Posts belonging to Category UBS



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 […]

Wall Street Seeks to Profit from the Madoff Fraud

 

UBS and other Wall Street banks have found a way to profit from the Madoff ponzi scheme, swooping in like vultures to snap up claims from defrauded investors at a fraction of their nominal value, according to Michael Rothfield’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “Madoff Claims Lure Banks.” At the same time, UBS is being […]

Improper Sales of ‘100% Principal Protected Notes’ Wallop UBS Again

 

In one of the largest dollar awards to date in a Lehman note case against UBS Financial Services Inc., a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitration panel “walloped” UBS, ordering it to pay former Philadelphia 76ers President Pat Croce more than $2 million for losses in so-called “100% Principal Protected” Lehman notes that were sold […]

Experts Conclude that Structured Products are ‘Absurdly Destructive’

 

Retail investors in structured products that were sold as safe and secure investments have lost at least $113 billion, according to a report by the nonpartisan policy center Demos and The Nation Institute. “In my three decades of Wall Street experience, I have not seen any other product as absurdly destructive as retail investments linked […]

When ‘Principal Protected’ Doesn’t Really Mean an Investor’s Principal is Protected

 

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) continue to warn that the so-called “principal protection” feature of structured notes is misleading, according to an InvestmentNews article by Liz Skinner entitled “Principal-protected notes don’t always protect principal, regulators warn.”