WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has several active investigations into possible wrongdoing by high-frequency stock traders and other equity market structure issues, SEC Chair Mary Jo White said Tuesday. “We currently... More »
(Reuters) – The chief executive of Japan’s Mt. Gox, once the world’s leading bitcoin exchange, was ordered to the United States to answer questions related to its U.S. bankruptcy case, filed after the company lost $400 million of customers’ digital currency. U... More »
(Reuters) – New guidance about social media from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission gives certain financial advisers some leeway to promote client reviews of their services that appear on third-party social media websites. The guidance is likely to ea... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court will on Monday delve into the hotly contested question of when software is eligible for patent protection. The nine justices will hear a one-hour oral argument in a case of interest not just to software companies b... More »
(Reuters) – BlackBerry Ltd won a preliminary injunction on Friday to ban Ryan Seacrest’s Typo Products LLC from selling a $99 iPhone case after a judge agreed that television host’s company had likely infringed on BlackBerry’s patents. U.S. District Judge Will... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal judge in New York granted class certification on Friday to a group of consumers who sued Apple Inc for conspiring with five major publishers to fix e-book prices in violation of antitrust law. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote said... More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Friday rejected a request from Apple, Google and two other tech companies to avoid a trial in a class action lawsuit alleging a scheme to drive down wages. Tech workers sued the companies alleging they conspired to avo... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – State securities regulators have hired a former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer to help them win a rare and high-stakes jurisdictional dispute with the SEC. The North American Securities Administrators Association, or NASAA, re... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A British court ruling that has set back the London Metal Exchange’s sweeping warehouse reforms has handed CME Group an unexpected windfall just weeks before it launches an audacious challenge to the world’s biggest aluminum contract. The ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – State securities regulators have hired a former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer to help them win a rare and high-stakes jurisdictional dispute with the SEC. The North American Securities Administrators Association, or NASAA, re... More »
(Reuters) – A federal judge has recommended dismissal of a U.S. government lawsuit accusing Bank of America Corp of defrauding investors into buying about $855 million of mortgage securities that soured during the global financial crisis. If it stands, Thursda... More »
SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) – Apple Inc, Google Inc and two other Silicon Valley companies are making progress toward settling a closely watched lawsuit where tech workers allege the companies conspired to avoid competing for each other’s employees in order... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. corporate governance rules make it too easy for activist investors to get politically driven shareholder proposals onto public company ballots and should be overhauled, a top U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission official said Thu... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. banks will tell shareholders on Wednesday how much they plan to pay out after the U.S. Federal Reserve unveils whether they can afford the cost and still be robust enough to weather the next crisis. It is part of a two-step annual r... More »
YANCHENG, China (Reuters) – Rural banks in China’s eastern city of Yancheng stacked piles of cash in plain view behind teller windows to calm depositors queuing at bank branches for a third straight day on Wednesday following rumors that they had run out of ca... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – In the end, one of the highest-profile antitrust cases in years failed to make much of an impression on some of the very people the lawsuit was meant to benefit. Customers of Amazon.com Inc and other e-book retailers on Tuesday began recei... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers are considering calling on former General Motors Co executives and employees from parts supplier Delphi Automotive to testify as they cast a wide net in their probe of GM’s recall of 1.6 million vehicles with potentially l... More »
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s opposition said on Tuesday a government telecom bill undermines a new watchdog by keeping key regulatory powers in the executive’s hands, in a spat that could stall the passage of rules aimed at curbing cell phone mogul Carlos ... More »
ZURICH (Reuters) – The Swiss government is set to appoint British-born former banker Mark Branson as the first non-Swiss national to head its financial regulator, two sources said, just as the body probes currency markets and prepares for a major review of big... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former customers of Bernard Madoff will have recouped nearly $6 billion of their money if a federal bankruptcy judge approves the latest payout request by the trustee liquidating the swindler’s firm. The trustee, New York lawyer Irving Pic... More »
