Posts belonging to Category Citigroup/Smith Barney



Time Is Running Out On Credit Crisis Legal Claims

 

Many investors, both individuals and corporations, were misled by their brokers and harmed during the credit crisis. For various reasons, however, many such investors have not yet taken action to recover their losses. Some have delayed taking action in order to see whether the misconduct warranted legal action while others just put it off until […]

SEC Expands Investigations into Toxic CDO Deals as the Awful Truth Begins to Come Out

 

The SEC is expanding its investigation into Wall Street’s sales practices involving toxic collateralized debt obligations that were linked to subprime mortgages as more and more evidence comes out that the Wall Street banks deliberately defrauded some of their customers.

SEC Report Reveals Serious Abuses in the Sale of Structured Securities

 

On July 27, 2011, the Staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations published a report entitled “Staff Summary Report on Issues Identified in Examinations of Certain Structured Securities Products Sold to Retail Investors.” This report was based on the Staff’s review of eleven broker dealers that sell various structured […]

Wall Street Pressures Brokers to Generate More Commissions

 

Large Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others, are cutting compensation for big producers, not just laying off lower producers and back-office employees, and are requiring even the biggest producers to bring in more business for the same amount of compensation, according to a CNBC article entitled “Wall Street Slashing Pay?Even for […]

SEC Refuses to Take Action Against Senior Executives in Structured Product Cases

 

SEC Enforcement Chief Robert Khuzami recently stated that the SEC’s decision not to charge top executives of Wall Street banks with wrongdoing in cases involving structured products was appropriate, according to Suzanne Barlyn’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “SEC: Structured-Product Cases Haven’t Reached Top Bank Officers.” According to Mr. Khuzami, top executives were not involved […]

Securities Industry Employment Disputes on the Increase as Wall Street Cuts Jobs

 

The jobs crisis is starting to hit Wall Street banks and brokerage firms, according to a series of Wall Street Journal articles (“Wall Street Wielding the Ax,” by Aaron Lucchetti and Liz Rappaport; “Credit Suisse Set to Ax 600 Jobs,” by Katharina Bart; and “Here’s Why Wall Street Is Cutting Jobs”). A regulatory crackdown on […]

The Real Truth Regarding Some of Wall Street’s Subprime Shenanigans Begins to Emerge

 

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC has agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle SEC charges that it misled investors in a complex “built to fail” mortgage securities transaction just as the housing market was starting to plummet.

The Subprime Mortgage Mess: How the American Dream Turned into a Nightmare

 

Best-selling “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led To Economic Armegeddon,” by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner, “calls out greedy guys behind mortgage mess,” according to a USA Today book review by Kathryn Caravan. See also “Home Truths,” by James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal. Both reviews provide examples of how the […]

What are Structured Products and Why are They so Dangerous?

 

Investors in today’s markets, particularly seniors, are caught between extremely low interest rates and the risk of pursuing higher returns they want or need. Brokerage firms are capitalizing on that dilemma by selling structured products as a way to earn above-market returns purportedly without market risk. But as Robert Powel, editor of MarketWatch’s Retirement Weekly, […]

Magnetar CDO Deals Haunt Wall Street Firms

 

The Securities and Exchange Commission is broadening its investigation into the world of “built to fail” collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) by looking at Merrill Lynch’s CDO business, according to articles by Marian Wang of Pro Publica (“Merrill Lynch Investigated for CDO Deal Involving Magnetar”) and Kara Scannell of the Financial Times (“SEC Probes $1.5 Billion […]