Morgan Stanley (MS) has reached an agreement in principal with the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve claims related to its sale of mortgage bonds. The government probe looked into allegations that the financial firm misrepresented the quality of home loans that were packaged into bonds. The broker-dealer, however, still…
Lockheed Martin Corp. has agreed to pay $62 million to settle a lawsuit accusing its employee 401(k) retirement plan of charging excessive fees to participants. As part of the settlement, the defense company will take part in monthly assessments of its plan, offer participants low-cost funds, and get bids from…
Gray Financial Group Inc. is suing the Securities Exchange Commission over the agency’s use of its own administrative law judges instead of federal ones when trying enforcement cases. The lawsuit contends that the regulator’s administrative proceedings are a violation of the U.S. Constitution because the SEC judges are distanced from…
The Securities and Exchange Commission is charging former VP of The Shaw Group’s construction operations Scott Zeringue and his brother-in-law Jesse Roberts III with insider trading. Zeringue has already agreed to settle the regulator’s charges by consenting to pay disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus a penalty. The SEC says that…
The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking at efforts by banks to comply with capital rules. The regulator is searching for improper activities involving the way these financial institutions value complicated assets, as well as transactions used to transfer risks to other entities. Following the financial crisis, when governments were…
A district court issued a Consent Order placing a permanent injunction against the U.S. Bank National Association and mandating that the bank return $18 million to customers of Peregrine Financial Group, Inc. customers. US Bank has offices in Iowa where Peregrine, a non-bank, nonclearing FCM (Futures Commission Merchant), and its…
A U.S investigation into the way Morgan Stanley (MS) information became available for sale online is looking at whether hackers targeted financial adviser Galen Marsh after he took information from the bank. Marsh was fired for taking data on up to 350,000 wealth management clients. His lawyer, however, maintains that…
UBS Group AG (UBS) is under scrutiny over losses related to its V10 Enhanced FX Carry Strategy. The complex financial product was sold to fund managers, businesses, and individual investors and touted as a high-yielding foreign-exchange investment that employed computer algorithms to reduce risks during volatile times. Unfortunately, according to…
The European Commission says that ICAP Plc has been ordered to pay a $17.2 million fine for helping traders manipulate benchmark interest rates linked to the Japanese yen. The word’s largest broker of transactions between banks is accused of spreading misleading data to lenders that set the yen Libor’s interbank…
A federal jury has decided that ex-U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador Peter Romero would not be allowed to keep over $758K in expenses, fees, and interest he earned while lending his legal counsel and credibility to Allen Stanford. Instead, he will pay that sum to the court appointed receiver. Stanford was…