(Reuters) – The outcomes of nearly 40 securities arbitration cases dating back more than 15 years and involving some of Wall Street’s most well-known brokerages could be compromised because one of the arbitrators who heard them allegedly lied about being a law... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Deutsche Bank AG has failed to win the dismissal of four U.S. lawsuits seeking to force it to pay damages or buy back troubled home loans it had packaged into residential mortgage-backed securities prior to the 2008 financial crisis. The c... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Florida and other U.S. states will join the Justice Department in seeking to determine if Comcast’s plan to merge with Time Warner Cable is legal under U.S. antitrust law, Florida officials told Reuters. Comcast shares slipped just over ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has reached a $1 billion settlement with Toyota Motor Corp over the automaker’s handling of consumer complaints tied to unintended vehicle acceleration and is set to announce the agreement as early as Wednesda... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York state’s attorney general on Tuesday said U.S. stock exchanges and alternative trading platforms provide high-frequency traders with unfair technological advantages that give them early access to key data. The stock exchanges allow... More »
(Reuters) – A proposal by Wall Street’s industry-funded watchdog to ramp up oversight of securities brokerages could expose clearing firms to more enforcement actions and lawsuits, lawyers say. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has said it wants to r... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lions Gate Entertainment Corp admitted on Thursday it failed to disclose to investors in 2010 the steps it took to thwart a hostile takeover bid by billionaire Carl Icahn, as part of a settlement with U.S. regulators. Lions Gate, which p... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. securities regulators filed civil charges against two brokers and seven others, saying they were involved in a scheme to profit from the death of terminally ill patients through variable annuity sales. The Securities and Exchange Co... More »
DETROIT (Reuters) – General Motors hired two law firms with ties to the automaker to look into its recall of cars blamed for 13 deaths, and a Congressional committee said it would also investigate the company’s response to a defect that first came to light a d... More »
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (Reuters) – Prosecutors said greed motivated former Jefferies Group Inc trader Jesse Litvak to defraud the government on mortgage securities, while defense lawyers said their client’s “fibs” were perfectly acceptable, during closing argu... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Victims of Bernard Madoff’s epic fraud may be able to recoup only a small portion of the billions of dollars he allegedly funneled to selected customers in the last years of his Ponzi scheme. At a hearing on Wednesday, a panel of the 2nd U... More »
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (Reuters) – Lawyers for Jesse Litvak wrapped up their defense of the former Jefferies Group Inc trader on federal fraud charges without his taking the stand, putting the case on track to go to the jury by late Wednesday. After two weeks ... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – The Federal Trade Commission on Friday refused to tip its hand on how it may be react to allegations that Herbalife is a fraud, but said it is taking a lawmaker’s concerns about the company seriously and underscored its record of shutting do... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Justice Department is dragging its feet on prosecuting Swiss banks that helped Americans evade taxes and on collecting billions of dollars likely owed to the U.S. Treasury by tax dodgers, a powerful U.S. Senate panel said on Tuesday.... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators released a scaled-back proposal on Tuesday that seeks to soothe industry concerns over a plan to force issuers of asset-backed securities to disclose sensitive loan-level data to investors. The Securities and Exchange Com... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Securities and Exchange Commission is developing a plan to step up its scrutiny of the country’s largest and riskiest asset managers, SEC Chair Mary Jo White said on Friday. The extra focus on the sector comes as the new U.S. risk co... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The annual “SEC Speaks” conference is usually a sea of dark business suits, as buttoned-down lawyers descend on Washington to hear Securities and Exchange Commission regulators describe their priorities. This year, a man in a gray hoodie... More »
(Reuters) – Credit Suisse Group AG agreed to pay $196.5 million and admit wrongdoing to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it provided cross-border brokerage and investment advisory services to U.S. clients without first registering wi... More »
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel said on Wednesday it was considering regulation of bitcoin and warned citizens that using such decentralized virtual currencies was risky. As a crypto-currency, bitcoin is passed between two parties digitally and can be traded on e... More »
