The US Supreme Court has decided not to review a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirming a $62M award against Michael Lauer, an ex-Lancer Group Hedge Fund manager, in the securities lawsuit filed against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The federal appeals…
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is now making its arbitration process available to all registered investment advisers. The SRO’s arbitration forum has in the past been for member broker-dealers, but not IA’s, to resolve disagreements. (That said, IAs that are dually registered with FINRA have had to arbitrate via the…
The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed charges against hedge fund manager Walter A. Morales and his Baton Rouge-based firm Commonwealth Advisors with allegedly defrauding investors by concealing the millions of dollars in losses sustained from investments linked to residential mortgage-backed securities during the economic crisis. The SEC wants a…
A ruling by the Australian Federal Court against Standard & Poor’s could give 13 NSW councils about A$30M in compensation for their about A$16M in synthetic derivative losses. According to the court, the ratings firm misled investors by giving its highest ratings to complex investment instruments that ended up failing…
Citigroup Global markets Inc. (C) has consented to pay $2M to settle claims by the state of Massachusetts that a research analyst improperly disclosed information about Facebook (FB) before the company’s initial public offering. According to Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin, the financial firm neglected to supervise this…
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…