Barclays : Banks reach $154.3 million settlement on “dark pool” fraud

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two major global banks, Barclays and Credit Suisse, will pay a combined $154.3 million to settle state and federal investigations that they misled clients about the safety of trading on their “dark pool” financial exchanges, the New York Attorney General’s office expects to announce Monday.

The banks left their customers on these private exchanges vulnerable to “predatory, high-frequency traders” that could intercept their financial trades, despite assurances by Barclays and Credit Suisse to the contrary, according to a draft statement obtained by The Associated Press that announces the joint settlement with New York and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

“These cases mark the first major victory in the fight to combat fraud in dark pool trading,” said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in the statement. “We will continue to take the fight to those who aim to rig the system and those who look the other way.”

Zurich-based Credit Suisse, a major firm on Wall Street, declined comment.

Read on.

Here’s a List of All the Hillary Clinton 31 Wall Street Fundraisers

Free Beacon:

Here is a list of 31 fundraising events that have been put on or will be put on for the Clinton campaign by the financial industry since she started campaigning early last year:

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April 28, 2015 in New York, New York, hosted by Richard Perry. Perry is CEO and president of Perry Capital, a hedge fund worth roughly $11 billion.

April 28, 2015 in New York, New York, hosted by Doug Teitelbaum. Teitelbaum is the founder of Homewood Capital, a private equity investment firm.

May 13, 2015 in New York, New York, hosted by Steve Rattner. Rattner is chairman of Willett Advisors, the investment arm of billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s personal and philanthropic assets. He previously worked at Morgan Stanley and founded his own investment firm, the Quadrangle Group.

May 13, 2015 in New York, New York, hosted by Marc Lasry. Lasry is president and CEO of Avenue Capital Group, an investment firm that focuses on distressed assets and private equity.

May 28, 2015 in Atlanta, Georgia, hosted by A.J. Johnson. Johnson is a founding partner of Georgetown Capital, a private equity firm.

June 1, 2015 in New York, New York, hosted by Silda Wall. Wall is a principal at the New World Capital Group, a private equity firm.

July 22, 2015 in Raleigh, North Carolina, hosted by George Reddin. Reddin is managing director of FMI Capital Advisors, an investment banking firm.

August 4, 2015 in Aspen, Colorado, hosted by Robert Hurst. Hurst is a managing director at Crestview Partners and a former vice chairman at Goldman Sachs.

September 17, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois, hosted by J.B. Pritzker. Pritzker is an heir to the Hyatt fortune and runs The Pritzker Group, a private equity and venture capital firm.

September 19, 2015 in Washington, D.C., hosted by Frank White. White is founder and CEO of DuSable Capital Management, a private equity firm.

September 24, 2015 in Cresskill, New Jersey, hosted by Michael Kempner. Kempner was an operating adviser of Pegasus Capital Advisors, a private equity firm.

June 5, 2015 in Greenwich, Connecticut, hosted by Malcolm Weiner. Weiner was chairman of investment management firms the Millburn Corporation and ShareInVest before he retired.

June 25, 2015 in New York, New York, hosted by Karen Persichilli Keogh and Eric Giola. Both Keogh and Giola are executives at JP Morgan Chase.

June 25, 2015 in New York, New York, hosted by Blair Effron. Blair Effron founded Centerview Partners, an investment banking firm.

June 29, 2015 in New York, New York, hosted by Martin Sosnoff. Sosnoff is CEO of Atalanta Sosnoff, a financial management firm.

July 1, 2015 in Washington, D.C., hosted by Patrick Steel. Steel is managing director of FBR Capital Markets, a Virginia-based investment bank.

July 21, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois, hosted by Rajiv Fernando. Fernando founded Chopper Trading, a high-frequency stock-trading firm.

September 25, 2015 in Greenwich, Connecticut, hosted by Cliff and Debbie Robbins.Robbins is CEO of Blue Harbor Group, a capital management firm.

September 28, 2015 in Saratoga, California, hosted by Harry Plant. Plant was an executive director at UBS investment bank.

November 11, 2015 in New York, New York, hosted by Howard Lutnick. Lutnick is chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment bank.