WASHINGTON/BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday seeking to reverse lower court decisions ordering the country to pay $1.33 billion to hedge fund creditors in a case Argentine officials warn could force it to d... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – In an unusual move, Bernard Madoff’s former back-office director took the witness stand in his own defense on Tuesday, telling a federal jury that he had no idea his boss was operating a Ponzi scheme until the day Madoff was arrested in De... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday strengthened the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s ability to recover insider trading profit from people who do not personally benefit directly from their alleged illegal trades. By a 2-1 ... More »
(Reuters) – Wall Street veterans would no longer be allowed to act as arbitrators in many legal disputes between investors and their brokerages under a proposal that a U.S. regulator will present to its board on Thursday, a person familiar with the matter said... More »
FRANKFURT/LINKOPING, Sweden (Reuters) – Some of the euro zone’s lenders have no future and should be allowed to go under if they fail a health check, the bloc’s new banking supervisor told the Financial Times, underscoring a tougher approach to banking oversig... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Mathew Martoma, a former portfolio manager at billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors hedge fund, was found guilty on Thursday of engaging in what prosecutors called the most lucrative insider trading scheme in U.S. history. A f... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators plan to seek input on how to improve public data used to spot discriminatory lending and other possible abuses in the mortgage market, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said on Friday. Lenders already must report l... More »
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – EU lawmakers called on Thursday for a strengthening of plans to tackle failed banks in the euro zone, as tensions mounted in talks to seal the important reform. The call from the European Parliament comes as efforts to form a united front ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The chief of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service said on Friday that a new law meant to fight offshore tax dodging by Americans will not be delayed again beyond its July 1 effective date, despite a clamor among banks asking for more time a... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors have criminally charged a former Wells Fargo & Co broker and a banker with insider trading in Burger King securities ahead of a 2010 buyout of the fast-food chain. Waldyr Da Silva Prado Neto, who worked for Wells Fargo Adv... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Chinese units of the global “Big Four” accounting firms should be suspended from practicing in the United States for six months, a U.S. judge ruled, in an escalation in a long-running dispute over regulators’ access to audit documents. I... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Representatives from Germany’s financial watchdog Bafin will visit the London offices of Deutsche Bank, the country’s biggest lender, as it steps up investigations into alleged currency market manipulation, a source familiar with the process... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Global regulators are planning the world’s first common rule within three years to value hard-to-price assets held by banks after unexpected revisions have unsettled investors, the man overseeing the plan told Reuters. The initiative may fac... More »
(Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co and U.S. Bancorp said on Friday they would stop offering customers a type of small, short-term loan that has come under regulatory scrutiny. The so-called deposit advance products are similar to payday loans, in that they are both ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Phil Falcone, the billionaire investor whose Harbinger Capital Partners owns wireless satellite company LightSquared, said Thursday he expended considerable energy in 2012 and 2013 trying to work out who was buying up LightSquared’s debt. ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A doctor testifying in the insider trading trial of Mathew Martoma said Wednesday the former SAC Capital Advisors trader appeared to already know results from a drug trial that many researchers in the study themselves had only just learned... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Nasdaq OMX Group is prepared to walk away from running the data processor that was at the center of a three-hour trading halt in August, in a sign of its frustration with the pace of talks over implementing fixes for the system, according ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Prosecutors “rushed to judgment” in charging former SAC Capital Advisors portfolio manager Mathew Martoma with insider trading, his lawyer told jurors on Friday. Richard Strassberg, Martoma’s attorney, argued there were “many, many indepen... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Years before he was accused of insider trading, former SAC Capital Advisors portfolio manager Mathew Martoma forged a Harvard transcript, falsified an email, and created a dummy forensic computing company to try to cover his tracks, accord... More »
(Reuters) – BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest asset manager, agreed to end its analyst survey program worldwide, as part of an agreement reached Wednesday with the New York Attorney General’s office. The agreement stems from an investigation by New York Attor... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Banks in the European Union face limits on taking market bets with their own money under a draft EU proposal that represents a central plank of attempts to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009. Policymakers want to rein i... More »
