HOUSTON (AP) — A former employee of Texas financier R. Allen Stanford told jurors at Stanford’s fraud trial Wednesday that he believes he saw the former billionaire making up accounting figures used in an annual report to woo investors. (more)
(Reuters) – An investment advisory arm of Swiss bank UBS will pay $300,000 to settle charges that it misled investors through incorrect pricing of securities in three of its mutual funds, U.S. securities regulators said on Tuesday. (more)
A provision of the Dodd-Frank Act aimed at bringing more women and minorities to the male-dominated world of finance is moving one step closer to being implemented, after the Securities and Exchange Commission announced this week that it had named Pamela A. Gibbs to head its recently created Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. (more)
By filing a civil fraud suit in mid-December against former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) took an action that has benefits far beyond bringing justice for investors. Among other things, it ruined the holidays of some of the nation’s most prominent liberal commentators by exposing the flaws of their narrative blaming the “unfettered free market” for the housing meltdown. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department says German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom and Hungary’s Magyar Telekom have agreed to pay more than $95 million to end a long-running bribery investigation. (more)
NEW YORK (AP) — Former Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd announced he would take a leave of absence from the hedge fund he runs Wednesday, less than a week after being charged in connection with the 2008 financial crisis. (more)
Procter & Gamble didn’t crunch the details on its Pringles partner adequately. Troubles escalated for Diamond Foods, the agreed buyer of the chips brand, on Thursday as the Securities and Exchange Commission initiated a probe into its accounting on the heels of the snack food company’s own internal inquiry. The scale of the issues being investigated suggests the consumer giant missed some warning signs. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday brought civil fraud charges against six former top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying they misled investors about risky subprime loans the mortgage giants held when the housing bubble burst. (more)
Judge Rakoff got to have his insurrection when he rejected the SECs $285 million settlement with Citigroup last month. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Jon Corzine’s three days of testimony on MF Global’s collapse offered little to satisfy lawmakers or clients who lost millions when the securities firm failed. Yet legal experts say Corzine helped himself by choosing words with care and articulating an explanation that’s hard to disprove. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Members of Congress, battling single digit approval ratings, are paying attention to the perception that some lawmakers enriched themselves through insider trading. (more)
The Securities and Exchange Commission, which failed to stop Bernard Madoff’s long-running investment fraud despite repeated warnings, has disciplined eight agency employees over their handling of the matter but did not fire anyone. (more)
The Securities and Exchange Commission, which failed to stop Bernard Madoff’s long-running investment fraud despite repeated warnings, has disciplined seven agency employees over their handling of the matter but did not fire anyone, a person familiar with the actions said. (more)
Many television viewers encounter strange, disjointed ads promoting NewAmerica3.com. The ads plead with viewers to visit the website, where the narrator promises a Nostradamus-like offering of dire prophecies for the future. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday backed a proposal to bar banks from trading for their own profit instead of their clients. (more)
The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed strengthening “circuit breaker” rules that suspend market trading in times of extreme market volatility. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering taking civil action against Standard & Poor’s for its rating of a 2007 mortgage debt offering. Such action could be just the first shot in a legal assault against the major credit rating agencies. (more)
(Bloomberg) — A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) trader and his father were accused by U.S. regulators of making illegal trades based on confidential information related to the Wall Street firm’s exchange-traded fund investments. (more)
As if having the U.S. lose its stellar credit rating wasn’t enough, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether some hedge funds and specialized trading firms profited from the debt downgrade through alleged insider trading, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. (more)
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are reportedly near a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over their failure to disclose to shareholders how heavily the firms had invested in subprime mortgages. (more)
