The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) recently issued a report outlining is its regulatory and examination priorities for 2012. The securities industry regulator is focusing on conduct and products meant to beat the market that are unsuitable investments for many investors.
Federal prosecutors plan to file criminal actions against four former traders who allegedly overvalued collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) sold by Credit Suisse in order to increase their commissions. The events occurred in 2008 and resulted in a $2.85 billion write down by Credit Suisse. Credit Suisse fired the traders and cooperated with authorities in their investigation. (“Ex-Traders at Credit Suisse Expected to Be Charged With Fraud,” New York Times, Dealbook).
Continue reading "Credit Suisse Traders Face Criminal Charges for Mortgage Investment Fraud" »
Given the array of exotic alternative investments being sold to the public, it’s logical that many investors often don’t understand what they are buying. What is even scarier is that it is likely their professional investment adviser doesn’t understand the alternative investment either. Investment advisers – 75 percent of them – admit they do not understand alternative investments. Notwithstanding their puzzlement, 50 percent of advisers said they intend to increase their use of them in their clients’ accounts this year. They could use some help, however, because of alternative investments are so confusing. (“Alternatives spur anxiety,” InvestmentNews).
After federal district court judge Jed Rakoff “forcefully rejected” a $285 million settlement between the SEC and Citigroup, Susan Beck bravely decided to read the prospectus for the Class V Funding III CDO at the center of the controversy, in order to see the disclosures that Citigroup says are adequate. What she found was a “brain-scrambling, obfuscating collection of words.” (“Susan Beck’s Summary Judgment: The Problem with Citi’s Disclosure Argument,” AmericanLawyer.com).
The SEC had accused Citigroup of failing to disclose to investors in the CDO that it had a role in selecting one-half of the $1 billion of assets in the deal and then bet against some of them. The investors lost $700 million while Citigroup made $160 million on the deal. Citigroup argued that its disclosures to investors were adequate, given that the investors were “sophisticated.”
Judge Jed S. Rakoff stunned the SEC and Citigroup by rejecting their proposed $285 million settlement of a case involving Citigroup’s sale to investors of a CDO that Citigroup allegedly “built to fail” and bet against. The judge’s decision made a dent in the SEC’s longstanding policy (“hallowed by history, but not by reason”) of allowing defendants to settle without admitting to any of the underlying facts. Judge Rakoff ordered the parties to be ready to try the case on July 16, 2012.
Continue reading "Judge Rejects Citi's Efforts to Buy Justice " »
Broker-dealers that sold billions of dollars in fraudulent private placements, such as Medical Capital and Provident Royalties notes, “failed massively in their due diligence responsibilities to investors” according to Gordon Yale, a CPA and expert witness in securities fraud cases. (See “Private-placement due diligence ‘sloppy,’” Investment News). They grossly misrepresented investigations into the investments and issuers they claimed to have performed, and, in fact, merely relied on self-serving representations made by management that were false and fraudulent.
Morgan Stanley’s motion to dismiss a class action involving “built to fail” structured products has been denied as to the fraud claims against it, and the case will go forward. The plaintiffs – a group of Singapore retail investors – allege that Morgan Stanley committed fraud in selling them sold them $154.7 million of Pinnacle Notes. The notes, which lost almost 100 per cent of their value during the financial crisis, were linked to synthetic (i.e., derivatives-linked) collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) in 2006 and 2007.
Continue reading "Morgan Stanley Bitten by 'Built to Fail' Structured Products" »
The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) announced that it has reached settlements with Citigroup and Deutsche Bank regarding potential claims relating to the sale of residential mortgage-backed securities to five failed wholesale credit unions. NCUA said that it is the first regulatory agency to recover losses on behalf of failed financial institutions that resulted from investments in residential mortgage-backed securities.
The Securities and Exchange Commission says it has stepped up its enforcement activities during the 2011 fiscal year ended September 30, filing a record 735 enforcement actions resulting in disgorgements and penalties totaling $2.806 billion, according to InvestmentNews (“SEC sets record in crackdown on advisers, B-Ds”). It reportedly filed 146 enforcement actions against investment advisers and investment companies in 2011, a 30% increase over last year and 200% more than 2002 when the SEC filed 52 cases. With regard to broker-dealers, the SEC says it filed 112 enforcement actions, a 60% increase over 2010.
Continue reading "Securities Violations Increase" »
When world markets move significantly in apparent response to major macroeconomic news, even supposedly “uncorrelated assets” move in unison with them, according to Jason Zweig’s Wall Street Journal article, “Caging Raging Contagion.” Such a significant move occurred last week when the Italian government and bonds collapsed over its fiscal problems, and everything else fell, too.