November 17, 2015 in New York, New York, hosted by Jay Snyder. Snyder is president of HBJ Investments, a private equity and venture capital firm that specializes in pharmaceutical companies.

November 30, 2015 in Chevy Chase, Maryland, hosted by Jerry Johnson. Johnson is a founder of RLJ Equity Partners, a private equity firm. He previously served in senior investment banking roles at Bank of America, Wachovia, and Bear Stearns.

December 1, 2015 in Miami Beach, Florida, hosted by Bob Wagner. Wagner is an executive at Silver Point Capital, a hedge fund management firm. He was previously a managing director at Goldman Sachs.

December 3, 2015 in Los Angeles, California, hosted by Michael Kong. Kong is CEO of MAPTI Ventures, a private investment fund.

December 6, 2015 in Washington, D.C., hosted by Julius Genachowski. Genachowski is managing director of Carlyle Investments, a wealth management company with over $193 billion in assets. He is also on the board of MasterCard and the founder of Rock Creek Ventures, a principal investment firm.

December 11, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois, hosted by Howard Gottleib. Gottlieb is a partner at Glen Eagle Partners and Glenwood Partners, both private investment firms.

December 14, 2015 in Potomac, Maryland, hosted by Frank Islam. Islam is founder and chairman of FI Investment Group, a private investment firm.

January 27, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, hosted by Michael Forman. Forman is chairman and CEO of Franklin Square Capital Partners.

January 27, 2016 in New York, New York, hosted by Charles Myers. Myers is a top executive at Evercore Partners, an investment banking firm.

February 5, 2016 in Boston, Massachusetts, hosted by Jonathan Lavine. Lavine is a managing director of Bain Capital’s private equity sector. He is also founder and managing partner at Sankaty Advisors.

February 16, 2016 in New York, New York, hosed by Matt Mallow. Mallow is senior managing director of BlackRock, an asset management firm with control of $4.5 trillion.

Client files chapter 13 while hoping for a loan modification of Wells Fargo mortgage

Client seeks chapter 7 relief for $78K credit card debt

CLIENT has had an on going “battle” with Wells Fargo for justice on her mortgage since 2007. It’s been 9 years since she made the mistake of refinancing her fully paid house with World Savings Bank. Yes, client was already a senior 9 years ago when she decided to borrow $250K against her house, which had no more mortgage! Apparently, a relative had asked her for some money to finance a business, and being the doting aunt that she was, she gladly but mistakenly, obliged. The question then was where should she get the refinance loan? She spoke to an agent of a very popular mortgage loan broker who offered her a fixed 30-year mortgage at 2% per annum. The broker told her that the interest rate was so low, it would make her cry, that the mortgage payment would be fixed for 30 years, and that she could even choose from several amounts of mortgage payments, depending on which one she would be most comfortable with.

She signed all the loan documents without reading them as most seniors would do. After paying for two years, she noticed that the loan balance, instead of decreasing, was increasing! Eventually, she got a letter from Wells Fargo informing her that the bank had taken over the loan. In addition, Wells Fargo said that she had a default of $20,000, and that if this amount was not paid in full immediately, foreclosure of her residence would ensue. When she called the famous loan broker to ask what was going on, she was told that the loan broker was being criminally indicted for a massive loan mortgage fraud scheme. It was only then that client realized that she had been duped. She did some research and found out that Wells Fargo had taken over the loans of World Savings, including hers, and that Wells Fargo was actually trying to make things right for the victims of this “massive” fraud as part of the settlement with the Attorney General’s office as well as part of the Federal “bail out” funds.

She called Wells Fargo and was given the run around. Wells Fargo wrote her many letters saying that they were going to look into the matter and would get back to her within 30 days. The 30 days dragged into 7 years without any resolution. Wells Fargo started foreclosure proceedings and client paid off the entire default of $57K. It was back to square one for a while then the problem resurfaced. Client hired a succession of lawyers who all went against a brick wall because client did not want to sue; all she wanted was to have the matter amicably resolved by negotiation.

