Morgan Stanley will pay $100,000 to the New Jersey Bureau of Securities for allegedly selling exotic exchange-traded funds to investors. The state’s regulators say that the firm’s financial advisers were not properly trained and sold inverse and leveraged ETFs to senior investors that wanted to earn additional income. These clients…
Investor Jon Hanson is suing Berthel Fisher & Co. Financial Services Inc. for allegedly not conducting the necessary due diligence on the TNP 2008 Participating Notes Program or making the proper disclosures to parties like him that backed the high-risk investment. The private placement went into default in 2012. The…
In federal court, both the Securities and Exchange Commission and former Goldman Sachs Group (GS) vice president Fabrice Tourre have both rested their case in the civil trial against the bond trader. Tourre is accused of MBS fraud for his alleged involvement in a failed $1 billion investment connected to…
The Securities and Exchange Commission is suing Trendon Shavers and his company Bitcoin Savings & Trust, accusing the two of them of running a Ponzi scam involving Bitcoin. In its Texas securities fraud case, the regulator contends that Shavers offered and sold the denominated investments online with the use of…
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority says that Thornes & Associates Inc. Investment Securities President John Thomas Thornes lent $4.2 million in client assets to two friends. Following the resolution of the FINRA arbitration case, the California broker is barred from the securities industry and his broker-dealer has been suspended, as…
UBS (UBS) will pay $885 million to settle Federal Housing Finance Agency to settle allegations that it misrepresented mortgage-backed bonds during the housing bubble. $415 million of the mortgage settlement will go to Fannie Mae, while $470 million will be paid to Freddie Mac, both government-sponsored enterprises, over the $200…
Last month, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority put out its yearly report for 2012. According to the results, the self-regulatory organization is hurting. Its operating losses are huge-nearing $90 million for the second year straight. Meantime, its staff has grown 13%, with benefits and compensation rising 41% in the last…
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter for the Central District of California has turned down Standard & Poor’s bid to have the Justice Department’s $5 billion securities lawsuit against it dismissed. This affirms Carter’s recent tentative ruling earlier on the matter. S & P is the largest credit rating agency…
The Securities and Exchange Commission is charging Stephen A. Cohen with failure to supervise two portfolio managers and stop them from insider trading. Cohen is the SAC Capital. The SEC wants to ban the hedge fund mogul from supervising investor funds. A spokesperson for SAC says the securities case is…
Securities America Stops Selling Nontraded REIT ARC V Securities America Inc. has severed ties with American Realty Capital Trust V Inc., a top-selling nontraded REIT. The independent broker-dealer blamed this on an overconcentration risk and its own exposure to real estate programs that AR Capital, a brokerage firm, distributes. The…