Morgan Keegan has been aggressively fighting an array of regulatory actions and investor claims. As a result of these “hardball” defense tactics, Morgan Keegan’s legal costs have doubled and are consuming a significant chunk of the firm’s revenue as a result of investigations by securities regulators and legal actions by aggrieved investors, according to an […]
Cellular South Inc. has filed a federal lawsuit in Mississippi against JP Morgan Securities for misrepresenting the risk and liquidity of auction rate securities, leaving $4 million in securities that it cannot liquidate. Auction rate securities are fixed-income debt instruments ? typically municipal bonds, preferred shares of closed end mutual funds, or asset-backed securities collateralized […]
Former Credit Suisse broker Eric Butler, who was convicted of fraud by a New York federal court jury in August, was sentenced last week to five years in federal prison. Along with former Credit Suisse colleague Julian Tzolov, Butler was accused of making misrepresentations in the sale of auction rate securities, claiming that they were […]
Two months ago we reported that Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. had asked a New York court to dismiss a $72 million lawsuit filed against it by KV Pharmaceutical Co. Last week it was announced that Citi had agreed to settle with KV.
An Atlanta-based Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitration panel has ordered SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc. (SunTrust) to pay over $4.1 million in damages (including punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and costs) to a former registered representative based on a claim of wrongful termination and malicious defamation in annotating the claimant’s Form U-5 (a regulatory filing) to […]
The Wall Street Journal reports that “hundreds of businesses are fighting to recover billions of dollars tied up in frozen auction-rates securities, a year after Wall Street firms agreed to $60 billion in settlements over the collapsed market for the investments.” See “Firms Fight Banks Over Billions in Frozen Notes,” WSJ 1/2/10. While regulators stepped […]
Dow Corning Corp. has filed its second lawsuit in a month over losses suffered by the company due to auction rate securities. The latest Dow suit, filed against Merrill Lynch in federal court in New York, alleges that Merrill misled the company about the safety and liquidity of the auction rate securities market. According to […]
There have been various developments over the past several weeks which investors may consider relevant in allocating their resources or evaluating alternatives that are available to them. Some of the more significant developments include, but are not limited to, the following: The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened the week at 10,270 and, on Monday, the […]
Dow Corning Corp. has filed a federal lawsuit against BB&T bank for misrepresenting the risk and liquidity of auction rate securities, leaving Dow Corning with $667 million in securities that it cannot sell. Auction rate securities (ARS) are debt instruments for which interest or dividends are regularly reset through a Dutch auction. Auction rate securities […]
Roche International has sued Credit Suisse for over $270 million in losses that the drug company incurred after the bank’s brokers invested $545 million of its money in auction rate securities. Roche’s Credit Suisse relationship managers were Julian Tzolov and Eric Butler, who are now serving federal prison sentences for securities fraud in connection with […]
