Practice

With Lehman Brothers filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, investors are fearful their holdings could be decimated, but regulators have been stepping in to reassure them that their mutual fund and brokerage accounts are safe, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Securities and Exchange Commission said that some of its staff were working within Lehman’s offices to ensure customer accounts are protected.

Fidelity Investments reached agreements with New York and Massachusetts officials to buy back at par $300 million of auction-rate securities from its customers by the end of the year, becoming the first retail brokerage firm to settle alleged fraudulent sales practices in the ARS market.

Fidelity will buy back $300 million worth of auction-rate securities from its brokerage customers, according to the Associated Press, citing an individual close to the talks. In so doing, it will settle an investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and the announcement could possibly be made this afternoon.

Mark Schonfeld, the high-profile New York regional director of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has left the SEC after 12 years of service to join Gibson Dunn as co-chair of the securities enforcement practice group. In this position, he will also work closely with the crisis management and white collar defense and investigations groups.

Bruce Bent, chairman of The Reserve and the creator of the first money market mutual fund, is breaking from the pack that has been critical of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposal of the rule governing money funds to lessen their reliance on credit rating agencies, Dow Jones reports.

The top enforcement attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mark Schonfeld, is reportedly leaving next month to join a private law firm.

Although unemployment and inflation have been higher in the past 30 years, a majority of people age 60 or older have a very pessimistic outlook, according to a poll by the MetLife Mature Market Institute.

Edward Jones will pay $7.5 million to California to settle claims that it failed to disclose its revenue-sharing policies to investors. Although it earlier denied the attorney general’s charges, in settling, the firm neither admitted to nor denied the allegations.

Anxious to do business in the world’s third-largest economy, where the population is aging, The Hartford is expanding into Germany.

The Pension Protection Act is proving to help people better prepare for retirement by easing employers’ liabilities for automatically enrolling workers in retirement savings plans. But millions of middle- or lower-income Americans are still underserved, particularly if they work for small employers that don’t offer a 401(k) plan, The Wall Street Journal reports.