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Last Entry: March 31, 2011 at 16:18:26

Bally Total Fitness Settles Financial Fraud Charges

Posted on February 28, 2008
The SEC settled financial fraud charges against Bally Total Fitness Holding Corporation, a nationwide commercial operator of fitness centers that recently emerged from bankruptcy proceedings under new, private ownership. The Commission alleges that from at least 1997 through 2003, Bally's...

SEC Open Meeting Agenda for March 4

Posted on February 28, 2008
The Agenda for the SEC's Open Meeting on Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., includes the following items: The Commission will consider whether to propose two new rules under the Investment Company Act concerning exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Proposed Rule...

FINRA Settles Mutual Fund Sales Violations Against Five Securities Firms

Posted on February 28, 2008
FINRA settled cases against five firms for mutual fund sales and supervisory violations - including improper sales of Class B and Class C mutual fund shares and failure to have supervisory systems designed to provide all eligible investors with the...

A Profile of Abu Dhabi's SWF

Posted on February 28, 2008
Abu Dhabi has about 9% of the world's oil and 0.02% of its population. This means it has a lot of money to invest. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), the world's largest SWF, has about $650-700 billion in assets,...

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SEC Charges Three with Scam Targeting Military Families

Posted on February 27, 2008
The SEC charged three promoters who targeted military families in a multi-million dollar investment scheme that forced victims into personal bankruptcy and their homes into foreclosure. The scam also targeted other affinity groups, including the Southern California Filipino community and...

"Say on Pay" on Many Corporations' Proxy Statements This Spring

Posted on February 27, 2008
"Say on pay" resolutions are on proxy statements of almost 100 companies this year, including Citigroup, Walmart, and Apple. Last year resolutons to adopt an advisory vote on executive compensation attracted, on average, about 40% support from shareholders...

IBM Announces $15 Billion Stock Buyback Plan

Posted on February 27, 2008
IBM authorized a $15 billion stock repurchase plan, its second in less than a year. IBM said the funds will come from operations. It could increase IBM's earnings by as much as 5 cents. In the past 5 years IBM...

Cox Testifies on Plain English

Posted on February 26, 2008
SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, spoke on one of his favorite topics, Plain Language ? The Benefits to Small Business, before the Subcommittee on Contracting and Technology, Committee on Small Business, U.S. House of Representatives, on February 26, 2008...

Two Deloitte Accountants Settle Charges Involving Delphi Audits

Posted on February 26, 2008
The SEC settled two administrative proceedings and found that Nicholas Difazio and Duane Higgins, Deloitte & Touche LLP (D&T) engagement partners on the 2000 and 2001 audits of the financial statements of Delphi Corporation, engaged in improper professional conduct on...

SEC Brings Pump & Dump Charges

Posted on February 26, 2008
The SEC filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona against Mario A. Pino, alleging that Pino usurped the "corporate identity" of Bancorp International Group, Inc. (BCIT), a public shell, by fabricating, issuing, and trading...

Five Convictions in AIG Reserves Trial

Posted on February 26, 2008
Five insurance executives -- one from AIG, 4 from General Re -- were convicted for their participation in sham reinsurance deals to bolster AIG's loss reserves. Former CEO Maurice Greenberg, who resigned in 2005 because of the scandal but remains...

SWFs Urged not to Become Political

Posted on February 26, 2008
The U.S. Treasury Dept. met with two of the largest SWFs -- the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority ($900 billion in assets) and the Government Investment Corp. of Singapore ($300 billion in assets) -- as part of discussions to encourage SWFs...

FINRA-AARP Partnership is Criticized

Posted on February 25, 2008
Some securities firms are critical of FINRA's partnership with AARP to promote automatic 401(k) enrollment ("Retirement Made Simpler") because they view AARP's for-profit financial services unit as a competitor. It sells a variety of financialproducts, including mutual funds that are...

Proposed Legislation Imposing Costs on Securities Plaintiff's Lawyer Introduced

Posted on February 25, 2008
Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) recently introduced the "Securities Litigation Attorney Accountability and Transparency Act" (H.R. 5463) that would require a court, in any private securities litigation that awarded a final judgment against a plaintiff, to determine: whether the plaintiff's position...

Visa Plans $18.8 Billion IPO

Posted on February 25, 2008
Visa filed its preliminary prospectus, dated February 25, 2008, for its IPO. It proposes to offer 406,000,000 shares of Class A common stock with an expected price between $37-42 per share, for a maximum aggregate offering price of $18,757,200,000. This...

