Last week, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing about the Investment Adviser Oversight Act of 2012, a bill introduced by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.). The two lawmakers had come up with (HR 4624) because they believe that the US Securities…
In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Janus Capital Group Inc. v. First Derivative Traders, the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona is now saying that investors did not succeed in stating a securities fraud claim against Prescott City, Arizona related to the $35 million…
The U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut has decided not to grant summary judgment to UBS AG (UBS) and UBS Securities LLC in Mary Barker’s lawsuit claiming that her firing violated the whistleblower provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Judge Janet Hall found that UBS failed to show that…
The SEC is suing investment adviser John Geringer for allegedly running a $60M investment fund that was actually a Ponzi scheme. Most of Geringer’s fraud victims are from the Santa Cruz, California area. According to the Commission, Geringer used information in his marketing materials for GLR Growth Fund (including the…
The Securities and Exchange Commission wants the US Supreme Court to leave standing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s decision upholding Irving Picard’s “net equity” approach to compensating victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scam. Picard is the Securities Investor Protection Act trustee of Bernard L. Madoff Investment…
The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a one-year pilot for a plan meant to shield equity markets from volatile price changes. The plan is based on two initiatives from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the national securities exchanges. One initiative involves a “limit up-limit down” proposal that would…
According to Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro, the two federal agencies didn’t know that JPMorgan & Chase (JPM) had sustained $2 billion in trading losses until they heard about it through the press in April. Schapiro and Gensler testified in…
The American Bar Association is in strong favor of self-funding for both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is calling on Congress to quickly deal with this need to increase the agencies’ resources. In a letter to lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee…
According to a senior FINRA enforcement official, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority appears on schedule this year to bring about 1,500 enforcement actions-that’s about the same amount a last year, when this was then considered a record number. He said that the actions tend to be “isolated cases,” with dishonesty…
In U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, federal judge Manuel Real threw out five of the seven securities claims made by the Securities and Exchange Commission in its fraud lawsuit against ex-IndyMac Bancorp chief executive Michael Perry and former finance chief Scott Keys. The Commission is accusing the…