Continue reading "High Correlations Among Asset Classes Means There's No Place To Hide" »
Unfortunately, many investors are experiencing first hand the truism that hedge fund managers rarely outperform the market on consistent basis.
John Paulson, the hedge fund manager who made a killing when Goldman Sachs let him select bad CDO assets, which he turned around and bet against, is having a tough time in 2011. His hedge fund has declined nearly 50% this year as a result of a massive positions in Bank of America, which had lost half of its value by October, Rupert Murdoch’s scandal-plagued News Corp., which owns Fox News, and Sino-Forest Corp., which imploded after an accounting scandal.
Continue reading "Hedge Fund Heroes Getting Battered" »
Many commentators have noted recently that the Wall Street meltdown of 2007-2008 was not a “black swan” – that is, an unprecedented and therefore unpredictable occurrence. Named for an influential 2007 book titled The Black Swan by investment fund manager Nassim Nicholas Talib, the black swan was used as a metaphor to explain why humans rely too much on the past to predict future events, and it has since been used as a defense by Wall Street to justify its inability to predict the 2008 crash. Talib himself maintains that the 2008 crisis was not a black swan event because, unlike the avian rarity of nature, it was predictable. The crisis was not only predictable, but it was actually predicted by many analysts whose voices were either ignored by the firms that employed them, or drowned out by the exuberant hype of brokers pushing the firms’ latest financial products without regard for their soundness.
Continue reading "The 2007-2008 Financial Crisis was not a 'Black Swan' Event" »
U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff has been asked by the SEC and Citigroup to approve a settlement of charges that Citigroup misled investors in a $1 billion dollar CDO deal called Class Funding III that was tied to residential mortgage-backed securities. Citigroup would pay a $95 million penalty and not admit fault. The Judge has some tough questions that he wants answered at a hearing before him in his courtroom on November 9.
Continue reading "Judge Challenges 'Cozy' Deal Between the SEC and Citigroup" »
Reuters blogger Felix Salmon seems to see evidence of the SEC colluding with banks to let them off the hook for most of their “built to fail” synthetic (derivatives-based) CDOs (see “Is the SEC colluding with banks on CDO prosecutions?”). What has raised eyebrows was an email from a Citigroup spokesperson saying that Citigroup has settled all its potential liabilities with the SEC by agreeing to pay $285 million in a case involving a single collateralized debt obligation (CDO) transaction (i.e., Class V Funding III). According to this email, Citigroup believes “the SEC has completed its CDO investigation(s) of Citi” and will not be examining any of the dozens of similar CDO deals.
Continue reading "Is the SEC Selectively Enforcing the Securities Laws?" »
Many investors in alternative investments are in for unpleasant surprises. Alternative investments are very popular these days, as traditional stock and bond investments are not doing well. Alternative Investments include a wide variety of investments that fall outside the traditional stock and bond categories. Examples include structured products (such as principal protected notes and reverse convertibles); hedge funds; private equity; nontraded REITs; niche, leveraged, inverse leveraged, and synthetic exchange traded funds; and many others.
Continue reading "Alternative Investments - High Risk 'Pigs in a Poke'" »
Prices and sales in the housing market appear to be grim through 2015 according to economists, builders and others in the industry. The biggest drop already occurred in 2008. Ancillary industries such as landscaping, mortgage lending, and home improvement feel the loss as well.
Continue reading "The Housing Markets Aren't Bouncing Back" »
A Bank of America employee will collect $930,000 from his former employer, Bank of America, for being fired in violation of the whistleblower protections. The employee blew the whistle on fraud at Countrywide Financial Corp. and led internal investigations that found “pervasive wire, mail and bank fraud involving Countrywide employees,” according to the U.S. Department of Labor. He was terminated soon after the bank acquired Countrywide in 2008. In addition, Bank of America must reinstate the whistleblower. He claimed that others who tried to report fraud to Countrywide’s employee-relations department suffered persistent retaliation. The $930,000 includes back wages, interest, compensatory damages and attorney fees.
Continue reading "Whistleblower Problems Add to Bank of America's Woes" »
In recent years, hedge funds have become dominant players in the investment markets and the evidence suggests that hedge fund trading (which regularly involves thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of shares) has been a significant contributing factor to market volatility.
Continue reading "Do Hedge Funds Create and Burst Bubbles for their Own Benefit?" »
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 a later time. Investors need to appreciate that time is running out on their claims, and they should act now or forever hold their peace.
Continue reading "Time Is Running Out On Credit Crisis Legal Claims" »
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.