– See more at: http://asianjournal.com/consumer/client-files-chapter-13-while-hoping-for-a-loan-modification-of-mortgage/#sthash.vqImDuPy.dpuf

An Explanation of the Bank Whistleblowers United 60-Day Plan

1. On Day One, the President directs each relevant federal financial agency to restore a superb criminal referral process, the criminal referral mandate, and criminal referral coordinators, at every federal financial agency. Local and state police forces rarely investigate sophisticated financial frauds.  That work is done overwhelmingly by roughly 2,000 FBI agents in the white-collar section.  That means that we have roughly two FBI agents per industry.  Those numbers mean that FBI agents don’t “walk a beat” – they only come when they receive a criminal referral alerting them to a likely fraud.  It also means that they cannot possibly have more than a few agents with expertise in the particular industry.  There is one other key fact to keep in mind – corporations don’t make criminal referrals against their own CEOs for obvious reasons, even though frauds led by CEOs cause by far the greatest harm of any form of fraud.

William K. Black-Announcing the Bank Whistleblowers United Initial Initiatives

William K. Black
January 29, 2016     Bloomington, Minnesota
Revised January 30, 2016

I am writing to announce the formation of a new pro bono group and a policy initiative that we hope many of our readers will support and help publicize.  Gary Aguirre, Bill Black, Richard Bowen, and Michael Winston are the founding members of the Bank Whistleblowers United.  We are all from the general field of finance and we are all whistleblowers who are unemployable in finance and financial regulation because we spoke truth to power and committed the one unforgivable sin in finance and in Washington, D.C. – being repeatedly proved correct when the powerful are repeatedly proved wrong.

HSBC Is Ordered To Unseal Report For Public To See

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the public has a right to see a secret report on HSBC Holdings PLC’s fight to keep out dirty money, a decision that could upend the way companies privately hash out deals with the government.

The ruling concerns the report of a so-called outside monitor that was appointed to police HSBC as a condition of the company’s $1.9 billion settlement with the U.S. government in 2012, in which it admitted to failing to catch money laundering and violating sanctions. As has been the case in other similar cases, the HSBC monitor’s reports have so far been kept private.

U.S. District Judge John Gleeson wrote in the ruling that “the public has a First Amendment right to see” the monitor’s report, though he said the company and the Justice Department can suggest redactions and that some portions can remain under seal. HSBC, the Justice Department and the monitor, former prosecutor Michael Cherkasky, had all fought attempts to make the report public.

Read on.

JPM Credit Default Swap Creator Blythe Masters’ Digital Asset Raises $50M, Adds JPM Exec to Board

Digital Asset Holdings, the blockchain technology startup led by Wall Street veteran Blythe Masters, has raised more than $50 million in funding and expanded its board, the company said Thursday.

Banking institutions have been looking to distributed-ledger startups like Digital Asset and its competitor, R3CEV, to experiment with and perhaps implement their technology. The idea of a shared ledger was a key innovation of bitcoin, although the industry’s explorations have mostly avoided associating with the decentralized digital currency.

The new investors in Digital Asset are ABN AMRO, Accenture, ASX Limited, BNP Paribas, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Citi, CME Ventures, Deutsche Börse Group, ICAP, Masters’ alma mater JPMorgan Chase, Santander InnoVentures, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. and PNC Financial Services. Digital Asset did not say when the round closed.

The company has also added four industry executives to its board of directors: DTCC president and CEO Mike Bodson; Sanoke Viswanathan, chief administrative officer of JPMorgan Chase’s corporate and investment banking division; Ashwin Kumar, group head of product development at Deutsche Börse Group; and Catherine Flax, head of commodity derivatives and foreign exchange and local markets at the Americas division of BNP Paribas. There are now nine seats on the company’s board; it plans to announce the ninth appointment shortly, it said.

Read on.

Carly Fiorina benefited from company using aborted fetal stem cells

 

Merck Board Directors in 1999 and in 2000.

Exclusive: GOP candidate was paid by Merck at a time when anti-abortion groups criticized company’s vaccine production

Well, well, well:

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, a staunch opponent of abortion, made at least $83,000 serving on the board of directors of Merck & Co. at a time when the pharmaceutical company was producing vaccines using fetal stem cell lines derived from aborted fetuses, according to corporate documents reviewed by Al Jazeera America. The program “Inside Story” with Ray Suarez also obtained documents indicating that during Fiorina’s tenure on the board, anti-abortion groups had asked Merck to stop producing such vaccines, and that the company had refused.

