Legal News

By Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Andrew Harris – Feb 3, 2012 8:59 AM ET R. Allen Stanford directed his executives to falsify investment returns, threatened to fire them if they revealed $2 billion he secretly borrowed from his Antiguan bank and approved of office affairs, according to witnesses at his criminal fraud trial. “I was [...]

By Patricia Hurtado – Feb 3, 2012 12:53 AM ET Kareem Serageldin, the ex-global head of Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN)’s CDO business charged in a bonus- boosting fraud tied to a $5.35 billion trading book, was surprised by the U.S. indictment since he has been cooperating with investigators for four years, his lawyer said. Serageldin, [...]

By Joel Rosenblatt – Feb 3, 2012 12:01 AM ET California Attorney General Kamala Harris objects to giving banks broad releases of liability for predatory lending. At the same time, she may be locked into her predecessor’s 2008 settlement with the largest lender in the state during the mortgage boom that does exactly that. Facing [...]

By Sara Forden and Jeff Bliss – Feb 3, 2012 12:01 AM ET U.S. antitrust enforcers are hiring litigators from major law firms, signaling a growing readiness for court battles to block mergers they view as anticompetitive. The Justice Department’s antitrust division on Jan. 3 brought in Mark Ryan, a partner at Mayer Brown LLP (1120L), as [...]

By Karin Matussek – Feb 2, 2012 11:21 AM ET Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Germany’s biggest bank, was ordered to pay 15 million euros ($19.7 million) in a lawsuit over a currency option product it sold to a client. The Frankfurt Regional Court today ruled partly in favor of German travel company Schauinsland-Reisen GmbH, which [...]

By Kit Chellel – Feb 2, 2012 10:50 AM ET MF Global Holding Ltd.’s (MF) U.K. administrators plan to make the first payment to British clients of the failed brokerage, returning 26 cents on the dollar. KPMG LLP, the administrators of MF Global’s U.K. unit, said the figure was the most it could return at [...]

By Chris Dolmetsch – Feb 2, 2012 10:08 AM ET Macy’s Inc. (M) asked a New York state Supreme Court justice to issue a preliminary injunction against Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. in a filing yesterday in Manhattan. The retailer sued in New York state Supreme Court on Jan. 23 seeking to stop New York-based Martha Stewart Living [...]

By David McLaughlin – Feb 2, 2012 12:01 AM ET The deadline for states to decide whether to join a proposed nationwide foreclosure settlement with banks was delayed to Feb. 6 from Feb. 3, the Iowa Attorney General’s Office said. States were given more time to evaluate the proposal, which may total $25 billion, after [...]

By Patricia Hurtado – Feb 1, 2012 10:54 AM ET Former Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) employee David Higgs pleaded guilty to conspiracy related to the intentional mismarking of prices tied to securities including collateralized debt obligations. Another former bank employee, Salmaan Siddiqui, will plead guilty later today, a person familiar with the case said. Switzerland’s [...]

By Dawn McCarty and Sophia Pearson – Feb 1, 2012 10:00 AM ET United Retail Group Inc (URGI)., owner of the Avenue plus-size women’s clothing stores, filed for bankruptcy court protection citing leasing costs and announced plans to sell the company. An affiliate of Versa Capital Management, a Philadelphia- based private-equity firm, agreed to serve as the lead, [...]

By Nandini Sukumar – Feb 1, 2012 8:47 AM ET NYSE Euronext (NYX) Chief Executive Officer Duncan Niederauer said the exchange operator is considering whether to appeal against European regulators’ veto of its merger with Deutsche Boerse AG. (DB1) An “appeal is an option going forward,” Niederauer said in a phone interview today, while he’s in “no [...]

By Kit Chellel and Erik Larson – Feb 1, 2012 5:56 AM ET Glenn Mulcaire, the ex-private investigator who hacked into celebrities’ voice mails for News Corp. (NWSA)’s News of the World, lost a U.K. appeal to avoid giving “incriminating” evidence in civil lawsuits against him. The ruling today by the Court of Appeal in London [...]

By Aoife White – Jan 31, 2012 9:34 AM ET Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) is being probed by European Union antitrust regulators over licensing of patents to other mobile-phone manufacturers. The European Commission said it will investigate whether Samsung broke a 1998 commitment to license any standard essential patents for phones on “fair, reasonable and non- [...]

By Tom Schoenberg and Phil Milford – Jan 31, 2012 9:27 AM ET The U.S. asked a judge to reject a challenge to the Obama administration’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was out of town, calling the effort “futile.” Trade groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Right to [...]

By Michael A. Riley and Sophia Pearson – Jan 31, 2012 12:00 AM ET China-based hackers looking to derail the $40 billion acquisition of the world’s largest potash producer by an Australian mining giant zeroed in on offices on Toronto’s Bay Street, home of the Canadian law firms handling the deal. Over a few months [...]

By Debra Mao – Jan 30, 2012 5:00 PM ET Hong Kong’s securities watchdog is fighting to defend the way it tackles offshore targets after losing the first round of its insider trading case against hedge fund firm Tiger Asia Management LLC. The Securities and Futures Commission will try next week to overturn a court ruling [...]

By Lindsay Fortado and Ben Moshinsky – Jan 30, 2012 11:59 AM ET Kweku Adoboli, the former UBS AG trader who is accused of causing the largest loss from unauthorized trading in British history, pleaded not guilty to fraud and false accounting. Adoboli, dressed in a grey suit and blue tie, pleaded not guilty to all [...]

By Manuel Baigorri, Steve Rothwell and Alex Webb – Jan 30, 2012 10:23 AM ET Spanair SA’s collapse after the withdrawal of state funding suggests Europe’s debt crisis may spur airlines from the Mediterranean to the Baltic to consider mergers or risk failure. The first collapse of a scheduled European airline since the last recession [...]

By Phil Milford – Jan 30, 2012 9:10 AM ET The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sued former officials of County Bank in Merced, California, part of Capital Corp. of the West, claiming their mismanagement caused $42 million in losses through bad loans. Named in the suit, filed Jan. 27 in federal court in Fresno, were former [...]

By Joel Rosenblatt – Jan 30, 2012 12:00 AM ET California Attorney General Kamala Harris’s holdout position in a proposed agreement with banks over foreclosure practices may reap financial and political rewards at the cost of prolonging some constituents’ suffering. Her strategy has created an obstacle in the negotiations between state attorneys general and the [...]