Saturday, October 11, 2008

Have you heard about Wall Street corruption and greed? Read about an example below.

October 11, 2008
The former general counsel of UBS AG agreed Tuesday to pay $6.5 million to settle insider trading claims stemming from the collapse of the auction rate securities market. According to the agreement announced by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, David Aufhauser will also be barred for two years from working with any company involved in the securities industry, from practicing law in New York and from serving as a director or officer of any public company. Aufhauser neither admitted nor denied guilt in the matter, according to the settlement. Aufhauser allegedly instructed his personal broker to dump $250,000 in auction rate securities after receiving an e-mail from UBS' chief risk officer on Dec. 14, 2007, that outlined the problems facing the ARS market.
According to the settlement agreement, Aufhauser sent the e-mail to his broker 10 minutes after forwarding the risk officer's e-mail to two other UBS lawyers requesting a meeting. Aufhauser allegedly restated the sell order to his broker the following Monday, and the auction rate securities were sold on Dec. 18 and 21, the settlement said. After hearing in February, immediately before the ARS market collapsed, that two other high-level executives had vacated their positions in the securities, Aufhauser allegedly told his broker to buy back the auction rate securities that had been sold two months earlier. When the broker was unable to carry out the order, Aufhauser told his broker to purchase as close to the same position as possible in auction rate securities.
The broker ended up purchasing $300,000 in ARS, $50,000 more than Aufhauser's original position, the settlement said. UBS stopped supporting ARS auctions the very next day, the settlement said.

For more information about what you can do if you lost money in the market go to www.tuckerludin.com/securitiesclaims.html