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The state of New Jersey has settled federal civil fraud charges of failing to inform bond investors that it had not met obligations to its largest pension plans, federal regulators said Wednesday.
The SEC declined comment on whether a similar investigation is under way in Illinois. The pension system here is the most underfunded in the nation, according to the Pew Center for the States, with only about half the money needed to cover more than $60 billion in liabilities. Get the full story »
The Securities and Exchange Commission has started a formal probe of possible insider trading by current and former officers and directors of mall owner General Growth Properties Inc.
General Growth, which has operated under bankruptcy protection since April 2009 and plans to exit later this year, disclosed the probe in its bankruptcy case Tuesday and in its quarterly report filed with the SEC last week. Get the full story »
U.S. drugmaker Merck & Co. said Friday that it has received letters from the federal government seeking information about its activities in foreign countries, in connection with a U.S. anti-foreign bribery law.
Merck disclosed in a regulatory filing it has received letters from the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission. The company said it is cooperating with the requests. Get the full story »
The independent examiner appointed to review claims and assets in Washington Mutual’s bankruptcy case is seeking subpoena power.
The examiner made the request Friday in filing his proposed work plan in Delaware bankruptcy court. A hearing on his plan will be held Tuesday. Get the full story »
Raids at Credit Suisse’s private banking offices in Germany have been a success and may help identify bank staff in Switzerland as part of a tax evasion clampdown, German prosecutors said Friday.
This week’s raids were the latest steps in an international crackdown on suspected tax cheats in offshore centers that saw Swiss wealth management giant UBS agree to an hefty settlement in a bitter U.S. tax probe last year. Get the full story »
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a July 29 hearing into last year’s release of a Libyan convicted for the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, and related actions by BP.
The committee said Thursday that it will ask officials of BP Plc to testify after the U.K.-based oil giant acknowledged that it had lobbied the British government in 2007 to transfer Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset al-Megrahi to Tripoli. The company said it was concerned that his continued imprisonment in Scotland could hurt an offshore oil drilling deal with Libya. Get the full story »
U.S. regulators are still trying to ferret out what caused the Dow Jones industrial average to mysteriously drop nearly 700 points in minutes before sharply recovering, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission said Friday. More than two months after the market briefly crashed in May, market regulators are still exploring a number of theories, including an imbalance between buyers and sellers.
“What we clearly understand are what the exacerbating factors were,” SEC chief Mary Schapiro told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a conference in Chicago on corporate governance, “like different trading conventions in different marketplaces, liquidity replenishment points, self-help, banded orders.” Get the full story »
U.S. biotech giant Monsanto Co. agreed Thursday to pay a $2.5 million fine for misbranding its cotton-seed products, the largest civil penalty ever enforced under a federal act that controls the sale and use of pesticides.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Monsanto distributed cotton-seed products that contained a genetically engineered pesticide banned from 10 counties in Texas for fear pests would become resistant to it.
Monsanto was required to label the products with an explanation of the ban. Get the full story »
The government is opening investigations into possible power steering problems in Mazda3 and BMW Z4 cars.
The investigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration involve more than 290,000 Mazda3s from the 2007-2009 model years and nearly 50,000 Z4s from the 2003-2005 model years. Get the full story »
Struggling homeowners who have complained for more than a year that the federal government’s loan modification program was unfair got some validation Thursday.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) paints a picture of the Home Affordable Modification Program as an inconsistent effort with wide-ranging degrees of participation that could lead to different outcomes, even for borrowers who face similar personal circumstances.
Get the full story »
The Illinois Department of Health is investigating a salmonella outbreak that has sickened almost 100 people who have reported eating at Subway sandwich restaurants in 28 counties around the state. Get the full story »
By Wailin Wong | Illinois has joined a list of governments in the U.S. and worldwide that are probing Google’s data collection for the search giant’s Street View service.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said Wednesday her office is investigating whether the California-based company gathered personal information from state residents. Street View is used in Google Maps and Google Earth to show photos at the street level, displaying pictures taken by special camera equipment mounted on cars and other vehicles.
The controversy over Street View arose last month, when Google admitted to inadvertently capturing and storing bits of private information sent over unencrypted WiFi networks. This “payload data,” as the information is called, can include e-mails, passwords and browsing activity.
Get the full story: Report: SEC is probing meeting drugmaker Mylan.
Dow Jones Newswires | The inspector general of the Securities and
Exchange Commission, David Kotz, has expanded his investigation of the
agency’s civil-case settlement with Bank of America Corp. over the
company’s acquisition of brokerage Merrill Lynch & Co., CNBC reports
Tuesday.
In his semiannual report to Congress, Kotz also will recommend
disciplinary action against two attorneys on the staff of the SEC’s
enforcement division for their role in the release of unauthorized
information to a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent. CNBC says the
agent was working on an investigation in conjunction with an imprisoned
former short seller the cable network identified as Anthony Elgindy.
By Wailin Wong
| The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has fined Belvidere-based NDK Crystals Inc. $510,000 for violations related to a December factory explosion that killed a truck driver.
“The employer knowingly operated high pressure vessels even after being warned of the potential for a catastrophic failure due to material design and fabrication defects,” David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for OSHA, said in a Thursday statement.