(Reuters) – Hulu has failed to persuade a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the video streaming service of illegally sharing users’ viewing history with Facebook Inc and business metrics company comScore Inc. In San Francisco on Friday, U.S. Magistra... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Aerospace and defense group Rolls-Royce said Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) had launched a formal investigation into concerns raised a year ago of possible bribery and corruption in China and Indonesia. Rolls Royce, the world’s second-... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is on a collision course with regulators abroad as it plans to force foreign banks to comply with a host of new rules for risky derivatives, two sources close to the European Union said on Friday. The U.S. swaps regulat... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Start-up companies will be able to raise much more capital through certain public stock deals without facing costly regulatory burdens under a proposal announced by U.S. securities regulators on Wednesday. The Securities and Exchange Com... More »
ZURICH (Reuters) – Several Swiss regional banks said on Monday they would cooperate with U.S. officials to avoid prosecution in a crackdown on Swiss lenders suspected of helping wealthy Americans evade taxes through offshore accounts. Banque Cantonale Vaudoise... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Major U.S. wireless carriers on Thursday pledged to make it easier for consumers to “unlock” their mobile phones for use on competitors’ networks, responding to pressure from consumer groups and the top U.S. communications regulator. Ver... More »
(Reuters) – The top U.S. securities regulator is stepping up scrutiny of “reverse churning,” a practice in which brokerage firms trade very infrequently in accounts they manage for fixed fees, according to an official. The issue will be a priority in the Secur... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Republican Senator Judd Gregg is stepping down from his post as chief executive of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) after less than a year in the position. The board of SIFMA, a major Wall Street t... More »
ZURICH (Reuters) – Two more Swiss banks said they would work with U.S. officials in a crackdown on wealthy Americans evading taxes through hidden offshore accounts, a trickle that could rise to about one third of the country’s private banks. The number that pa... More »
(Reuters) – Banks and asset managers scored some small victories after U.S. regulators narrowed the scope of a provision in the Volcker rule that restricts banks’ ownership stake in hedge funds and private equity funds. The final version of the Volcker rule, r... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. banks will no longer be able to make big trading bets with their own money after regulators finalized on Tuesday a rule shutting down what was a hugely profitable business for Wall Street before the credit crisis. The measure known ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. banks will no longer be able to make big trading bets with their own money after regulators on Tuesday finalized the Volcker rule and shut down what was a hugely profitable business for Wall Street before the credit crisis. After st... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – The European Union’s executive has ruled out hasty curbs on “shadow banking”, or simplistic trading restrictions on mainstream lenders, in case it ends up crimping finance for the economy. Testimony to Britain’s parliament from Patrick Pears... More »
(Reuters) – The fight over defunct Nortel Networks’ $7.5 billion in cash will be decided in joint U.S.-Canadian court hearings and not in arbitration, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia upheld ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to rule on the divisive issue of what kinds of software are eligible for patent protection in a case being closely watched by the technology industry. The court’s decision may prove key to deciding unde... More »
(Reuters) – Arbitrators who hear legal disputes between investors and their brokerage firms could receive their first pay hike in 14 years under a proposal approved by Wall Street’s industry-funded watchdog, according to a notice. The Financial Industry Regula... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A top U.S. securities regulator on Friday called for reforms to streamline the disclosures that public companies are required to file, saying he is concerned that some company filings may not actually be helpful to investors. “I often he... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Three Wall Street trade groups sued the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Wednesday in hopes of beating back tough overseas trading guidelines they fear could hurt markets and cut profits. The groups accused the CFTC in their ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bank of America Corp has agreed to pay $20 million to settle a lawsuit in which investors accused it of rigging bids for municipal securities, court papers filed on Wednesday show. The settlement is part of litigation that began in March 2... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would largely spare private equity fund advisers from federal regulations enacted after the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The bill would exempt many private equity fund advi... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Negotiations over sweeping changes to European Union securities market rules enter what may be the final stretch on Wednesday with several key elements already agreed. The bloc’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive or MiFID is being u... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bernard Madoff’s longtime lieutenant testified on Monday that several former colleagues were deeply enmeshed in Madoff’s decades-long Ponzi scheme, using everything from fake trades to a refrigerator to hide the truth about the fraud. Fran... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday called for changes to the U.S. financial risk council that could slow the process by which it designates large financial firms as “systemic,” subjecting them to tougher supervision. In a five-page l... More »
