Morgan Keegan Must Buy Back Auction-Rate Securities and Pay $110,500, Says District Judge

A US District judge is ordering Morgan Keegan & Co. to repurchase auction-rate securities and make a payment of $110,500 in an ARS lawsuit filed by the SEC that accuses the financial firm of misleading investors about these investments’ risks. The SEC contends that the $2.2B in securities that the firm sold left clients with frozen funds when the market failed in 2008.

Even after the financial firm started buying back ARS—it has since repurchased $2B in ARS of its own accord—the SEC decided to proceed with its securities case. The Commission contends that even as the ARS market failed, Morgan Keegan told clients that the securities being sold came with “zero risk” and were short-term investments that were liquid.

Now, Judge William Duffey Jr. has found that although Morgan Keegan’s brokers did not act fraudulently, some of them acted negligently when they left out key information and made misrepresentations when selling the securities. This including not apprising investors about the risk of failure, liquidity loss, or that interest rates might vary.

Duffey is the same judge who dismissed this very case in 2011. However, last May, the US Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturned his decision after determining that he wrongly found that verbal comments made to certain customers were not material because of disclosures that could be found on the financial firm’s web site.

Morgan Keegan Trial Judge to Decide SEC Case He Dismissed, Bloomberg.com, November 26, 2012

More Blog Posts:
Morgan Keegan Founder Faces SEC Charges Over Mortgage-Backed Securities Asset Pricing in Mutual Funds, Institutional Investor Securities Blog, December 17, 2012

Judge that Dismissed Regulators’ Claims Against Morgan Keegan to Rule on ARS Lawsuit Again After His Ruling Was Reversed on Appeal, Institutional Investor Securities Blog, November 27, 2012

Court Upholds Ex-NBA Star Horace Grant $1.46M FINRA Arbitration Award from Morgan Keegan & Co. Over Mortgage-Backed Bond Losses, Stockbroker fraud Blog, October 30, 2012

Your first case evaluation with one of our experienced auction-rate securities lawyers at Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas, LTD LLP is free.