Microtune’s Tune Is a Consent Decree

Microtune Inc. agreed to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges stemming from an investigation into the company’s historical stock option granting practices.Under the deal, the designer and marketer of radio-frequency products for the broadband communications and transportation electro...

By Stephen Taub • July 1, 2008

Told to “Do Something” with Funds, He Stole Them

A former Oregon Department of Education accountant who stole nearly $1 million in school funds — using some of the money for his online gun and ammunition business — told the judge a peculiar story of having been confused by superiors who said he should “do something with the money.” He was sente...

By Stephen Taub • July 1, 2008

Senate Bill: No More Arm-twisting

A bill introduced Thursday night would make it illegal for federal enforcement agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission — to demand documents that are protected by client-attorney confidentiality in exchange for lenient treatment in federal prosecutions.The Attorney-Client Priv...

By Kate Plourd • June 27, 2008

Changes Near for Oil and Gas Reporting Rules

On Thursday the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a new set of rules that would change the way oil and gas companies report their reserves on financial statements. Following 60 days of public comment, the commission will take a final vote on adopting the changes.The new rules would requ...

By Kate Plourd • June 27, 2008

Navistar Gets Current on Financials, Relists

Navistar International has filed its quarterly reports for the first and second quarters of 2008, bringing it up-to-date after years of restatements and delinquencies. As a result, on Monday the truck and engine maker will be reinstated on the New York Stock Exchange under its original ticker sym...

By Stephen Taub • June 27, 2008

The Exxon Valdez Crashes into Fair Value Accounting

Nearly two decades after the Exxon Valdez spilled millions of gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, the Supreme Court ordered that punitive damages paid by the oil company should not exceed the compensatory damages it paid. That ruling cut Exxon’s punitive damages — initially set at ...

By Tim Reason • June 26, 2008

SEC: Credit Ratings Are a Crutch

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday continued its assault on the central role credit-rating agencies have played in the evaluation of securities. Two weeks after floating new rules to mitigate the agencies’ conflicts of interest and require them to distinguish among different typ...

By Kate Plourd • June 26, 2008

Senate Banking Committee Okays SEC Nominees

Three Securities and Exchange Commission nominees won approval from the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday, according to press reports. Their nominations are now being sent to the full Senate, where reportedly they are likely to be confirmed. One of the nominees, Troy Paredes, was named by Pre...

By Stephen Taub • June 26, 2008

Angry Cox Expects SEC to Grow, Not Die

Rarely in its 74-year history has the Securities and Exchange Commission been so squarely on the griddle, with new reforms seeming to target its very existence and Chairman Christopher Cox personally being criticized as “peripheral,” in the words of a critical Monday profile on the Wall Street Jo...

By Roy Harris • June 26, 2008

Rigas Inmates Get a Shave: Three Years Off Terms

Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas and son Timothy, Adelphia’s fomer CFO, had their prison terms trimmed by three years in a resentencing that came after their convictions for roles in the company’s massive fraud. John Rigas, the 83-year-old former chairman of the cable company, along wit...

By Stephen Taub • June 25, 2008

Reports of the SEC’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Some suggest that the Securities and Exchange Commission is hurtling toward extinction. On Monday, for example, a Wall Street Journal front-page analysis of Chairman Christopher Cox’s “low key leadership” — especially during the Bear Stearns crisis — described Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s ...

By Roy Harris • June 25, 2008

SEC Begins Study of Disclosure Overhaul

The Securities and Exchange Commission — seemingly in danger of having its mandate severely diluted — made public its initiative to consider overhauling how public companies, mutual funds, brokers, and other regulated entities disclose information.The goal of the “21st Century Disclosure Initiati...

By Stephen Taub • June 24, 2008

Royal Dutch to Shell Out $120 Million

Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to pay $120 million to settle a class action lawsuit led by the Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement Board and the Public School Employees’ Retirement Board.The energy giant had been accused of overstating oil and natural gas reserves and artificially inflating st...

