LONDON (Reuters) – ICAP, the world’s largest interdealer broker, said on Wednesday it had no reason to believe any of its brokers are linked to an alleged manipulation of foreign exchange markets under investigation by financial watchdogs. Regulators in the Un... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Tuesday named Timothy Massad, a lawyer who oversaw the U.S. government’s $700 billion bank bailout program, as the next head of one of Wall Street’s most powerful supervisors. If confirmed by the Senate as chair... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street’s industry-funded watchdog is developing a new rule that would require clearing firms to regularly provide it with data about brokerage transactions, U.S. regulators said on Tuesday. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Some brokerages still do not have proper buffers in place to protect against technology errors or rogue algorithms which could rile markets, although many have improved their compliance with new rules, U.S. regulators said on Tuesday. So-c... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Manhattan federal judge signaled on Tuesday that he will not rubber-stamp a central component of billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors LP’s record $1.2 billion insider trading settlement with the government, saying he needs ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. securities regulators will hold a roundtable next month to discuss the role of proxy advisory firms, in what could mark the first step toward drafting new regulations for the industry. The decision by the Securities and Exchange Com... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Barclays has suspended several traders amid multiple investigations into possible manipulation of benchmark foreign exchange rates, a banking industry source said on Friday. A string of banks, including Standard Chartered, JP Morga... More »
(Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, disclosed on Friday that the U.S. Department of Justice and agencies from other jurisdictions are investigating hiring practices in Hong Kong that were already being probed by the U.S. Securitie... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives passed a controversial bill on Tuesday that would delay two government regulators from adopting rules requiring stock brokers and retirement account financial advisers to put their customers’ interests a... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission vowed to plow ahead with controversial new rules requiring hedge funds to disclose details about private stock deals before advertising them, a move that is likely to irk the indust... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A deal between SAC Capital and U.S. prosecutors to resolve a criminal insider trading case against the firm could come in a few days, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Any potential deal between Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capi... More »
BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hedge fund manager Philip Falcone, banned from the securities industry for five years by U.S. regulators, is also being banned for seven years from decision-making roles at Fidelity & Guaranty Life Insurance, a unit of his firm, New... More »
(Reuters) – Twitter’s acquisition offer for MoPub, a mobile advertising exchange, will not be challenged by antitrust regulators ahead of the microblogging service’s initial public offering, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Twitter announced on Septe... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to consider whether severance pay to workers laid off involuntarily is subject to federal payroll tax in a case the Obama administration has warned could affect $1 billion in tax refund claims. Th... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission would continue reviewing IPO applications and monitoring markets as normal in the early weeks of a government shutdown, but market players are increasingly anxious about the prospect of a prolo... More »
(Reuters) – Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team, is set to go on trial on Monday to face civil charges that he committed insider trading in shares of a little-known internet search company nearly a decade ago. Cuban, 5... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A top Federal Reserve official on Friday took a swipe at a fellow U.S. regulator’s proposal to rein in money market mutual funds, saying a key part of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s plan is a step backward and should be ditched. ... More »
(Reuters) – The Securities and Exchange Commission said it has uncovered an “extensive and egregious” Ponzi scheme run by a Las Vegas executive who raised more than $800 million from thousands of investors, mainly from Japan, over nearly 15 years. A federal ju... More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Entrepreneur Nicole O’Rourke has a novel idea for raising cash that would have been illegal until this week: smacking a “fund me” sticker on every bottle or can of hair products from her start-up business, Rock Your Hair. O’Rourke is ... More »
LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. and British authorities on Wednesday fined ICAP, the world’s biggest interdealer broker, $87 million and filed criminal charges against three former employees over the Libor interest rate rigging scandal. The scandal, which h... More »
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators on Wednesday closed a five-year investigation into alleged manipulation of the silver market, saying 7,000 staff hours of investigation produced no evidence of wrongdoing. The decision by the Commodity Futures Tr... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors announced Monday they had indicted a former executive vice president of the wireless technology company Qualcomm Inc for insider-trading and conspiring with his brother and his broker to launder the money and obstruct... More »
(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department is preparing to sue JPMorgan Chase & Co over mortgage bonds it sold in the run-up to the financial crisis, a sign the bank’s legal troubles are not yet over. A lawsuit, first reported by Reuters, could come as early as T... More »