Fiorina has been openly supportive of vaccines derived from fetal stem cells at least since her California Senate run in 2010. According to the Los Angeles Times, Fiorina clarified that, “It is when embryos are produced for the purposes of destruction, for the purposes of stem cell research that I have a great deal of difficulty.”

She served on Merck’s board from April of 1999 through December of 2000, according to Merck’s SEC filings from the time.

The Fiorina campaign did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment. Merck confirmed Fiorina’s tenure on the board, but said it does not retain the relevant compensation records from that time.

In addition to the $83,000 Fiorina received over her two years on the board, the company’s SEC filings indicate she was to receive an additional $1,200 for each board meeting she attended.

Fiorina’s tough anti-abortion stance briefly sent her soaring in the polls, after a Republican candidates’ debate in which she dared President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to watch what she said was a video in which Planned Parenthood medical personnel harvested tissue from an aborted fetus, the heart of which was still beating.  

Hat tip to Aljazeera America!

Elizabeth Warren Challenges Clinton, Sanders to Prosecute Corporate Crime Better Than Obama

The Intercept:

Three days before the Iowa caucuses, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has released what might have been her closing argument had she been a candidate in the presidential race.

It’s a thorough indictment of a rigged system in Washington that allows corporate criminals to go free while those without the same power and influence get severely punished.

The report — a 12-page booklet titled “Rigged Justice: How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy” — cites 20 well-documented civil and criminal cases from 2015 “in which the federal government failed to require meaningful accountability.”

Of the 20 cases, which span Wall Street, the auto industry, pharmaceuticals, natural resources, and more, only one resulted in any convictions to executives, and that was for a misdemeanor — in the Upper Big Branch mine case, where 29 Americans died.

The focus on how laws are enforced rather than the intricacies of the law itself carries on a theme Warren has stressed throughout primary season — that personnel is policy, that who you will put in power in those key regulatory positions matters as much as your 10-point plan.

The Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders camps — and their allies in the press — have been arguing increasingly harshly over who has the most perfect or most attainable policies. But the real issue, as Warren sees it, comes in installing the personnel to carry out the laws on the books that protect public safety and the economy.

Both Clinton and Sanders have called for stiffer penalties and more aggressive Justice Department enforcement on financial crimes. The Warren report suggests how far we have to go, and how intensely she will be watching developments as they unfold.

The report is the first in a promised annual series from Sen. Warren, where she will highlight the most egregious cases of unprosecuted corporate crime from the previous year.

In virtually all the cases she cites — from Standard & Poor’s deliveringinflated credit ratings to defraud investors during the financial crisis, to Novartis giving kickbacks to pharmacists to steer customers to their products, to an explosion at a Bayer CropScience pesticide plant that killed two employees — the Department of Justice declined to prosecute individual executives or the corporations themselves, resorting to settlements with minuscule fines that barely disrupt the corporations’ business models.

The report also gives new meaning to the term “1 percent.”

Helicopter Money Arrives: Switzerland To Hand Out $2500 Monthly To All Citizens

Zerohedge:

With Citi’s chief economist proclaiming “only helicopter money can save the world now,”and the Bank of England pre-empting paradropping money concerns, it appears that Australia’s largest investment bank’s forecast that money-drops were 12-18 months away was too conservative. While The Finns consider a “basic monthly income” for the entire population,Swiss residents are to vote on a countrywide referendum about a radical plan to pay every single adult a guaranteed income of around $2500 per month, with authorities insisting that people will still want to find a job.

The plan, as The Daily Mail reports, proposed by a group of intellectuals, could make the country the first in the world to pay all of its citizens a monthly basic income regardless if they work or not.  But the initiative has not gained much traction among politicians from left and right despite the fact that a referendum on it was approved by the federal government for the ballot box on June 5.

Under the proposed initiative, each adult would receive $2,500 per months, and each child would also receive 625 francs ($750) a month.

 

The federal government estimates the cost of the proposal at 208 billion francs ($215 billion) a year.

 

Around 153 billion francs ($155 bn) would have to be levied from taxes, while 55 billion francs ($60 bn) would be transferred from social insurance and social assistance spending.