(Reuters) – A California federal judge has dismissed a consumer lawsuit over data privacy against Apple Inc, saying the plaintiffs had failed to show they had relied on any alleged company misrepresentations and that they had suffered harm. The four plaintiffs... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s antitrust watchdog has dropped an investigation into Amazon after the world’s biggest Internet retailer agreed to stop forcing third-party merchants to offer their cheapest price when selling products on its platform. Amazon said i... More »
(Reuters) – China’s anti-trust investigation into Qualcomm, the world’s biggest smartphone chip maker, is likely tied to the impending $16 billion rollout of commercial fourth-generation services by China’s big telecoms carriers. The probe by the National Deve... More »
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – U.S. advertising company Omnicom Group Inc and French peer Publicis Groupe SA have asked European Union antitrust regulators to approve their proposed $35.1 billion merger to create the world number one agency. Omnicom, the world’s second ... More »
(Reuters) – A penny stock financier based in Long Island, New York, and his companies agreed to pay $1.46 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges that they sold more than 3 billion shares in two microcap companies at a profit without ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Credit-rating agencies that also offer consulting and risk-management services are taking proper steps to mitigate potential conflicts of interest and should not face additional regulations, the Securities and Exchange Commission said on... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators are considering whether to give banks more time to comply with the Volcker rule, which bans them from gambling with their own money, Federal Reserve Vice-Chair Janet Yellen said in a November 18 letter. Yellen, nominated ... More »
(Reuters) – The United States rejected Fairholme Capital Management’s recapitalization proposal of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying the only way to revamp the home loan market is through proper housing finance reform, according to Gene Sperling, a senior adv... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. congressional panel on Wednesday approved a bill targeting patent “trolls,” companies that buy or license patents from others and then aggressively pursue licensing fees or file infringement lawsuits. The House of Representatives ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve is weighing whether banks should get more time to comply with the Volcker rule, which bans them from trading with their own money, Federal Reserve Vice-Chair Janet Yellen said in a November 18 letter to a U.S. Senator... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New rules to simplify the paperwork consumers receive when they apply for loans will take effect in August 2015 as part of a U.S. effort to make it easier to shop for mortgages. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said on Wednesday ... More »
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In late September, JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon walked into the office of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. “We’re willing to take our lumps,” he said, according to a person briefed on the matter. “We don’t think there ... More »
(Reuters) – A former trader was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on Tuesday for an unauthorized purchase of about $1 billion in Apple Inc stock that eventually led to the demise of financial services firm Rochdale Securities. David Miller, 41, was sentenced ... More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc will pay $17 million to settle allegations by 37 states and the District of Columbia that it secretly tracked Web users by placing special digital files on the Web browsers of their smartphones. The deal, announced Monday m... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – When U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced at a televised press conference on November 4 that Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors would plead guilty to insider trading, two prosecutors stood quietly to his right. In coming weeks those t... More »
MADRID (Reuters) – A former JPMorgan Chase executive accused of helping to hide trading losses in a $6.2 billion financial scandal at the bank rejected on Friday a U.S. extradition request, which will now rest in the hands of courts in his native Spain. Javier... More »
(Reuters) – Starbucks Corp said it would restate fourth-quarter results to show an operating loss of $2.12 billion to reflect damages related to its dispute with Kraft Foods. Starbucks shares were down 1.8 percent at $79.15 in trading before the bell. An arbit... More »