(Reuters) – It’s $1 billion in payouts that JPMorgan Chase & Co most likely wants to forget. In agreements with regulators totaling $1 billion and made public on Thursday, the nation’s biggest bank settled four civil investigations into its “London Whale” trad... More »
(Reuters) – Wall Street brokers must keep their clients in the loop about bonuses they receive when the brokers switch firms, under a preliminary measure approved by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s board on Thursday. The board has authorized FINR... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. corporations will need to disclose how the paychecks of their chief executive officers compare with those of their workers under a new proposal released on Wednesday by a sharply divided U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. With... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. corporations will need to disclose how their chief executive’s paycheck compares to that of their average worker under a proposal set to be unveiled on Wednesday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC’s CEO pay rati... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators are stepping up their scrutiny of the private securities market in anticipation of the lifting on Monday of an 80-year-old ban on advertising by hedge funds to investors. Starting on Monday, hedge funds, private equity fu... More »
VILNIUS (Reuters) – Work will pick up after Germany’s elections to set up a European agency that can order the restructuring or closure of any euro zone bank, the head of group’s finance ministers Jeroen Dijsselbloem said on Saturday. The agency, called the Si... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Will top bankers’ behavior ever land them in jail? Or are bad business decisions even a crime at all? Five years on from the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the debate over how to hold senior bank bosses to account for failures is far from ov... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority has fined AXA Wealth Services 1.8 million pounds ($2.85 million) for giving unsuitable investment advice to thousands of retail customers. The British wealth management unit of the French insurer sold ap... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two key Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are questioning whether federal securities regulators are spending too much of their time conducting compliance examinations of private equity fund advisers, saying sophisticated i... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. House of Representatives committee is investigating whether federal securities regulators are using last century’s tools to review corporations’ books despite a rule that requires them to use 21st century technology. House Oversig... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A potential landmark case for U.S. regulation of Internet traffic goes before a panel of federal judges on Monday, testing whether the Federal Telecommunications Commission has authority to enforce so-called net neutrality rules. Net neu... More »
SINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Expert networks – a matchmaking service that connects investors with industry experts – are under scrutiny from regulators in the United States, but are expanding across Asia where the market for corporate intelligence is less t... More »
WASHINGTON/BERN (Reuters) – The United States and Switzerland have struck a deal to allow some Swiss banks to pay fines to avoid or defer prosecution over tax evasion by their U.S. customers, moving closer towards ending a long-running dispute. The deal will a... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. tax authorities can assess penalties broadly on taxpayers using tax shelters, an appeals court said on Tuesday, in a decision that could influence a similar case set for oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court in October. With a lo... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will sit down with the leading U.S. financial market regulators on Monday to discuss their progress in implementing the 2010 Wall Street reform law, the White House said on Sunday. The Dodd-Frank law was passed by ... More »
(Reuters) – The U.S. securities regulator on Thursday banned former press baron Conrad Black from acting as a director of a U.S. company and said he must pay $4.1 million in restitution in a settlement that ends a long-standing lawsuit over Black’s dealings as... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The JPMorgan Chase & Co executives who supervised the traders at the center of the “London Whale” scandal are unlikely to face any charges over a trading debacle that cost the largest U.S. bank more than $6.2 billion, people familiar with ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – The U.S. commodities market regulator has subpoenaed a number of major metals warehousing firms, including Switzerland-based commodities giant Glencore, seeking documents and communications from the last three years as an inquiry into compla... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – The U.S. commodities market regulator has subpoenaed a metals warehousing firm, seeking all of its documents and communications related to the London Metal Exchange since January 2010, as an inquiry into complaints about inflated metals pric... More »
