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Displaying 41-50 out of 228 results for "Principal Protected Notes".

Enforcement Actions: Week in Review - March 21st, 2014

(Mar 2014)

SEC ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS

Manager of Pre-IPO Investment Funds Settles Fraud Claims
March 20, 2014, (Litigation Release No. 22949)
Frank Mazzola,brokerage firm Felix Investments, LLC, and investment adviserFacie Libre Management, Associates, LLC, have been charged with defrauding "investors in funds created to purchase shares of Facebook, Twitter, and other technology companies prior to their initial public offerings." According to the SEC, Mazzola and Felix Investments "arranged to be...

SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - March 14th, 2014

(Mar 2014)

SEC Files Subpoena Enforcement Action Against Charles Riel III for Failure to Produce Documents and Appear for Testimony in Investigation of Reinvest LLC Securities
March 14, 2014, (Litigation Release No. 22943)
The SEC has filed a subpoena enforcement action against Charles Riel III a/k/a Chuck Riel and REinvest LLC. The SEC previously served Riel and REinvest "with document subpoenas in January 2014" and a subpoena for Riel to "appear for sworn testimony in February 2014." According to the...

UBS Intentionally Misled Willow Fund Investors About its Troubled CDS Portfolio

(Feb 2014)

In three blog posts we explained how the UBS Willow Fund's decision to make a large, highly-leveraged short bet on credit risk contrary to its repeated SEC disclosures caused investors to lose over $200 million between 2007 and 2012 . See Credit Default Swaps on Steroids: UBS's Willow Fund, Willow Fund's Hedging, Investing and Speculating in Distressed Debt With Credit Default Swaps and Further Reckoning of UBS Willow Fund's CDS Losses.

As we demonstrated in our earlier blog posts, the second...

Structured Product Based Variable Annuites are Riskier Than Advertised

(Feb 2014)

My colleagues and I have a paper in the current (Winter 2014) Journal of Retirement about structured product based variable annuities (spVAs), which are variable annuities with index-linked accounts that have a payoff similar to structured products. We have been following the market for spVAs since they were first introduced in 2010, and distributed our first working paper in 2011. Since then, three issuers have sold more than $3 billion worth of spVAs, according to a recent article in...

SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - February 7th, 2014

(Feb 2014)

Court of Appeals Denies Stay of Order Compelling Investigative Testimony; Affirms District Court's Exercise of Discretion
February 6, 2014, (Litigation Release No. 22920)
This week the court issued a "summary order denying Edward Daspin's motion for a stay" on a December 2013 order. This means that Daspin is required "to appear for investigative testimony in compliance with an SEC investigative subpoena" and was denied a "request that the SEC be required to pay for Daspin's physician to attend...

SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - January 10th, 2014

(Jan 2014)

Securities and Exchange Commission v. Diamond Foods, Inc.
January 9, 2014, (Litigation Release No. 22902)
According to the complaint, Diamond Foods, Inc. manipulated walnut costs to report "higher net income and inflated earnings to exceed analysts' estimates for fiscal quarters in 2010 and 2011." According to the complaint against Diamond's former CFO, Steven Neil, Neil "directed the effort to fraudulently underreport money paid to walnut growers." Diamond's former CEO, Michael Mendes, has...

Behringer Harvard / TIER REIT Illustrates How Non-Traded REIT Sponsors and Brokers Have Siphoned $10 Billion to $20 Billion (and Counting) From Investors

(Jan 2014)

Sponsors have issued, and brokers had sold, over $85 billion of non-traded real estate investment trusts (REITs) by the end of 2012. These investments are illiquid, high-commissioned, poorly diversified real estate investments. Despite their glaring defects another $20 billion of non-traded REITs were sold to investors in 2013.

Sponsors and brokers have siphoned off at least $20 billion from investors through their sales of non-traded REITs up through 2012. We illustrate the calculation of...

Did UBS Charge its Proprietary Puerto Rico Bond Funds Excessive Markups? Part II

(Jan 2014)

We have previously posted several blog posts about UBS Puerto Rico's collapsing closed-end municipal bond funds including: Trouble in Paradise: UBS Puerto Rico Bond Fund Investors Hit Hard, Diversification and UBS Puerto Rico Bond Fund Losses, Did UBS Charge its Proprietary Puerto Rico Bond Funds Excessive Markups? and Merry Christmas from UBS Asset Managers of Puerto Rico.

UBS has argued that since we couldn't identify which trades in the EMMA data were the UBS bond fund trades and UBS...

Are Managed Futures a License to Steal?

(Dec 2013)

Bloomberg's David Evans raised this question in his recent Fleeced by Fees. David found that 89% of the futures trading profits and interest on collateral in 63 SEC-registered managed futures funds from 2003 to 2012 were consumed by fees and commissions. David's story shines a light on the abusive fees charged by the managed futures partnerships. His story quotes a spokesperson for the National Futures Association self-regulatory organization / trade group as saying that "We can't just give...

SEC Scrutinizing Exchange Traded Notes

(Dec 2013)

Risk.net is reporting that the Office of Capital Markets Trends of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking into the details of exchange traded notes (ETNs). The office, headed by Amy Starr, is looking into the fees and the disclosure of risks and formulas used to determine ETN indicative values according to statements made by Starr at the Structured Products conference in Washington, DC on December 10.

ETNs have been a frequent subject on the blog and regulators have issued...

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