As most readers are aware, brokerage firms structure their signing bonuses for producing brokers as long term loans which are forgiven over time. When the broker leaves the firm, regardless of the reason, the firm sues to collect the balance on the loans.
Those claims are often met with significant counterclaims by the broker - after all, the broker left the firm for a reason, usually a significant breach by the firm.
While the brokerage firms often win in those cases, since the promissory note is just that, Merrill Lynch has been losing these cases lately, as it appears that Merrill's mistreatment of its brokers over recent years is finally coming home to roost.
Last month, a FINRA Panel refused to enforce a promissory note at Merrill's request. This month, another FINRA arbitration panel denied Merrill Lynch's request to enforce a million dollar note, and ordered Merrill Lynch to pay the broker 1.5 million dollars.
The broker keeps the one million dollars represented by the note, and Merrill pays him an additional 1.5 million dollars.
And, to add insult to injury, the Panel assessed all forum fees against Merrill.
I have represented numerous Bank of America and Merrill Lynch brokers in employment related cases, including the defense of claims on promissory notes. While I do not know anything about this case, in my view of the world, these cases are simply an outgrowth of the poor management of Merrill Lynch which led to its financial demise, and the nearly incompetent management of the brokerage firm by Bank of America. Management of both firms took steps in their own self-interest, regardless of the impact on employees and brokers and destroyed careers in the process.
Sometimes damage to employees in management decisions is unavoidable. A reputable company compensates the employees harmed by those management decisions. Merrill Lynch and Bank of America do not compensate the employees; they sue the employees.
No wonder Bank of America/Merrill lynch finds itself in financial ruin. BofA's stock traded at over $50 a share a few years ago. Today it hovers around $10.
A copy of the award is available here.
Watch the lunar eclipse from anywhere
Rabu, 15 Juni 2011 0 komentar
(Cross-posted on the YouTube and Lat Long blogs)
We’re always fascinated by the unique wonders of space and the world—what can we say, it’s the geek in us! Naturally, when we learned that part of the world will be treated to a rare 100-minute long total lunar eclipse starting at 11:20am PDT today, we were both excited and disappointed that this rare occasion wouldn’t be visible from our Mountain View campus like last year’s eclipse. We suspect we aren’t alone, so you’ll be glad to know that we’ve worked with Slooh Space Camera to let you experience the spectacle wherever you are in the world, in real time.
Slooh will host a live mission interface using Google App Engine that lets anyone not lucky enough to live in certain areas (South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia) take part in this rare astronomical event. It’s equipped with audio narrations from real-life astronomers so you can hear a firsthand, expert account of the event. You can also watch the live stream on the Google YouTube Channel or from the Sky layer in Google Earth (download this kml), while exploring the fascinating world that exists in our galaxy. Finally, those of you on the go can download the Slooh Space Camera Android app to view the images right on your phone.
If you're fortunate enough to be able to view this event in the sky, we hope you'll get the chance to step outside and indulge in the spectacle. For everyone else, we hope our moon madness helps brighten your day.
Update 11:23 PDT: Starting now, if you visit the Google homepage you’ll see a special interactive doodle, which will update throughout the day to show the latest state of the moon. Lunar imagery provided by Slooh.
We’re always fascinated by the unique wonders of space and the world—what can we say, it’s the geek in us! Naturally, when we learned that part of the world will be treated to a rare 100-minute long total lunar eclipse starting at 11:20am PDT today, we were both excited and disappointed that this rare occasion wouldn’t be visible from our Mountain View campus like last year’s eclipse. We suspect we aren’t alone, so you’ll be glad to know that we’ve worked with Slooh Space Camera to let you experience the spectacle wherever you are in the world, in real time.
Slooh will host a live mission interface using Google App Engine that lets anyone not lucky enough to live in certain areas (South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia) take part in this rare astronomical event. It’s equipped with audio narrations from real-life astronomers so you can hear a firsthand, expert account of the event. You can also watch the live stream on the Google YouTube Channel or from the Sky layer in Google Earth (download this kml), while exploring the fascinating world that exists in our galaxy. Finally, those of you on the go can download the Slooh Space Camera Android app to view the images right on your phone.
If you're fortunate enough to be able to view this event in the sky, we hope you'll get the chance to step outside and indulge in the spectacle. For everyone else, we hope our moon madness helps brighten your day.
Update 11:23 PDT: Starting now, if you visit the Google homepage you’ll see a special interactive doodle, which will update throughout the day to show the latest state of the moon. Lunar imagery provided by Slooh.