(Reuters) – Canada will sell off wireless spectrum next year as planned, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Friday, despite protests by major telecoms firms that the auction rules favor the entry into the market of U.S. giant Verizon Communications Inc. The... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street’s industry-funded watchdog on Tuesday warned that scammers are turning to a rather old-fashioned strategy for defrauding investors – the phone call. “In a new twist to Internet ‘phishing schemes,’ which use spam email to lure y... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple Inc is headed for a showdown with the U.S. government and dozens of states, which on Friday urged that tough new restrictions be imposed on the company for illegally conspiring to raise e-book prices. The changes proposed by the U.S.... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple Inc is headed for a showdown with the U.S. government and dozens of states, which on Friday urged that tough new restrictions be imposed on the company for illegally conspiring to raise e-book prices. The changes proposed by the U.S.... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street’s industry-funded regulator, FINRA, will review a controversial practice in arbitration cases that critics say makes it too easy for brokers to scrub some black marks from their records, according to an official with the organi... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top securities regulator on Wednesday set new rules to protect clients with cash or securities at securities brokers, requiring more disclosure and safeguards from firms including some of Wall Street’s largest. The Securities and Exc... More »
(Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed rules on Friday that would require food companies to verify that the products they import meet certain safety standards. The rules are the latest in a series proposed under the Food Safety Modernizatio... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Steven Cohen’s hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors LLP, pleaded not guilty in federal court on Friday, one day after it was indicted on insider-trading charges. The firm’s general counsel, Peter Nussbaum, flanked by five defense lawyers, ente... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors indicted billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s hedge fund for insider trading, a rare move that could end the career of one of Wall Street’s most successful investors and trigger a fundamental change in how traders try to gain an ... More »
(Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected Twenty-First Century Fox Inc’s effort to stop Dish Network Corp from selling devices that let viewers skip over commercials on primetime broadcast shows. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a l... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fabrice Tourre, the former Goldman Sachs trader accused of secretly helping the hedge fund of billionaire John Paulson construct a $2 billion deal it could bet against in 2007, is set to testify Wednesday in his civil fraud trial. The U.S.... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A key witness is scheduled to testify on Tuesday in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s case accusing former Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice Tourre of misleading investors in a 2007 bond deal. The SEC has said in court papers that L... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said investment firms that repeatedly violate the law should be concerned that they will eventually be held accountable. “People should be afraid that bad actions they have committed in the past” will ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A House of Representatives Republican who oversees an investigative committee said on Friday the new U.S. systemic risk council overstepped its authority with an attempt to push through rules to rein in the $2.6 trillion money market fun... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top U.S. derivatives regulator is within reach of a compromise over how its rules apply to foreign companies dealing with U.S. banks, a source close to the negotiations told Reuters. Friday is the last day the Commodity Trading Futur... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators on Wednesday lifted an 80-year-old ban on advertising by hedge funds, private equity firms and other companies, paving the way for asset managers to reach a new swath of investors through television and the Internet. The ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. consumer watchdog on Wednesday warned lenders it will crack down on unfair and misleading debt collection practices, part of growing scrutiny of how financial firms treat consumers who owe them money. Banks and third-party compa... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – The global bond market shock of recent weeks may be closer to an ‘old normal’ than some new world of fragile, over-regulated markets posited by many banks and brokers to explain the rout. One narrative behind the surge in bond yields around ... More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Stockton, California’s city council voted on Tuesday night to put a measure increasing the city’s sales tax on the November ballot to raise revenue to help the city exit from bankruptcy and to increase spending on public safety. The v... More »
(Reuters) – Foreign gamblers cannot be taxed on every winning bet they make in U.S. casinos when they end up losing money overall, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday, rejecting current Internal Revenue Service policy. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Di... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A top Republican senator unveiled legislation on Tuesday that would radically change public pensions by having life insurance companies pay benefits through annuity contracts, helping to alleviate the underfunding that has engulfed many ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A powerful Senator would like to use life insurance companies to help alleviate the funding crisis that has engulfed many public pensions. Utah’s Senator Orrin Hatch, the top-ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, will introduce le... More »
WASHINGTON/HONG KONG (Reuters) – In one week, the United States is scheduled to begin registering foreign financial firms with U.S. customers for a new anti-tax evasion law, despite industry lobbying to secure another implementation delay. The Internal Revenue... More »
