit, Credit Suisse is accused of failing to disclose that…
According to The Wall Street Journal, it’s just been a week since regulators approved the Volcker Rule and already investors and financial institutions are looking for new ways to finance municipal bond investments. The Volcker rule limits how much risk federally insured depository institutions can take, prohibiting proprietary trading, setting…
The Securities and Exchange Commission says that Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith Inc. (MER) will pay $131.8M to settle charges involving allegedly faulty derivatives disclosures. The regulator claims that the firm, which is the largest broker-dealer by client assets, misled investors about certain structured debt products before the economic…
One day after Moody’s Investor Service placed Puerto Rico’s general obligation bonds rating of Baa3 on review for downgrade to junk status, the credit rating agency affirmed the ratings it had earlier in the year given four banks: Banco Santander Puerto Rico, Popular Inc. and its subsidiaries, FirstBank Puerto Rico,…