Bloomberg has reported: ~~~~ “The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hired Adam Storch, a 29-year-old former employee in Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s business intelligence unit, as the enforcement division’s first chief operating officer, according to people familiar with the decision. The COO, who started Oct. 13, has “a great deal of background” in technology and managing processes [...]
Bloomberg interview with Saber Partners CEO Joseph Fichera about the municipal markets and structural inconsistencies… he also asks what happened with the auction rate securities meltdown… there has been so little reporting on the whole issue… (running time = 5 minutes)
From the weekly ‘Northside Sun’: ~~~~ Interest swap deal bad news for Jackson Will Jackson meet Jefferson County’s current fate: a local government slowly dragged into bankruptcy after it bet its municipal bonds on complex derivatives? The Jackson City Council approved a motion to enter into an interest rate swap for its 2002 and 2004 [...]
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board reminds dealers of the January 30, 2009 effective date for dealers to report, or ensure the reporting of, interest rate and descriptive information about municipal Auction Rate Securities to the MSRB’s Short-term Obligation Rate Transparency (“SHORT”) System. The MSRB has published a notice that: (i) includes an updated version of SHORT [...]
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Auction rate securities investors at Citi and UBS will be made whole under today’s settlement with the SEC… $ 30 billion of making whole… that’s lots of wholeness… These ARS settlements represent the first time that the major dealers have had to pay an onerous penalty for shoddy fixed income practices… there have been multi-million [...]
Friday, November 28, 2008
This is a clip from Aug 12th on Bloomberg News (running time ~~ 4 minutes)… it concerns the auction rate securities markets…analysis by Adam Dean, President of SVB Asset Management and Joe Mysak, Bloomberg columnist… Mr. Dean talks about the approx $ 200 billion dollars of ARS that the large banks had to bring back [...]
Yes… there is material, non-public information in the fixed income markets… and the former General Counsel of UBS is paying a big fine today for acting on non-public information to his advantage… from the Securities Law Prof Blog… ~~~~ ” New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced a $6.5 million settlement with David Aufhauser, a [...]
Saturday, September 13, 2008
From WSJ.com … ~~”Facing pressure from regulators, Fidelity Investments will buy back an estimated $300 million in auction-rate securities from its customers. Anne Crowley, a spokeswoman for the Boston mutual-fund giant, said it notified regulators in New York and Massachusetts on Friday that it will repurchase at par value auction-rate securities that were purchased through [...]
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Financial Service Committee to Hold Hearing on Auction Rate Securities Market Washington, DC – House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA), today announced that the committee will hold a hearing to review problems and potential resolutions to the auction rate securities market. Specifically, the hearing will examine the continuing crisis in the markets [...]