Posts belonging to Category Auction Rate Securities



City of Pasadena Wins Right to Arbitrate Auction Rate Securities Case Against UBS

 

A number of cities and local governments that issued auction rate securities at low interest rates are now paying higher interest rates because of widespread auction failures that began occurring in early 2008. Some of them have filed arbitration claims against the Wall Street banks that recommended the issuance of auction rate securities, underwrote them, […]

Case Reveals How Wall Street Banks Cheated Municipalities out of Billions of Dollars

 

The former co-head of UBS AG’s municipal-derivatives group, and two ex-colleagues are defendants in a municipal bond bid-rigging case being tried before U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan (“Ex-UBS execs on trial in muni bid-rigging case,” InvestmentNews).

The Number of Very Large Securities Arbitration Cases is on the Rise

 

The amount of dollars at stake in FINRA securities arbitrations has grown in recent years. Of the 7,000 claims currently pending, approximately 200 involve claims of $10 million or more. “The claims coming in now are substantially larger than what we had a few years ago,” Linda Fienberg, president of FINRA Dispute Resolution, was quoted […]

Wall Street Professionals Fleece Government Amateurs – Main Street Suffers

 

Unsophisticated state and local government officials have been sold billions of dollars of flawed financial products by Wall Street banks, leaving taxpayers on the hook for even more. The banks advised the governments to issue auction rate bonds to lower their financing costs and purchase interest rate swaps to protect the governments if the market […]

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 […]

SunTrust Settles Auction Rate Securities Case with Regulators

 

Two subsidiaries of SunTrust Banks, SunTrust Robinson-Humphrey and SunTrust Investment Services have agreed to pay a combined total of $5 million to settle FINRA charges that they misled clients about the liquidity risks of auction rate securities, according to an article in the Atlanta Journal by J. Scott Trubey entitled “Regulator fines two units of […]

Raymond James Settles Auction Rate Securities Dispute with Regulators

 

Raymond James Financial has agreed to buy back $300 million in auction-rate securities from clients and pay a fine of $1.7 million as part of a settlement the Securities and Exchange Commission and the states of Florida, Texas, Indiana, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, according to Bruce Kelly’s InvestmentNews article entitled […]

Judge Gives Morgan Keegan a ‘Free Pass’ on Auction Rate Securities Claims

 

A U.S. district court judge granted Morgan Keegan’s motion for summary judgment, dismissing the Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that the brokerage firm misled investors in connection with its sales of $2.2 billion in auction-rate securities, according to an InvestmentNews article entitled “SEC claim that Morgan Keegan misled ARS investors is nixed,” and David Benoit’s […]

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 […]

Institutional Investors Are Filing Big Claims Against Financial Services Firms

 

Defense-minded institutions that have long remained on the sidelines when defrauded have finally woken up and are jumping on the plaintiff-recovery bandwagon as they seek to protect themselves against a variety of wrongdoing, according to Vanessa O’Connell’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “Company Lawyers Sniff Out Revenue.” These actions include waves of claims against Wall […]