Regulation

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is proposing a new “execution-with-diligence” standard for municipal trading that would require a dealer to use “reasonable diligence” to determine the market for a bond so the price it provides to a customer is “fair and reasonable under prevailing market conditions.”

The group targeted companies that processed financial transactions and retailers that received and transmitted financial data.

Former UBS AG executive Peter Ghavami was sentenced to 18 months in prison for rigging what should have been competitive bids to handle municipal-bond investment deals.

Federal prosecutors brought criminal charges against SAC Capital on Thursday. Dubbing SAC “a veritable magnet of market cheaters,” authorities argued that the company allowed a “systematic” insider trading scheme to play out between 1999 to 2010. It is deemed that the scheme generated profits for the firm in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Former UBS AG executive Peter Ghavami was sentenced to 18 months in prison for rigging what should have been competitive bids to handle municipal-bond investment deals.

A Texas man has been accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme involving the digital currency Bitcoin. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Trendon Shavers with defrauding investors of nearly $150,000 worth of bitcoins through Bitcoin Savings and Trust, an online investment scheme he ran, and of making false claims while soliciting investments online in 2011 and 2012.

Ex-UBS AG Managing Director Peter Ghavami and two former colleagues convicted of rigging municipal bond investment deals may be sentenced to less prison time than the government is seeking, a federal judge said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Trendon Shavers with defrauding investors of nearly $150,000 worth of bitcoins through Bitcoin Savings and Trust, an online investment scheme he ran, and of making false claims while soliciting investments online in 2011 and 2012.

Robert Khuzami, the former head of enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, is joining Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

Increased demand for due diligence on hedge funds -- if not for the funds themselves -- may be the initial impact of the SEC's recent ruling lifting an 80-year-old ban on advertising for private offerings.