SEC Loses Insider Trading Trial
Selasa, 14 Juni 2011 0 komentar
My good friends and colleagues Jim Sallah and Jeff Cox from Sallah & Cox, LLC have just proved that SEC complaints contain allegations, not facts. Jim and Jeff just finished a two week trial in Miami, and after an hour of deliberations, the jury cleared their client of any wrongdoing.
According to their press release, the jury found that Dr. Sebastian De La Maza, age 73, did not engage in insider trading by purchasing stock issued by Miami-based Neff Corp. only weeks before the company was acquired by Odyssey Investment Partners in 2005. Dr. De La Maza, according to the SEC’s complaint, allegedly learned about the acquisition from his daughter, who is married to Neff’s former CEO.
The trial was one of the first insider trading cases to be heard by a jury sitting in the Southern District of Florida in nearly a decade. Dr. De La Maza adamantly denied the allegations and presented evidence at trial that he had a seven-year history of closely following and trading Neff, and that his purchases prior to Neff’s acquisition were consistent with his trading history.
Despite the SEC’s arguments, it took the jury a little more than one hour to determine that Dr. De La Maza was not liable for insider trading. The defense verdict is the culmination of a federal investigation and litigation spanning nearly half of a decade.
Earlier this year, Sallah & Cox also successfully defended Dr. De La Maza in a private, shareholder suit in federal court in Miami based on the same allegations, which was dismissed by the Court on different grounds. (Kamin et al. v. Acord, et al., Case No. 09-22829-Civ-Jordan).
Jim and Jeff are partners in Sallah & Cox, LLC. Mark Astarita, the author of this blog, has a working relationship with the firm, whose web site is at www.sallahcox.com
According to their press release, the jury found that Dr. Sebastian De La Maza, age 73, did not engage in insider trading by purchasing stock issued by Miami-based Neff Corp. only weeks before the company was acquired by Odyssey Investment Partners in 2005. Dr. De La Maza, according to the SEC’s complaint, allegedly learned about the acquisition from his daughter, who is married to Neff’s former CEO.
The trial was one of the first insider trading cases to be heard by a jury sitting in the Southern District of Florida in nearly a decade. Dr. De La Maza adamantly denied the allegations and presented evidence at trial that he had a seven-year history of closely following and trading Neff, and that his purchases prior to Neff’s acquisition were consistent with his trading history.
Despite the SEC’s arguments, it took the jury a little more than one hour to determine that Dr. De La Maza was not liable for insider trading. The defense verdict is the culmination of a federal investigation and litigation spanning nearly half of a decade.
Earlier this year, Sallah & Cox also successfully defended Dr. De La Maza in a private, shareholder suit in federal court in Miami based on the same allegations, which was dismissed by the Court on different grounds. (Kamin et al. v. Acord, et al., Case No. 09-22829-Civ-Jordan).
Jim and Jeff are partners in Sallah & Cox, LLC. Mark Astarita, the author of this blog, has a working relationship with the firm, whose web site is at www.sallahcox.com
Knocking down barriers to knowledge
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As much as technology has advanced, there are still many barriers between you and the answers you’re looking for—whether you’re juggling a clunky mobile keyboard or waiting for a website to load. Today we held a media event in San Francisco where we talked about some of the latest things we’re doing to tackle these barriers on mobile, announced that we’re bringing our speech recognition and computer vision technology to the desktop, and took the next step for Google Instant—Instant Pages.
The thirst for knowledge doesn’t stop when you step away from your computer, it continues on your mobile device. In the past two years, mobile search traffic has grown five-fold. Mobile search today is growing at a comparable pace to Google in the early years.
One of the technologies driving this growth is speech recognition. With Voice Search, you don’t have to type on a tiny touchscreen. You can just speak your query and the answer is on the way. We’ve invested tremendous energy into improving the quality of our recognition technology—for example, today we teach our English Voice Search system using 230 billion words from real queries so that we can accurately recognize the phrases people are likely to say. As the quality has increased, so has usage: in the past year alone, Voice Search traffic has grown six-fold, and every single day people speak more than two years worth of voice to our system.
