The heads of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the National Credit Union Administration, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have sent a letter to Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn) about bill…
Per a study released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, it is “ill-advised” to regulate money market mutual funds further due to the effective reforms that the SEC already implemented two yeas ago, including revisions that made the funds more transparent and liquid and not as high risk. The study…
In the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, three ex-former financial services executives have received their respective sentences for taking part in conspiracies involving contract bidding for municipal finance contracts and the municipal bond proceed investments. The defendants, Peter S. Grimm, Steven E. Goldberg, and Dominick…
Three years after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority awarded former Chicago Bulls forward Horace Grant a $1.46 million arbitration award in his securities claim against Morgan Keegan & Co., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has upheld that ruling. Grant, who had suffered mortgage-backed bond losses, accused…
The California Court of Appeals says that while investor Irene Mastick can proceed with her securities litigation against Oakwood Capital Management LLC, she has to arbitrate her securities claim against TD Ameritrade Inc. Mastick had sued representatives of the two financial firms, along with M.E. Safris & Co. and her…
The Massachusetts Securities Division is claiming that Putnam Advisory Co. deceived investors about its actual involvement in Pyxis 2006 and Pyxis 2007, two $1.5 billion collateralized debt obligations comprised of midprime and subprime mortgage-backed securities. In its administrative complaint, the state contends that Putnam represented to investors that it would…
Officials representing consumers, union, and state groups are threatening legal proceedings should the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed Rule 506 of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act becomes final. They strongly opposed the proposed rule, which is supposed to implement the JOBS Act’s Section 201, which takes away the bars…
The CFTC is ordering Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC (MS) to pay a civil monetary penalty of $200,000 for alleged supervisory failures related to customer account handling by employees, which is a violation of CFTC regulation 166.3. Its Order maintains that Morgan Stanley did not have adequate supervisory and internal…
One year after The Rand Family pled guilty to bilking over 200 investors in $68M Dallas Ponzi scam, a number of their expensive instruments are going up for auction. The money from the sales will go towards paying back their victims. The Rand Family, who owned oil and gas owned…
The United States is suing Bank of America Corporation (BAC) for more than $1 billion over alleged mortgage fraud involving the sale of defective loans to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The federal government contends that Countrywide, and then later Bank of America, following its acquisition of the former, executed…