Tom Steinert-Threlkeld

Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, now a unit of Bank of America, will pay $10 million to settle charges that it misused customer order information for its own proprietary trading in securities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged an Austin energy company with bribing a broker to manipulate the price of its stock.

The asset manager said its technology services business, BlackRock Solutions, had taken on 20 new assignments and become a "key differentiator." And that its iShares exchange-traded fund business is strong, with inflows of $42.9 billion for the year.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged three New York-based investment firms and four former senior officers with fraud, misuse of client assets and other securities laws violations, when they masked financial troubles within their $66 million advisory business.

NYSE Euronext said average daily volume in dervivatives contracts were down 6.2% worldwide in December 2010, compared to the prior year.

The operations chief for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities and his personal assistant are petitioning a New York court to be released from jail.

Assets held in exchange-traded funds reached $994.5 billion by the end of 2010, according to data compiled by the National Stock Exchange. That is up 27.1%, compared to a year earlier

Steadfast Networks said Monday it acquired Radius IT, in a bid to create a network for financial trading.

Dreyfus and Merlin Securities equip wholesalers and hedge fund customers with iPads.

The four major exchange operators – NYSE Euronext, Nasdaq OMX Group, Direct Edge and BATS Global Markets – will be observing Christmas Eve. But not New Year’s Eve.

The Financial Services Authority has fined a former executive from Toronto Dominion Bank $1.2 million for intentionally mispricing trading positions in credit derivatives to cover his losses and banned him from working in the financial services industry.

The Financial Services Authority has fined a former executive from Toronto Dominion Bank $1.2 million for intentionally mispricing trading positions in credit derivatives to cover his losses and banned him from working in the financial services industry.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has censured Citigroup Global Markets after finding the financial services firm failed to report transactions promptly to its Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine.

It didn't take a federal jury long to convict programmer Sergey Aleynikov of stealing computer code used for high-speed trading, from Goldman Sachs.

Sergey Aleynikov, who took code with him when he moved to a startup in high-speed trading technology, faces as much as 10 years in prison, if convicted of stealing trade secrets from his former employer, one of the largest electronic trading firms on Wall Street.

The federal regulator indicates it plans to allow the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to take on new powers for inspecting the audits of broker-dealers.

Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Mary Schapiro said that the creation of a system for capturing all stock market data in close to real time is likely half as much as the $4 billion originally estimated.

EDGAR Online said Tuesday it struck agreements that will let it create risk-return summaries in the eXtensible Business Reporting Language for as many as 2,000 out of the roughly 8,000 mutual funds that must meet a new federal requirement for interactive financial filings.

The trustee seeking to recover funds lost in the Bernard Madoff securities fraud Sunday sought $9 billion from international banking firm HSBC, in a bankruptcy court complaint.

The fees on securities transactions and on registrations of securities that fund the operations of the Securities and Exchange Commission are set to jump as much as 62 percent, once its budget for the next fiscal year are approved.