We first offered speech recognition on mobile search, but you should have that power no matter where you are. You should never have to stop and ask yourself, “Can I speak for this?”—it should be ubiquitous and intuitive. So we've added speech recognition into search on desktop for Chrome users. If you’re using Chrome, you’ll start to see a little microphone in every Google search box. Simply click the microphone, and you can speak your search. This can be particularly useful for hard-to-spell searches like [bolognese sauce] or complex searches like [translate to spanish where can I buy a hamburger]. Voice Search on desktop is rolling out now on google.com in English, but in the meantime you can check it out in our video:
Searching with speech recognition started first on mobile, and so did searching with computer vision. Google Goggles has enabled you to search by snapping a photo on your mobile phone since 2009, and today we’re introducing Search by Image on desktop. Next to the microphone on images.google.com, you’ll also see a little camera for the new Search by Image feature. If you click the camera, you can upload any picture or plug in an image URL from the web and ask Google to figure out what it is. Try it out when digging through old vacation photos and trying to identify landmarks—the search [mountain path] probably isn’t going to tell you where you were, but computer vision may just do the trick. Search by Image is rolling out now globally in 40 languages. We’re also releasing Chrome and Firefox extensions that enable you to search any image on the web by right-clicking.
Whether you type, speak or upload a photo, once you’ve indicated what you’re looking for the next step in your search is to sift through the results and pick one. To make this faster, last year we introduced Google Instant, which gives you search results while you type. We estimated Google Instant saves you between two and five seconds on typical searches. But once you’ve picked a result, you click, and then wait again for the page to load—for an average of about five seconds.
We want to help you save some of that time as well, so today we took the next step for Google Instant: Instant Pages. Instant Pages can get the top search result ready in the background while you’re choosing which link to click, saving you yet another two to five seconds on typical searches. Let’s say you’re searching for information about the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, so you search for [dc folklife festival]. As you scan the results deciding which one to choose, Google is already prerendering the top search result for you. That way when you click, the page loads instantly.
Instant Pages will prerender results when we’re confident you’re going to click them. The good news is that we’ve been working for years to develop our relevance technology, and we can fairly accurately predict when to prerender. To use Instant Pages, you’ll want to get our next beta release of Chrome, which includes prerendering (for the adventurous, you can try Instant Pages today with the developer version). It’s one more step towards an even faster web.
To learn more about today’s news, visit our new Inside Search website at www.google.com/insidesearch. There you’ll find a recording of the event (when it’s ready), answers to common questions and links to other blog posts about today’s news on the Mobile blog and Inside Search blog. The Inside Search website is our new one-stop shop for Google search tips, games, features and an under-the-hood look at our technology, so there’s plenty for you to explore.
We’re far from the dream of truly instantaneous access to knowledge, but we’re on our way to help you realize that dream.
Update 4:38p.m.: Watch the video and see a slideshow of today's event below.
Here you can see that mobile search traffic growth over the past three years (the red line) is comparable to overall Google search traffic growth over the same duration (the blue line) but earlier in our history.
One of the technologies driving this growth is speech recognition. With Voice Search, you don’t have to type on a tiny touchscreen. You can just speak your query and the answer is on the way. We’ve invested tremendous energy into improving the quality of our recognition technology—for example, today we teach our English Voice Search system using 230 billion words from real queries so that we can accurately recognize the phrases people are likely to say. As the quality has increased, so has usage: in the past year alone, Voice Search traffic has grown six-fold, and every single day people speak more than two years worth of voice to our system.
We first offered speech recognition on mobile search, but you should have that power no matter where you are. You should never have to stop and ask yourself, “Can I speak for this?”—it should be ubiquitous and intuitive. So we've added speech recognition into search on desktop for Chrome users. If you’re using Chrome, you’ll start to see a little microphone in every Google search box. Simply click the microphone, and you can speak your search. This can be particularly useful for hard-to-spell searches like [bolognese sauce] or complex searches like [translate to spanish where can I buy a hamburger]. Voice Search on desktop is rolling out now on google.com in English, but in the meantime you can check it out in our video:
Searching with speech recognition started first on mobile, and so did searching with computer vision. Google Goggles has enabled you to search by snapping a photo on your mobile phone since 2009, and today we’re introducing Search by Image on desktop. Next to the microphone on images.google.com, you’ll also see a little camera for the new Search by Image feature. If you click the camera, you can upload any picture or plug in an image URL from the web and ask Google to figure out what it is. Try it out when digging through old vacation photos and trying to identify landmarks—the search [mountain path] probably isn’t going to tell you where you were, but computer vision may just do the trick. Search by Image is rolling out now globally in 40 languages. We’re also releasing Chrome and Firefox extensions that enable you to search any image on the web by right-clicking.
Whether you type, speak or upload a photo, once you’ve indicated what you’re looking for the next step in your search is to sift through the results and pick one. To make this faster, last year we introduced Google Instant, which gives you search results while you type. We estimated Google Instant saves you between two and five seconds on typical searches. But once you’ve picked a result, you click, and then wait again for the page to load—for an average of about five seconds.
