Practice

Growing up in Honduras, Maria Chrin heard the story of how her grandmother, a widow lacking financial savvy, lost a large amount of money because she could not figure out what to do with the stocks her husband owned in U.S. banks.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service, concerned that some Build America Bonds are being sold to investors at prices that are too high, is urging municipal issuers to track the trading of their BABs through the Electronic Municipal Market Access system and to question underwriters about the pricing.

Financing a college education is a major concern for most high school seniors as they prepare for graduation, according to a study by Fidelity Investments titled "College Bound and Cost Conscious: A Survey of High School Seniors."

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a Walt Disney Co. employee and her boyfriend with insider trading for plotting to sell confidential information about the company’s quarterly earnings to hedge funds.

The SEC alleged in a complaint filed Wednesday that Bonnie Jean Hoxie, an administrative assistant to a “high-level” Disney executive, and her boyfriend, Yonni Sebbag, sent anonymous letters in March to more than 20 hedge funds offering to provide results of Disney’s second quarter earnings.

A new survey challenges the notion that investors should load up on bonds as they age.

New SEC rules that take effect May 28 are also making money funds wary.

Senate Democrats tapped mostly liberal members Tuesday to be conferees on the regulatory reform bill, making it harder for the banking industry to remove provisions it considers too tough.

With the SEC money market fund rules taking effect this Friday and the Libor up sharply, fund managers are reportedly beginning to see lending to European banks as too much of a risk. The bigger worry is this pullback has the potential to lead to another credit crunch like the one that nearly crippled the capital markets in 2008.

Kenneth A. Johnson, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new chief financial officer as of last Friday, takes over the agency’s financial operations just as the regulator prepares to amass a bigger operating budget and beef up examinations of mutual fund complexes and hedge funds to get ahead of systemic risk and ponzi schemes of the Madoff magnitude.