Sunday, August 02, 2009

NYT: Auction rate securities

The debacle hit individual investors especially hard.

When state regulators investigated the circumstances surrounding auction-rate failures, they found that some of the firms selling the securities had turned their aggressive sales pitches on small investors even when astute institutional buyers had already seen trouble and stopped buying.

Regulators have since forced many brokerage firms that underwrote or sold the securities to buy back their clients’ holdings.

Eight large and small firms have already settled, or agreed to settle, auction-rate cases with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/business/02gret.html?ref=business
Posted by at

4 comments:

Tan Kin Lian said...

This is an example of action taken by the regulator when the financial institution sold inappropriate products to retail investors. Our MAS should do the same. I asked them many times to follow this good example, but I received no reply.

August 02, 2009 9:41 AM
Anonymous said...

MAS kept saying that they can not force those FIs to compensate investors. My question is what can they do to help investors?

My impression is MAS is working with FIs to stonewall affected investors.

August 02, 2009 1:36 PM
Anonymous said...

What can MAS do to help affected investors?

They already have. They ask us to look after ourselves because they completed their report. Now they are doing other very important thing like helping to paint a good economic picture soon so that ministers can ask for a pay raise.

August 03, 2009 11:16 AM
Anonymous said...

This is Singapore. In good time, Civil servant [60,000) salary can only go up if Minister Salary goes up. MB investors are only 10,000. 10,000 divided by 2 million voters is insignificant. So not important to care about MB investors. Focus on main stream more important. So must talk about Terrorist, Religion, helping the poor, give vouchers, shake hands but cannot attend funerals as this is the job of opposition.

August 03, 2009 11:21 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Blog Archive