April 28, 2010

Goldman Sachs Refuses to Confirm that "Goldman Puts Its Clients' Interests First

“Who wants to entrust their money to a Goldman Sachs fund after this?” asks Brett Arends in his ROI column in the Wall Street Journal. Arends is referring to the sorry spectacle of a Senate hearing at which four Goldman executives were asked questions about the firm's role in the collapse of the mortgage market. They seemed unable or unwilling to explain why Goldman sold investments that internal Goldman emails described as “shitty.”

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April 8, 2010

Regulators Sue Morgan Keegan Over Toxic Bond Funds

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Morgan Keegan and its touted managing director, James Kelsoe, with securities fraud for deliberately inflating the value of subprime securities in order to hide losses in Morgan Keegan’s proprietary toxic bond mutual funds. See Joe Bel Bruno’s recent Wall Street Journal article, “Morgan Keegan and Its Onetime Star Kelsoe Charged by SEC.”

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March 17, 2010

Sophisticated Investors Win Millions in Toxic Bond Fund Cases Against Morgan Keegan

In two recently decided arbitrations against Morgan Keegan related to its collapsed bond funds, the investors were awarded over $3.6 million, according to an article by Christopher Sheffield in the Memphis Business Journal, “Morgan Keegan pays out $3.6 million in February.”

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March 2, 2010

Morgan Keegan's Legal Costs Soar Under an Avalanche of Claims

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 Feb. 25 article in InvestmentNews by Bruce Kelly.

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March 1, 2010

Tennessee State Court Ruling Undermines Securities Arbitration

A Memphis, Tennessee Chancery court has vacated an award in favor of an investor that was issued by a FINRA arbitration panel in a Morgan Keegan bond fund case. Vacatur of an arbitration award is highly unusual, and should not occur without proof of some corruption in the process, such as evident partiality of an arbitrator. The reason given by the Tennessee court was that two of the arbitrators were “biased” because they had previously ruled against Morgan Keegan in another Morgan Keegan bond fund case.

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February 18, 2010

Are Investors Being Adequately Informed about the Risks of Target Date Mutual Funds?

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission will begin examining the marketing of retirement products known as target-date mutual funds. “SEC to Examine Marketing of ‘Target Date’ Funds,” Feb. 6, 2010, by Fawn Johnson.

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February 13, 2010

What Are Exchange Traded Funds?

What is an exchange traded fund? John Waggoner explains in his Feb. 12 column in USAToday, “What the heck are ETFs? It’s complicated.” Waggoner is USA TODAY's investing columnist, and formerly was senior editor at The Independent Investor, then the nation's third-largest investment advisory newsletter.

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