Any type of arbitrage activity in an annuity is of concern to the
The New York A.G. is "very interested" and "concerned" about manipulations of prices in annuities by professional investors, and "intends to bring a case" against a specific firm, Brown said at the Mutual Funds Reform and Public Trust Conference of the
Specifically, New York is concerned about hedge funds and wealthy individuals using annuities without restrictions on the number of trades, to market time them, according to the NYT. In addition, regulators continue to track the practice of "churning," or moving a clients assets from one annuity to another in order to generate brokerage commissions.
"We think there is a fair amount of improper activity," James S. Shorris, an NASD official, told The Times. For its part, the SEC has demanded records from 40 companies and is "actively and aggressively" pursuing market-timing investigations there, said Herb Perone, a Commission spokesman.
However, Deborah Tucker, a spokeswoman for the
Grace Period
But as far as late trading is concerned, the NY A.G. draws the line there. "The view of our office is that late trading is criminal," Brown said, adding, "We are living in a completely new regulatory world. Its moved to a different stadium."
__
The staff of Money Management Executive ("MME") has prepared these capsule summaries based on reports published by the news sources to which they are attributed. Those news sources are not associated with MME, and have not prepared, sponsored, endorsed, or approved these summaries.
