Blog posts with "securities fraud"

  The soon to be world's largest brewing company, InBev (brewer of beers such as Bass, Stella, Labatt, and Becks), was ordered today to divest of its assets in Labatt Beers. The issue stems from InBev's merger with Anheuser-Busch that began on July 13, 2008. At the time, Anheuser-Busch was the largest American brewer capturing 50% of the U.S. market, and InBev was the largest European and South American brewer making it the world's second largest brewer. On November 14, 2008 the Department o...

  The Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud and other charges against General Electric today for misleading investors through their preparation of financial statements (See the SEC official release). Apparently GE used deceptive accounting methods to artificially increase its earnings reports. GE has neither admitted nor denied culpability, but have agreed to pay a $50 million dollar penalty to settle the charges. The fairness of this settlement is difficult to grasp consideri...

For more background on "flash" trading, see my prior post "Not Insider Trading? Part I." Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said earlier today that an SEC ban on flash trading was "imminent." Schumer said that in a discussion he had with Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro, she personally promised him that the ban would be forthcoming. This is part of a broader investigation into questionable trading practices such as "dark pools," anonymous trading groups, and high frequenc...

See if you can figure this one out: if you are extremely rich and influential, then you can receive market news before the general public, and legally trade on it. What?! The service provided to these traders, known as "flashing," allows them to view orders submitted to exchanges, like the Nasdaq, before they are actually placed on the open market. The time period to review the information before the trade is placed is very short, fractions of a second, but enough time for an automated comput...