We want to help you save some of that time as well, so today we took the next step for Google Instant: Instant Pages. Instant Pages can get the top search result ready in the background while you’re choosing which link to click, saving you yet another two to five seconds on typical searches. Let’s say you’re searching for information about the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, so you search for [dc folklife festival]. As you scan the results deciding which one to choose, Google is already prerendering the top search result for you. That way when you click, the page loads instantly.
Instant Pages will prerender results when we’re confident you’re going to click them. The good news is that we’ve been working for years to develop our relevance technology, and we can fairly accurately predict when to prerender. To use Instant Pages, you’ll want to get our next beta release of Chrome, which includes prerendering (for the adventurous, you can try Instant Pages today with the developer version). It’s one more step towards an even faster web.
To learn more about today’s news, visit our new Inside Search website at www.google.com/insidesearch. There you’ll find a recording of the event (when it’s ready), answers to common questions and links to other blog posts about today’s news on the Mobile blog and Inside Search blog. The Inside Search website is our new one-stop shop for Google search tips, games, features and an under-the-hood look at our technology, so there’s plenty for you to explore.
We’re far from the dream of truly instantaneous access to knowledge, but we’re on our way to help you realize that dream.
Update 4:38p.m.: Watch the video and see a slideshow of today's event below.
SEC Suspends Trading in 17 Penny Stocks
Rabu, 08 Juni 2011 0 komentar
Yesterday the SEC suspended trading in 17 microcap stocks because of questions about the adequacy and accuracy of publicly available information about the companies, which trade in the over-the-counter (OTC) market.
The trading suspensions spring from a joint effort by SEC regional offices in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Philadelphia; its Office of Market Intelligence; and its new Microcap Fraud Working Group, which uses a coordinated, proactive approach to detecting and deterring fraud involving microcap securities. The trading suspensions follow a similar suspension last week against Uniontown Energy Inc. (UTOG), based in Henderson, Nev., and Vancouver, Canada.
The 17 companies and their ticker symbols are:
- American Pacific Rim Commerce Group (APRM), based in Citra, Fla.
- Anywhere MD, Inc. (ANWM), based in Altascadero, Calif.
- Calypso Wireless Inc. (CLYW), based in Houston.
- Cascadia Investments, Inc. (CDIV), based in Tacoma, Wash.
- CytoGenix Inc. (CYGX), based in Houston.
- Emerging Healthcare Solutions Inc. (EHSI), based in Houston.
- Evolution Solar Corp. (EVSO), based in The Woodlands, Texas.
- Global Resource Corp. (GBRC), based in Morrisville, N.C.
- Go Solar USA Inc. (GSLO), based in New Orleans.
- Kore Nutrition Inc. (KORE), based in Henderson, Nev.
- Laidlaw Energy Group Inc. (LLEG), based in New York City.
- Mind Technologies Inc. (METK), based in Cardiff, Calif.
- Montvale Technologies Inc. (IVVI), based in Montvale, N.J.
- MSGI Security Solutions Inc. (MSGI), based in New York City.
- Prime Star Group Inc. (PSGI), based in Las Vegas, Nev.
- Solar Park Initiatives Inc. (SOPV), based in Ponte Verde Beach, Fla.
- United States Oil & Gas Corp. (USOG), based in Austin, Texas.
SEC Suspends Trading in 17 Companies in Proactive Effort to Combat Microcap Stock Fraud
SCOTUS Makes Securities Fraud Suits Easier
0 komentarHalliburton Loses As Supreme Court Backs Securities Suits
The U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for investors to press securities fraud suits, ruling for shareholders who accuse Halliburton Co. of misrepresenting its financial condition while under Dick Cheney’s leadership.
The justices today unanimously said the shareholders can sue as a group without first establishing that they lost money as a result of the alleged fraud.
2nd Circuit Affirms $400 Million FINRA Arbitration Award
Selasa, 07 Juni 2011 0 komentar
Professor Jill Gross at the ADR Prof Blog provides the details - the Second Circuit affirmed a denial of a vacatur motion in the context of a $400 million FINRA arbitration award. In STMicroelectronics, N.V. v. Credit Suisse Securities (USA), LLC, Docket No. 10-3847-cv (2d Cir. June 2, 2011), Credit Suisse moved to vacate an award against it arising out of its sale of auction-rate securities (“ARS”) to STMicroelectronics (“ST”), a semiconductor manufacturer. Credit Suisse sold ARS to ST, and, when the ARS market froze in August 2007, more than $400 million of ARS owned by ST failed at auction, rendering them illiquid and significantly lower in value.
Second Circuit Affirms $400 Million FINRA Arbitration Award
Second Circuit Affirms $400 Million FINRA Arbitration Award
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