GAO Releases Report on Hedge Funds

Posted on February 25, 2008
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report today on Hedge Funds (GAO-08-200). The Report explains that after the near collapse of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, regulators generally have increased reviews, by means of targeted examinations, of systems...

Nasdaq Will Close Deal on OMX

Posted on February 25, 2008
The Wall St. Journal has an interview today with Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld, as the exchange prepares to close its $4.4 billion acquisition of Nordice and Baltic exchange operator OMX AB. To accomplish the deal, Nasdaq partnered with Borse Dubai,...

Wachovia Backs Out of Clear Channel Sale of TV Stations

Posted on February 25, 2008
While Clear Channel and Providence Equity Partners renegotiated their deal and reduced the price that Providence will pay for a group of television stations, Wachovia, one of the three banks that agreed to finance the original deal, went to court...

Electronic Arts Bids for Take-Two

Posted on February 25, 2008
Electronic Arts Inc. (Madden NFL) announcced an unsolicited $2 billion cash offer for Take-Two Interactive Software (Grand Theft Auto), after Take-Two's board rejected the $26 per share offer (50% premium over Friday's closing price) as inadequate. The offer comes about...

Bush May Send SEC Nominations to Senate

Posted on February 23, 2008
At long last, President Bush may send nominations to the Senate to fill the vacancies on the SEC. There are currently two vacancies that must be filled by Democrats, to replace Annette Nazareth and Raul Campos. In addition, there will...

Brown on SEC & Corporate Governance

Posted on February 23, 2008
The SEC, Corporate Governance, and Shareholder Access to the Board Room, by J. ROBERT BROWN Jr., University of Denver Sturm College of Law, was recently posted on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In the shareholder governance area, one of the...

Armour et alia on Legal Origins Hypothesis

Posted on February 23, 2008
Shareholder Protection and Stock Market Development: An Empirical Test of the Legal Origins Hypothesis, by JOHN ARMOUR, University of Oxford - Faculty of Law; University of Cambridge - Centre for Business Research (CBR); European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI); SIMON DEAKIN,...

Gilson & Milhaupt on SWFs

Posted on February 23, 2008
Sovereign Wealth Funds and Corporate Governance: A Minimalist Response to the New Merchantilism, by RONALD J. GILSON, Stanford Law School; Columbia Law School, and CURTIS J. MILHAUPT, Columbia Law School, was recently posted on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Sovereign...

SEC Settles Charges Against Former Stock Options Administrator

Posted on February 22, 2008
The SEC announced today that it settled its enforcement action with Vencent A. Donlan ("Donlan"), former stock options administrator at Wireless Facilities, Inc. ("WFI") (now Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc.) for his violations of the federal securities laws in...

DOJ Raises Concerns About CME-Nymex Consolidation

Posted on February 22, 2008
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest U.S. exchange operator, is moving forward with plans to acquire Nymex Holdings, an energy exchange operator, even though the DOJ recently expressed concerns about the exchange business. The acquisition would cost about $10 billion,...

Nasdaq Seeks SEC Approval to List SPACs

Posted on February 22, 2008
Nasdaq announcced it will seek SEC approval of a rule change to list special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs)and subject them both to NASDAQ's initial listing requirements as well as additional criteria developed specifically for this type of entity...

SEC's Inspector General Tells Congress of Reforms

Posted on February 21, 2008
David Kotz, the SEC's new Inspector General, announced reforms to improve the agency's investigations in a letter to Senate Finance Committee ranking member Charles Grassley. The letter is apparently a response to Congressional criticism of the SEC's handling of an...

SEC Charges Fraudulent Offering by Phony Distributor of Self-Cleaning Toilet Seats

Posted on February 21, 2008
Would you buy stock in a distributor of "self-cleaning toilet seats"? The SEC alleges that Clean Care Technologies, Inc. ("CCT"), its former president and principal owner, Edward Klein, and two salespeople, Al Nazon and Anil Varughese, orchestrated a fraudulent unregistered...

Oppenheimer Settles Market-Timing Charges with FINRA

Posted on February 21, 2008
FINRA announced today that Oppenheimer & Co. will pay a fine of $250,000 for supervisory and other failures in connection with improper market timing of mutual fund shares from January through September 2003. The firm will also pay $4.25 million...

2007 Securities Issuance Total Unchanged from 2006

Posted on February 21, 2008
According to the latest Research Quarterly released by SIFMA, the 2007 full-year issuance total, $6.44 trillion, was virtually unchanged from the $6.47 trillion in securities issued in 2006. On the strength of a strong first half of the year, 2007...

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