In a new round of payments by Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC trustee Irving Picard, victims of the $17 billion Madoff Ponzi Scam are slated to receive around $349 million. The US Bankruptcy Court in New York must still approve the distribution, which would bring total payouts to $6…
A capital plan to reward investors with stock buybacks and dividends by Citigroup Inc. (C) was one of five to fail Federal Reserve stress test. The others that did not succeed were those involving the US units of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. (RBS), HSBC Holdings Plc. (HSBA), Zions…
FINRA says that LPL Financial, LLC must pay a fine of $950,000 for supervisory deficiencies involving the sale of alternative investment products, such as oil and gas partnerships, non-traded real estate investment trusts, managed futures, hedge funds, and other illiquid pass-through investments. By settling, the independent broker-dealer is not denying…
The Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities is looking into the sales of nontraded REITs by Securities America employees. Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc., which owns the broker-dealer and two other independent brokerage firms, said in its yearly report that the state regulator wants the brokerage firm to provide data…
According to a study commissioned by the US Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, securities class action lawsuits are not a help to investors seeking to recover their investment losses. The study, which was released by Navigant Consulting, found that class action litigation costs investors close to $39 billion annually even…
The Securities and Exchange Commission is getting ready to revisit a 2008 rule proposal about exchange-traded funds. In the wake of new issues that have cropped up since then, changes to the original proposal are likely. Speaking at the Investment Company Institute’s Mutual Fund and Investment Management Conference this week,…
Credit Suisse (CS) will pay $885 million to resolve securities allegations related to the sale of approximately $16.6B in residential mortgage-backed securities that it made to Freddie Mac (FMCC) and Fannie Mae (FNMA) prior to the financial crisis. The RMBS settlement is with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees…
The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed securities fraud charges against the promoter behind affiliated microcap stock promotion websites. The regulator us accusing John Babikian of using PennyStocksUniverse.com and AwesomePennyStocks.com to engage in “scalping” which is a type of securities fraud. The SEC has also obtained an emergency asset freeze.…
In an alleged insider trading scam that could have been ripped out of the plot of a movie, prosecutors are accusing three men of engaging in methods of spycraft, including eating the evidence, as they ran an insider trading racket that netted about $5.6 million. The information they used was…
The non-traded real estate investment trusts industry wants to delay the implementation of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority disclosure rule until the end of 2015. The rule would require that investors be given more accurate data about the valuation of direct participation programs and non-traded REITs. This should provide investors…