From Bloomberg | Aon Corp., the world’s biggest insurance broker, said it may resume taking payments that were banned for five years under a 2005 settlement with Eliot Spitzer, then the attorney general of New York.
Filed under: Regulations
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July 19, 2010 at 3:46 p.m.
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Filed under: Banking, Investing, Policy, Politics, Regulations U.S. SEC sees staff beef-up to enforce new law
The broadest shake-up in U.S. financial services law since the Great Depression will likely require the Securities and Exchange Commission to beef up its staff with 800 new positions, the SEC’s chief said in prepared remarks on Monday. Get the full story »
Retirement plan providers to disclose compensation
The Department of Labor on Friday will issue a long-awaited rule that would require retirement-plan providers to disclose the compensation they receive for their services.
Some companies supply this information, but the “interim final rule” will require all service providers that receive more than $1,000 to disclose it. The intent of the rule, which takes effect next summer, would be to help fiduciaries better assess “the reasonableness of compensation paid to plan service providers and any conflicts of interest that may impact a service provider’s performance.” Get the full story »
Glaxo defends Avandia in hearings on drug’s safety
GlaxoSmithKline Plc insisted its diabetes pill Avandia was safe as U.S. advisers began a two-day meeting to consider whether the medicine is too dangerous to stay on the market.
The scientific experts assembled by the Food and Drug Administration are sorting through sharply conflicting data on whether Avandia causes heart attacks. Get the full story »
FAA tells airlines to inspect Boeing cockpit windows
From Bloomberg | The Federal Aviation Administration said today that U.S. airlines flying Boeing Co. 757, 767 and 777 aircraft must inspect or replace the cockpit windows after 11 reports of fires tied to electrical wiring in the past two decades.
Miner killed at troubled Peabody operation
A miner has been killed in an equipment accident at a troubled Peabody Energy mine in southern Illinois, federal regulators said Friday. The victim was struck by a piece of heavy underground equipment at Peabody Energy’s Willow Lake mine in southern Illinois, said Amy Louviere, a spokeswoman for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. The victim was identified only as a section foreman.
July 9, 2010 at 11:45 a.m.
Filed under: Economy, Exchanges, Investigations, Regulations, Stock activity SEC still unclear on cause of flash crash
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 »
EU chief calls for 70 as retirement age
The European Union’s executive says Europeans should not retire before 70 to save cash-strapped state pension funds.
In a paper to be published Wednesday, the European Commission says four workers’ contributions to state pensions help support two retirees. Get the full story »
Obama: No ending all foreclosures
President Barack Obama says that no matter how much the government spends, some people still won’t be able to afford their mortgages and will lose their homes.
There are still underlying problems in the housing market, the president said, in part because “some people just got too much house for their salary.”
Obama made his comments in response to a question Wednesday at a town hall event. Get the full story »
June 30, 2010 at 1:05 p.m.
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Filed under: Government, Housing, Real estate, Regulations, Tourism Vacation rentals to get B&B treatment in Chicago
Houses and condominiums leased as “vacation rentals” in Chicago will be treated like bed-and-breakfast establishments after aldermen unanimously voted Wednesday for a plan aimed at getting a handle on such leases in residential areas.
Supreme Court tweaks part of Sarbanes-Oxley
The Supreme Court largely affirmed Monday the legitimacy of an accounting regulator created by a post-Enron antifraud law, striking down only a minor provision of it.
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board was established in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley law, which Congress passed after the Enron Corp. scandal exposed a wave of accounting chicanery used by some companies to pump up their stock prices during the late-1990s bull market. Get the full story »
June 25, 2010 at 4:45 p.m.
Filed under: Banking, Credit Cards, Government, Mortgages, Policy, Regulations What financial reform means for you
As legislators on Capitol Hill trumpet a final agreement on sweeping financial reform, consumers might be wondering, “What’s in it for me?”
They will benefit in a big-picture way from many of the provisions in the bill, likely to be passed by Congress next week. It is meant to provide a more stable financial system, prevent government bailouts of banks and protect investors. Get the full story »
SEC says it halts alleged $34M Ponzi scheme
The government says it obtained a court order to halt an alleged $34 million Ponzi scheme targeting federal employees and law enforcement agents nationwide with promises of safe investments in a nonexistent bond fund.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said the order issued Thursday by a federal judge in Miami also froze the assets of the estate of the late Kenneth Wayne McLeod, his consulting firm Federal Employee Benefits Group and an affiliated investment firm. The SEC alleges that McLeod and the firms defrauded an estimated 260 investors starting in 1988.
June 25, 2010 at 10:37 a.m.
Filed under: Banking, Exchanges, Government, Policy, Politics, Regulations Lawmakers reach a deal on financial reform
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) talks with a group including Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), left, during a recess from a committee conference on Wall Street reform. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Ending more than two weeks of often-contentious negotiations, House and Senate lawmakers reached agreement early Friday on the most far-reaching rewrite of financial rules since the Great Depression.
The final details, including creation of an agency to protect consumers in the financial marketplace and new regulations to reduce risk-taking by large banks and limit their trading of complex derivatives, were hashed out in a marathon 20-hour session that began Thursday morning.
Lawmakers on a joint conference committee labored until dawn reconciling House and Senate versions of the legislation in time for President Obama to brief foreign leaders on the completed deal at a major economic summit in Canada starting Friday.
Get the full story »
FDA approves Abbott’s new diabetes testing strips
Drug and device maker Abbott Laboratories said Thursday it received U.S. regulatory approval for its Freestyle Lite blood sugar testing strips.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the products to test for levels of glucose, a type of blood sugar, in patients with type 2 diabetes. People with the disease have trouble breaking down carbohydrates because their bodies have become resistant to a protein used in metabolism. Get the full story »