By Stephen Taub • June 23, 2008

Midlevel Insider-Trading Case Settled

A former Williams-Sonoma Inc. finance manager has settled civil charges that he traded the company’s stock ahead of its report of bad news.Adrian Di Vita, who was a financial planning and analysis manager for the specialty retailer, agreed to pay $76,932.80 in disgorgement of illegally earned gai...

By Stephen Taub • June 20, 2008

Cendant Scandal Refuses to Die

Long before Enron and WorldCom, the $3.2 billion fraud by Cendant, revealed in 1998, has spawned numerous lawsuits and landed two key perpetrators in prison. In 2005, E. Kirk Shelton, the company’s former vice chairman, got 10 years; in January 2007, ex-chairman Walter Forbes was hit with more th...

By Stephen Taub • June 20, 2008

Despite Subprime Mess, D&O Still Cheap

The market for directors and officers insurance has remained soft despite a rise in litigation spurred by the subprime-mortgage crisis and tight credit environment, according to a survey by Towers Perrin, a reinsurance strategy firm.Last year, as prices for D&O insurance grew cheaper and poli...

By Alan Rappeport • June 20, 2008

A Hedge Too Far: Bear Ex-Managers Arrested

Former Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi were arrested, and are expected to be indicted on securities fraud charges after a year-long federal investigation that looked into the collapse of their subprime-mortgage-investment-heavy fund.Separately, after their arrest ...

By Stephen Taub • June 19, 2008

Deloitte Is Protected in “Insolvency” Ruling

A recent Pennsylvania Court ruling favoring Deloitte & Touche seems to restrict a company’s ability to win a case against an accountantcy for actions that lead to the company’s “deepening insolvency,” unless the accountant is negligent in other ways as well.The issue arose in a lawsuit that R...

By Alan Rappeport • June 19, 2008

Regulators of the World Unite

Even as participants in U.S. capital markets wonder when American companies may be required to adopt international accounting standards, the world’s securities regulators took steps today to increase their oversight of the body responsible for setting those standards. A press release issued by th...

By Tim Reason and Sarah Johnson • June 18, 2008

Astonishing Sentence for Astonishing Scam

A former CFO who was an accused mastermind of a scam that investigators said had “astonishing scope” was sentenced to time served, which amounts to seven months in prison. The key to the soft sentence in the more than $680-million scheme, according to federal prosecutors: his cooperation in a cas...

By Stephen Taub • June 17, 2008

Parmalat Suits Target Deloitte, Grant

In another round of lawsuits stemming from the Parmalat accounting scandal, individual investors claiming losses from the Italian dairy giant’s 2003 collapse plan to sue Deloitte & Touche and Grant Thornton, along with Citigroup and Bank of America.The plaintiffs will probably demand more tha...

By Stephen Taub • June 17, 2008

Ex-Broadcom CFO: I Didn’t Do It

The former chief financial officer and the co-founder of Broadcom Inc. pleaded not guilty on Monday to committing fraud by backdating stock options. The ex-CFO, William Ruehle, denied 21 securities fraud charges in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana. Accused of filing false statements with the Secu...

By Stephen Taub • June 16, 2008

Europe Regulator Targets Rating Agencies

Credit-rating agencies will not be able to seek safe haven in Europe, according to Charlie McCreevy, European commissioner for internal markets and services, who called on Monday for “meaningful but targeted” measures to regulate the firms largely blamed for this year’s credit crisis.McCreevy’s c...

By Alan Rappeport • June 16, 2008

Outdated Oil & Gas Reporting Rules Take Heat

The Securities and Exchange Commission has moved a step closer to revising what many see as outdated rules for how oil and gas companies report their reserves.The SEC staff announced Thursday that it would recommend that the commission propose reporting rule changes. The staff didn’t specify what...

By Kate Plourd • June 13, 2008

New SEC Rules Being Drawn Up for the Ratings Game

The Securities and Exchange Commission moved on two fronts to reform the embattled credit rating agencies — aiming to fix conflicts of interest in the industry, and to distinguish between different types of asset-backed securities.Twin proposed new rules come as the rating companies have taken ma...

By Alan Rappeport • June 11, 2008