Stock market

Washington, D.C., Nov. 10, 2009 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged the former chief financial officer of a New York-based hedge fund with securities fraud for arranging secret sales of securities from his personal trading account to the hedge fund accounts at inflated prices to generate his own illicit profits.    » read more »

Cantwell Introduces Legislation to Help Stop Abusive Speculation Practices

November 10,2009 -- WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), together with Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), proposed legislation empowering state gambling regulators and attorneys general to examine unregulated derivatives trading and take appropriate action to protect citizens from practices which can harm the foundations of our economy. As part of a broader effort by Congress to pass comprehensive financial regulatory reform, Cantwell’s proposal treats derivatives trading for what it is: a sophisticated form of gambling.    » read more »

Washington, D.C., Nov. 5, 2009 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a pair of lawyers for tipping inside information in exchange for kickbacks as well as six Wall Street traders and a proprietary trading firm involved in a $20 million insider trading scheme.    » read more »

Hedge Fund Managers, Professional Traders and Senior Corporate Executive Among Newly Charged in $33 Million Scheme

Washington, D.C., Nov. 5, 2009 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced additional charges in its insider trading enforcement action against billionaire Raj Rajaratnam and Galleon Management LP by charging 13 additional individuals and entities, including three hedge fund managers, three professional traders at New York-based Schottenfeld Group, and a senior executive at Atheros Communications, a California-based developer of networking technologies.    » read more »

Senator says failure to address market structure issues could mean systemic risk

November 5, 2009 -- WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a speech on the Senate floor today, Senator Ted Kaufman continued his push for more regulatory oversight of the U.S. equity markets by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As Kaufman noted, “just over one year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers ... Wall Street is essentially unchanged.” Not only are the same practices that led to the financial debacle 14 months ago still present, but the market is increasingly dominated by “new practices which are leading to new problems and new systemic risks.”

The danger, Kaufman warns, is that with no immediate crisis at hand, it is all too easy to slip back into complacency.    » read more »

Washington, D.C., Oct. 30, 2009 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged the former chief financial officer of a San Francisco private investment firm and six of his relatives and friends with insider trading, alleging that their scheme collectively reaped more than $8 million in illicit profits from unlawful trades in the securities of Tempur-pedic International, Inc. and Acxiom Corporation.    » read more »

Will Sell Retail Asset Management Business, Including Van Kampen Investments, to Invesco and Maintain Minority Stake in Combined Firm

Oct 19 2009 -- New York -- Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) today announced as part of a restructuring of its investment management division a definitive agreement to sell its retail asset management business, including Van Kampen Investments, Inc., to Invesco Ltd. (NYSE: IVZ), a leading independent global investment management company. This transaction allows the Firm to focus on its institutional client base - including corporations, pension plans, large intermediaries, foundations and endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and central banks, among others.    » read more »

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Charges Hedge Fund Managers, Fortune 500 Executives, and Management Consulting Director in $20 Million Insider Trading Case

October 16, 2009 -- PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and JOSEPH DEMAREST, JR., Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), today announced charges against six individuals arising out of their alleged involvement in the largest hedge fund insider trading case in history.    » read more »

Funding Status of Typical Corporate Plan Tops 80 Percent

BOSTON, October 6, 2009 — U.S. stocks rose for the seventh consecutive month, helping to increase the funded status of the typical U.S. corporate pension plan by 0.6 percentage points in September, according to monthly statistics published by BNY Mellon Asset Management. The funded status of the typical plan increased to 80.3 percent at the end of September, up from 79.7 percent at the end of August, according to the BNY Mellon statistics.    » read more »

Washington, D.C., Oct. 5, 2009 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it has approved new exchange rules for breaking stock trades that deviate so substantially from current market prices that they are considered “clearly erroneous.” The rules would for the first time provide a consistent standard across stock exchanges and reduce uncertainty about what happens to a trade depending on where it is executed.

“Adopting consistent standards across exchanges for breaking trades will strengthen the resiliency of our markets by reducing the potential for market confusion, especially during periods of high market volatility,” said SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro. “These changes will promote the orderly and efficient operation of our markets.”    » read more »

Washington, D.C., Sept. 17, 2009 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today unanimously proposed a rule amendment that would prohibit the practice of flashing marketable orders.

A flash order enables a person who has not publicly displayed a quote to see orders less than a second before the public is given an opportunity to trade with those orders. Investors who have access only to information displayed as public quotes may be harmed if market participants are able to flash orders and avoid the need to make the order publicly available.    » read more »

Enhance investor confidence

Washington, D.C., July 1, 2009 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today voted on three measures that are intended to better inform and empower investors to improve corporate governance and help restore investor confidence.

The Commission proposed requiring public companies receiving money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to provide a shareholder vote on executive pay in their proxy solicitations The Commission also voted to propose better disclosure of executive compensation at public companies in their proxy statements, and approved a New York Stock Exchange rule change to prohibit brokers from voting proxies in corporate elections without instructions from their customers.    » read more »

New system offers more speed, flexibility and scalability

NEW YORK, July 1, 2009 -- The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), a subsidiary of NYSE Euronext (NYX), has reduced the time it takes to execute an order to five milliseconds from 105 milliseconds, with the implementation of the new NYSE Super Display Book system (SDBK) for processing orders. As a result, NYSE customers are experiencing trade executions and reports within five milliseconds, as well as order and cancellation acknowledgments in just two milliseconds.    » read more »

June 23, 2009 -- CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Duke Energy has declared a quarterly cash dividend on its common stock of $0.24 per share, an increase of $0.01 over the previous level. The dividend is payable on Sept. 16, 2009, to shareholders of record on the close of business Aug. 14, 2009.

"Despite challenging economic conditions, Duke Energy continues to successfully implement its business strategy. We are pleased to share this success with our investors," said James E. Rogers, chairman, president and CEO.

This is the 83rd consecutive year that Duke Energy has paid a quarterly cash dividend on its common stock.

Source: Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK)

Voltaire and NYSE Technologies deliver industry’s lowest latency Ethernet solution to accelerate financial market data applications

SIFMA Technology Management Conference, NEW YORK – June 23, 2009 – Voltaire Ltd. (NASDAQ: VOLT), a provider of scale-out data center fabrics, today announced a new low latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet-based messaging solution in collaboration with NYSE Technologies. This combination accelerates the performance of automated trading and market data applications achieving average latencies of 25 microseconds at rates of 1 million 200 byte messages per second per core.    » read more »