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Article: Dole Food Had Too Many Shares

Article - Media

Dole Food Had Too Many Shares

Matt Levine

Bloomberg, 17 February 2017

In 2013, tropical-fruit tycoon David Murdock, who was the chairman, chief executive officer and biggest shareholder of Dole Food Co., took it private for $13.50 a share. A lot of shareholders felt that that price was way too low, and that Murdock had sandbagged the shareholders by driving down the value of the company so he could buy it cheaply for himself. So they sued, and they won. In 2015, the Delaware Chancery Court ordered Murdock to pay shareholders another $2.74 a share, plus interest. There was a class action on behalf of shareholders, covering 36,793,758 shares, and after the court ruled in their favor, the class lawyers informed the shareholders and asked them to submit a form to claim their $2.74 a share.

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Comment: Who sold all the fake shares? Who paid the dividend to shareholders?

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Web: Fake New Impresario Patrick Byrne Gets Canadian Court Deadline

Web

Fake New Impresario Patrick Byrne Gets Canadian Court Deadline

Gary Weiss

gary-weiss.com, 16 February 2017

Another setback for Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, as he fights the There’s been a victory in the struggle against fake news, and chances are you’ve never heard about it.

I’m referring to a legal battle involving a right-wing financier named Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com. A few months ago he was trounced in a Canadian court for outlandish lies that he published on his fake news website, “Deep Capture.”

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Article: Meet this maverick short seller whose favourite pastime is exposing ‘bad companies’

Article - Media

Meet this maverick short seller whose favourite pastime is exposing ‘bad companies’

Tom Redmond

The Economic Times, 12 February 2017

The roosters start crowing at 4 am on Alder Lane Farm, about an hour north of San Francisco on the edge of Sonoma wine country. While horses stir in their stables and chickens begin to roam the 20-acre property, one of the world’s most fearsome short sellers puts on his usual attire—shorts and flip-flops—and makes his way in the dark to the room behind his garage. Six pinball machines, a gigantic flatscreen, and a pingpong table compete for attention. If not for the Bloomberg terminal in the corner, you might assume this was your typical man cave.

Paywall Access to Full Article

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Article: VirnetX Class Accuses Big Brokers of Naked Short Sales

Article - Media

VirnetX Class Accuses Big Brokers of Naked Short Sales

Chris Fry

Courthouse News Service, 19 December 2016

Investors claim in a federal class action that Goldman Sachs and other banking giants suppressed the share price of VirnetX, “a leader in mobile security technology.”

In addition to Goldman Sachs, the Dec. 14 complaint in Bergen County Superior Court takes aim at Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab and the Bank of New York Mellon. The case is the Top Download for Courthouse News on Monday.

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Web: Canadian Court Wallops Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne

Web

Canadian Court Wallops Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne

Gary Weiss

gary-weiss.com, 19 December 2016

A Canadian appellate court has a lump of coal for the Christmas stocking of Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne: pay a libel judgment for lying on a fake news website, or your appeal will be kicked out of court.

Last May, Byrne was hit with a C$1.2 million judgment for outlandish lies about a Canadian stock promoter, Aly Nazerali, on “Deep Capture,” a website that retails fake news, conspiracy theories and personal attacks on journalists and whistleblowers. The court’s scathing decision found that Byrne and right-wing conspiracy theorist Mark Mitchell maliciously fabricated wild accusations against Nazerali.

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Article: Japanese regulator looks to fine Morgan Stanley for market manipulation

Article - Media

Japanese regulator looks to fine Morgan Stanley for market manipulation

Hayley McDowell

The Trade, 6 December 2016

Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC) has recommended that Morgan Stanley be fined based on the findings of an investigation into market manipulation.

The SESC found a trader at Morgan Stanley had placed orders and conducted trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange over a 14-day period in October 2015, without intention to execute.

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Article: Overstock’s Blockchain and the War Against Naked Shorting

Article - Media

Overstock’s Blockchain and the War Against Naked Shorting

Jacob Dienelt

coindesk, 14 November 2016

Sometimes called the “Pariah of Wall Street”, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne has spent decades fighting against a suspect practice known as “naked short selling”.

Naked short selling, or a naked short, occurs when a trader sells a share of stock without first procuring a “borrow” – an assurance that the shares are available to be delivered. This can lead to more shares being shorted than can actually be delivered to the buyers.

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Article: FINRA Merrill’s system failures produced millions of inaccurate trading records

Article - Media

FINRA: Merrill’s system failures produced millions of inaccurate trading records

Kenneth Corbin

OnWallStreet, 19 October 2016

Staffers at FINRA’s Department of Market Regulation identified a number of reporting errors in the data Merrill submitted to FINRA’s Order Audit Trail System, or OATS, and cited the firm for failures relating to its supervision practices and its maintenance of books and records.

