USA Capital Mortgage Company, a Las Vegas company, filed for bankruptcy last year listing approximately three-quarters billion dollars in debts to creditors. Most of this is owed to investors who purchased mortgage trust deeds and/or unit trusts which contained trust deeds. Apparently there were a number of brokerage firms involved,…
After the U.S. Supreme Court decided to let brokerage firms make customers sign arbitration agreements, a lot of people thought that this was a faster, less expensive alternative than letting investors take their claims to courts. Recently, however, what seemed like a good way to resolve disputes between brokers and…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled last week that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission went beyond its authority to promulgate a rule exempting broker-dealers that offer investment advice to clients with fee-based accounts from regulation under the 1940 Investment Advisers Act. The SEC…
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint on Wednesday against Rex Rogers, the former associate general counsel at Enron, and Jordan Mintz, the former general counsel for Enron’s finance group, with civil violations of securities laws because of omitting or fudging regulatory filing disclosures. The SEC alleges that…
At a hearing discussing the budgetary needs of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Senator Richard Durbin voiced concerns that President Bush’s 2008 budget request for the CFTC would not be enough to meet the regulatory agency’s key needs to allow it to function effectively. Durbin, the chairman of the Senate…
As class actions against investment firms face dismissal, attorneys for investors plan to go forward with claims for individual shareholders against those same firms. After the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decided that cases in Houston against Merrill Lynch and other investment banking firms could not…
NYSE Regulation Inc. and the Securities and Exchange Commission say that a clearing affiliate and prime broker of Goldman Sachs Group will pay $2 million in fines and penalties over its alleged role in an illegal short-sale trading scheme that was executed by Goldman Sachs customers through their accounts with…
William Francis Galvin, the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, says that his office has set up new standards for advisers using credentials implying that they are experts when it comes to senior investors. According to Galvin, the state of Massachusetts is charging two Massachusetts annuity salesmen with using unethical and…
Morgan Stanley shared in the earnings boom for Wall Street Firms as it reported earnings for its latest quarter of $2.56 Billion, a 29% increase over a year ago. The investment giant is also celebrating a victory in the Florida courts, having convinced an appeals court to throw out an…
A Houston Federal Court was set to begin tiral on class actions filed on behalf of investors against several fiancial firms that allegedly assisted Enron to defraud shareholders. However, a Federal Court of Appeals, with most of its judges selected by the Bush-Cheney administration, stepped in to overturn the class…