SEC: Small Insider Trades Get Caught, Too

A former vice president of treasury at Restoration Hardware settled Securities and Exchange Commission civil insider-trading charges that he tipped three friends to the company’s pending acquisition, the SEC said.The friends made more than $900,000 in unlawful profits after public announcement of...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 7, 2008

Insurance: Hartford Sells Allianz a $2.5B Stake

The Hartford Financial Services Group is receiving a $2.5-billion capital investment from German insurer Allianz SE. The Hartford also is cutting its quarterly dividend by 40 percent, to 32 cents a share. The moves, announced by The Hartford this week, will allow the company to finish the year wi...

By Alan Rappeport • Oct. 7, 2008

Changing the Rules

AT THE best of times, economic regulation does not lend itself to close examination in election campaigns. Regulation, like economics itself, is about trade-offs and judgment, whereas candidates need to put things in black and white.That is even more so in this election, when Barack Obama and Joh...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 6, 2008

Pay Attention

When it comes to penny-pinching, slashing dividends is a dramatic move for a listed company. But recently a string of firms — from big banks down to pub companies — have hit shareholders in the pocket by doing just that.At Redrow, a £650m (€817m) UK housebuilder, the reasons for cancelling a full...

By Tim Burke • Oct. 6, 2008

Eight Years Later, Ex-CFO Sentenced

The former CFO of Network Associates Inc. — now called McAfee Inc. — was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for his role in a scheme to falsify financial statements, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Prabhat Goyal must also pay a $200,000 fine, according to the paper.In December ...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 3, 2008

AIG Tries to Hang on to Corporate Insurance Buyers

AIG, which by September 30 had drawn down $61 billion of the $85 billion credit facility provided by the U.S. Federal Reserve two weeks earlier, is seeking to strengthen itself by selling off some of its subsidiaries. The company intends to make itself look good enough to avoid a flight by corpor...

By David Katz • Oct. 3, 2008

SEC Extends Buyback Safe Harbor

When the Securities and Exchange Commission issued restrictions on short selling on September 18, it also modified rules related to stock repurchases, something that affects corporate issuers directly. However, at the time, the short-selling announcement grabbed the headlines, and the buyback pro...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 2, 2008

Europe Eyes Sweeping Bank Regulation Changes

In response to “the current meltdown of the financial system,” the European Commission proposed a series of rules to tighten the regulation of banks within the European Union today. Most notably, the commission wants sellers of securitised products to retain a material stake in these creations, w...

By Jason Karaian • Oct. 1, 2008

White House Works to Pass Senate Bill

The White House expressed its full support today for the Senate financial bailout bill to be voted on tonight, asserting that support in Congress for the plan is growing amid changes to the legislation and constituents’ complaints about the House’s failure to approve the plan.White House Deputy P...

By Roll Call Staff • Oct. 1, 2008

No Money-Saver

Last year was the first in which companies could legally dispense with printing and mailing proxies to their shareholders and put everything online, potentially saving millions of dollars in time and money. Did that option live up to its promise? First the good news: shareholders raised minimal f...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 1, 2008

The Jury’s Out

Last January, Apollo Group, owner of the University of Phoenix, learned a hard lesson about the risk of going to trial when a jury ordered it to pay shareholders up to $278 million in a securities class-action case. But the company enjoyed a reversal of fortune in August, when the judge who overs...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 1, 2008

Studies: Bailout Backers Got More Bank Donations

In the wake of the defeat handed the Bush administration’s $700 billion financial rescue plan by the House on Monday, two groups issued reports suggesting that the receipt of corporate political contributions may have influenced lawmakers’ votes.The reports from two nonpartisan organizations that...

By Kate Plourd • Sept. 30, 2008

Reid: Senate Will Vote on Bailout

One day after the House voted down the financial rescue plan, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pledged to have a vote on a bailout proposal in the near future. Reid on Tuesday did not say when the Senate would move to the bailout bill or what it might look like in order to attract more ...

By Roll Call Staff • Sept. 30, 2008

Into the Land of the Unknown

HOW many votes in Congress will the latest financial upheaval change? That is the calculus underway in Washington, D.C., after the House of Representatives defeated the proposed $700 billion mortgage-rescue plan by 228 to 205 on Monday September 29th. Democrats backed it by 140 votes to 95, while...

By Economist Staff • Sept. 30, 2008

Finger-pointing Starts

House GOP leaders are blaming a floor speech by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as the reason that some Republicans voted against the $700 billion bailout bill.At a news conference after the vote, House Chief Deputy Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) held up a copy of Pelosi’s floor speech and sai...

By Roll Call Staff • Sept. 29, 2008

House Votes Down Financial Bailout Deal

The House has voted 228-205 to reject the financial sector bailout bill crafted over the weekend by a bipartisan group of House and Senate negotiators, Roll Call reported.The paper said that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 29, 2008

Securities Group Gets Off the Sidelines

Wall Street lobbyists have been largely silent this week as Congressional leaders huddled behind closed doors to hammer out the historic bailout package. Now, with the House vote on the measure about an hour away, one of the financial service industry’s heaviest-hitting groups is asking its membe...

By Roll Call Staff • Sept. 29, 2008

Federal Probes Aimed at Fannie, Freddie

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say they are officially targets of two federal investigations — one by the Securities and Exchange Commission Enforcement Division and one by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.The two mortgage companies, which were recently taken over by t...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 29, 2008

Conservatives Come Out Strong against Bailout Bill

As the House kicked off three hours of debate on the $700 billion bailout package Monday morning, conservative Republicans wasted no time expressing their opposition to the massive government support of the financial sector.Before the debate began, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) requested that the ...

By Roll Call Staff • Sept. 29, 2008

PMI Insurer Seeks Cover

In a sign of further fallout from the housing market meltdown, mortgage insurer MGIC Investment Corp. announced Friday that its subsidiary, Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp., is eliminating one type of coverage that it offers to lenders.MGIC provides private mortgage insurance, which homebuyers t...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 26, 2008

Not So Fast, Congressional Voices Warn

The congressional split over the Bush Administration’s $700-billion bailout plan for the U.S. financial system is showcasing some strong voices resounding with alternative ideas.One alternative comes from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who sees the proper prescription to correct the breakdown in the sys...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 24, 2008

Defaulted Bank Loans Face Lower Recovery Rate

Recovery rates for defaulted bank debt could be far lower than historic averages, Moody’s Investors Service warns in a new report.The credit rating agency predicts recovery rates of 60 percent or lower for defaults on bank debt by companies with bank-debt-only capital structures. The historic ave...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 23, 2008

Maxim Backdating-Case Deal Involves ex-CFO, ex-CEO

Former Maxim Integrated Products CFO Carl Jasper, along with ex-CEO Jack Gifford, apparently are participating in a broad tentative company agreement to settle litigation related to the semiconductor concern’s backdating of stock options.The two were not identified by name in the Maxim news relea...

By Stephen Taub and Roy Harris • Sept. 23, 2008

Stevens Will Be Excused From Trial to Vote

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) will be excused from appearing at his trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the event of Senate votes, Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled Tuesday. But Sullivan warned Stevens, who faces seven counts of filing false financial statements, that his abse...

By Roll Call Staff • Sept. 23, 2008

Lehman D&O Risk Prompts Lawsuit

A shareholder lawsuit accuses an energy company’s directors and officers of not fully revealing the shareholders’ exposure to Lehman Brothers’ credit problems before the investment bank collapsed last week. The complaint issued by law firm Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins says that foll...

By Sarah Johnson • Sept. 23, 2008