In a statement announcing the settlement, Thomas Gira, executive vice president and head of market regulation at FINRA, notes the importance of maintaining accurate data through the OATS market-surveillance program to detect signs of market manipulation and other irregularities.

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Article: FINRA fines Merrill Lynch $2.8 million for reporting violations

Article - Media

FINRA fines Merrill Lynch $2.8 million for reporting violations

Elizabeth Dilts

Reuters, 18 October 2016

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch $2.8 million on Tuesday for what it called systemic violations in record-keeping and how the firm reported trades and order audit trail system data.

The allegations involve trade and order audit data that brokerages submit to FINRA, and which the regulator uses to detect, among other things, possible market manipulation.

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Filing: SEC v Merrill Lynch

Filing

SEC v Merrill Lynch

23 June 2016

Broker-dealers are required to be diligent stewards of the cash and securities entrusted to them by their customers. This basic principle is embodied in Exchange Act Rule 15c3-3, known as the Customer Protection Rule (“Rule”). The Rule requires broker-dealers to safeguard both the cash and securities of their customers so that customer assets can be quickly returned if the firm fails. In broad strokes, a broker-dealer cannot use customer assets to finance the business activities of the firm, and it cannot place customer assets in locations or accounts that make them vulnerable to claims made against the broker-dealer by third parties.

PDF (23 pages): SEC v Merrill Lynch

 

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Article: Credit Suisse Tries to Overhaul Its Image, but Problems Remain

Article - Media

Credit Suisse Tries to Overhaul Its Image, but Problems Remain

William D. Cohan

New York Times, 23 June 2016

Wall Street’s efforts to overhaul its culture since the 2008 financial crisis that nearly bankrupted the world’s economy have not been a resounding success, despite calls by prominent regulators to stop rewarding bad behavior.

William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and one of Wall Street’s most important overseers, has twice held closed-door sessions at the bank, located in downtown Manhattan, to urge top banking executives to overhaul the behavior inside their companies. His goal has been to get bankers to think about what they should do instead of what they can do and get away with.

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Article: FINRA Fines Morgan Stanley $80,000 for Supervisory Failures, Deletion of 21k OTC Options Positions

Article - Media

FINRA Fines Morgan Stanley $80,000 for Supervisory Failures, Deletion of 21k OTC Options Positions

Michael Edmiston

Stock Law, 13 June 2016

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC received a censure and $80,000 fine after a FINRA investigation determined the firm improperly deleted 21,374 over-the-counter (OTC) options positions required to be reported to the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC)’s LOPR system, thereby rendering the LOPR data inaccurate.

FINRA wrote that, “The accuracy of LOPR data is essential for the analysis of various potential violations, including insider trading, position limits, exercise limits, front-running, capping and pegging, mini-manipulation, and marking-the-close.” The identification process assists regulators in identifying potential market manipulation by users who hold large options positions, such that deleting such information may adversely affect the industry’s ability to detect such violations.

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Article: SESC Proposes $1.9m Fine for Morgan Stanley MUFG over Market Manipulation

Article - Media

SESC Proposes $1.9m Fine for Morgan Stanley MUFG over Market Manipulation

Finance Magnates, 12 June 2016

Japan’s financial market watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC), today recommended fining Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities for alleged market manipulation related to shares of railway operator, Seibu Holdings, according to a Reuters report.

SESC has recommended that the Financial Services Agency (FSA) imposes a penalty of ¥220 million ($1.9 million), as revealed in a statement posted on its website.

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Article: Ban offshore banks with account secrecy from US correspondent accounts: Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz

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Ban offshore banks with account secrecy from US correspondent accounts: Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz

Lucy Komisar

The Komisar Scoop, 3 June 2016

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winning former chief economist of the World Bank, says that the way to solve corruption and money-laundering facilitated by offshore banks that run secret accounts is to “shut them down.” And the way to do that is to ban non-transparent banks from US correspondent accounts. He spoke at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting today.

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Article: Immunomedics Kicked Out of Prestigious ASCO Cancer Conference

Article - Media

Immunomedics Kicked Out of Prestigious ASCO Cancer Conference

Adam Feuerstein

TheStreet, 3 June 2016

Immunomedics (IMMU) – Get Report was caught trying to sneak old, previously presented clinical data on its triple-negative breast cancer drug IMMU-132 into the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, which starts Friday.

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Comment: Complete fraud.  Stock went from $5.50 to $2.50 on millions of shares, then up to $27.

THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?