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – It probably seemed like a good idea to Federal Reserve officials at the time. But their decision to stick Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke out on live television two weeks ago to explain how the Fed aims to scale back and eventually en... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Reserve pledged to draft tough rules for Wall Street while shielding smaller banks from some of the harshest impact of the global Basel III capital rules it adopted on Tuesday. The central bank voted in favor of the long... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sprint Nextel Corp must face a lawsuit brought by New York state accusing the company of deliberately not collecting or paying millions of dollars of taxes for its cell phone service, a judge has ruled. In a decision made public on Monday,... More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – U.S. regulators warned leading Internet firms including Google Inc. to better identify paid ads in search results, particularly as new technology such as mobile services and voice-based online services become more common. The U.S. Fed... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The economy is headed in the right direction but more needs to be done to speed up the recovery and put more people back to work, a top White House economic adviser said on Friday. “There is a lot more of work to be done, given how many ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Institutional Shareholder Services has settled civil charges by U.S. regulators that an employee of the prominent proxy advisory firm shared nonpublic voting data in exchange for meals and concert tickets. The Securities and Exchange Com... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Wall Street brokerages’ use of mandatory arbitration clauses merits a regulatory review, but the Securities and Exchange Commission will not have time to undertake one before 2014, an SEC commissioner said on Monday. The agency will wrap... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top securities regulator remained tight-lipped on Friday about the details of her agency’s efforts to craft reforms for money market funds, probably disappointing an audience of fund industry executives who gathered in Washington for... More »
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese regulators have stripped U.S.-based MRI International Inc of its registration as an asset manager and may pursue criminal charges against the firm, accusing it of mismanaging client funds and falsifying reports. The second such scand... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has named two former federal prosecutors as co-heads of enforcement, in one of new agency chief Mary Jo White’s first actions on the job. George Canellos and Andrew Ceresney will serve as co-di... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Dish Network Corp is asking regulators to suspend the review of the proposed acquisition of Sprint Nextel Corp to Japan’s SoftBank Corp, saying its own counter-bid would be preferable for national security reasons. Dish in the past has a... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican members of the House of Representatives criticized top officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday for missing congressionally mandated deadlines to complete new rules designed to help small businesses rais... More »
(Reuters) – Workers encounter confusion and misleading information when they leave their jobs and roll over their retirement money into individual retirement accounts, or IRAs, from company-sponsored 401(k) plans, according to a report released on Wednesday by... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday over whether big drug companies can settle patent litigation with generic rivals by making deals to keep cheaper products off the market. U.S. and state regulators say the practice cos... More »
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court made it easier on Wednesday for shareholders to bring class-action lawsuits, breaking a recent line of decisions that had made it harder to sue corporate defendants collectively and perhaps obtain greater ... More »
(Reuters) – Wall Street brokers who dig in their heels when regulators ask for details about business dealings conducted outside of their brokerages play a risky and often career-ending game. A battle waged by one former broker against the Financial Industry R... More »
NEW YORK/CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – A group of mortgage-backed securities investors says Bank of America Corp failed to buy back more than $30 billion in loans from investors after the bank modified the mortgages to reduce borrowers’ payments. The a... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Antitrust enforcers are increasingly scrutinizing the world’s major banks. The U.S. government’s investigation into a scheme to rig bids for investment contracts involving municipal bond proceeds has resulted in major monetary settlements ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fewer investors are taking corporate America to court for fraud. The number of new federal securities fraud lawsuits seeking class-action status fell to a 6-year low in 2012, according to a study by Stanford Law School and Cornerstone Re... More »
(Reuters) – A unit of Wells Fargo Corp must pay $1.3 million to a California couple for losses tied to a strategy that included a $5 million loan and a risky type of exchange-traded fund, a securities arbitration panel has ruled. Wells Fargo Advisors LLC was f... More »
(Reuters) – U.S. regulators proposed new food safety rules on Friday that aim to make food processors and farms more accountable for reducing foodborne illnesses that kill or sicken thousands of Americans annually. The new rules, required by the Food Safety Mo... More »
(Reuters) – Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp said the publishing arm it plans to spin off from its entertainment assets would have lost $2.08 billion in the last fiscal year if it were a standalone company. News Corp filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commi... More »
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – EU regulators are set to suspend indefinitely an antitrust investigation into credit default swaps deals offered by clearing house ICE Clear Europe to nine banks, due to the lack of evidence, a European Commission source said on Wednesday.... More »
