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Sending shockwaves through the Swiss financial industry, banking giant UBS is facing accusations from a former senior banker in US courts of massive fraud and corruption. UBS is alleged to have engaged in routine activities aimed at helping its high net worth clients evade hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes, among other matters.
The world's leading ozone destroyer takes credit for leadership in ozone protection. A major agrichemical manufacturer trades in a pesticide so hazardous it has been banned in many countries, while implying it is helping feed the hungry.
Countrywide Financial made risky loans to tens of thousands of Americans, helping set off a chain of events that has the economy staggering. So it may come as a surprise that a dozen former top Countrywide executives now stand to make millions from the home mortgage mess, buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government took over, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, at newly-formed PennyMac.
The rescue of Bear Stearns faced further scrutiny in Congress on Tuesday as a powerful Democratic lawmaker demanded more information on the selection of BlackRock as investment manager for $30bn in the bank's mortgage assets.
There's something peculiar in the report on
financial market regulation issued March 31 by Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson. The plan, touted by some as a bold expansion of federal
control over capital markets and dismissed by others as a mere
rearranging of the deck chairs on the financial Titanic, includes an
incongruous section on the insurance industry.
Originally posted at Dirt Digger's Digest on September 23, 2008 -- A number of leading Democrats and Republicans expressed strong
misgivings last Monday about the autocratic plan for bailing out Wall
Street that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to ram through
Congress. It remains to be seen whether this is mere posturing or
serious opposition.
The European Union's secretive decision-making processes were condemned on Thursday in a legal judgment that should lead to more light being shed on how thousands of regulations affecting businesses are hatched.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought charges against 69 accountants for failing to register with the Public Company Accounting Board (PCAB) earlier this week. This somewhat obscure action is the latest ripple in the wave of crackdowns that followed the Enron accounting scandals in 2001 -- to break up the all too cozy relationship between auditors and the multinationals that they are supposed to be policing.
When it comes to attracting celebrity wealth seeking shelter from taxes, the Cayman Islands and other classic Caribbean tax havens are receding in favor, according to tax experts here and overseas. But for earnings derived from intellectual property such as royalties, the Netherlands has become a tax shelter of choice.
The securities industry dodged a bullet on Monday when the Supreme Court threw out a private antitrust suit that accused 10 leading investment banks of conspiring to fix prices for the initial public offerings of hundreds of technology companies during the 1990s.
As the contemporary environmental movement built momentum in the mid-to-late 1960s, undermining the public trust in many a corporation, newly greened corporate images flooded the airwaves, newspapers and magazines.
Seven international banks have been served with subpoenas over the global interest setting scandal. Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS - have been asked to provide relevant "documents and communications" to the New York attorney-general.
The largest U.S. banks sold expensive subprime loans more frequently to minorities than whites, according to a study released Wednesday by a community activist group.