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New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo filed a lawsuit against Ernst & Young LLP charging the accounting firm with helping Lehman Brothers Holdings engage in an accounting fraud masking the true state of its balance sheet.

Experts increasingly believe the bond rally has run its course.

The company said it has already taken appropriate provision for the fine, so payment won't affect current income.

The New York attorney general's lawsuit claims that the accounting firm explicity approved the transactions, which were designed to temporarily reduce the leverage on Lehman's balance sheet.

Although stocks didn’t rally until the fourth quarter of this year, that momentum could continue into 2011, according to The Wall Street Journal’s “Heard on the Street” column Wednesday. Thus, the two-year-long aversion to stocks and stock funds could finally be coming to an end.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced three shared-equity deals Tuesday for a total of $620 million in failed-bank assets.

If the FDIC has its way, federal regulators would not wait for Congress to create national servicing standards, but instead write such rules as part of risk retention guidelines.

Although independent registered investment advisers are optimistic about the future of their businesses and the stock market, they are worried about the time and money associated with pending regulatory changes, according to a new survey by TD Ameritrade Institutional, a division of TD Ameritrade.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney characterized its outlook for 2011 with the phrase “recovery becomes expansion.” The business-cycle recovery in the global economy that began in the summer of 2009 is now an expansion, it says in a new report.

Hedge fund managers found it a little easier to hang out their own shingles in the third quarter.

While 2010 represented a modest improvement for mergers and acquisitions, the market for initial public offerings surged back to life, as domestic IPO activity eclipsed the previous two years, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

What Jon Wax learned about buying an advisory business from a retiring financial planner (his mother).

Get ready for a strong recovery in 2011, as corporate profits will boost the markets, predicts kasina CEO Steven Miyao. By mid-year, positive flows into equities will exceed flows into bonds, he said.

Toronto-Dominion, which controls a 1,250-branch retail bank on the East Coast of the U.S., said the deal will create one of the five-largest bank-owned auto lenders in North America.

The business-cycle recovery in the global economy that began in the summer of 2009 is now an expansion, says MSSB.

The new retirement plan requirement to disclose all fees will be particularly difficult for non-registered investments, such as bank collective funds, separately managed accounts and annuities, the SPARK Institute warns. Thus, it is developing standards to facilitate disclosure.

The Bank of America unit caps off a year of aggressive wealth management team expansion with the appointment of five new advisors.

Americans’ financial outlook is improving, according to the December Country Financial Security Index. Thirty-eight percent rate their financial security positively, and another 15% sense their financial security is improving.

Some transaction participants appear to be rushing to market questionable Build America Bond, bank-qualified or other municipal bond deals before tax incentives expire at the end of the year and risking Internal Revenue Service enforcement action for violations of tax requirements, according to market sources.

The Securities and Exchange Commission Monday proposed a lengthy new rule to establish a permanent registration system for municipal advisory firms as well as individual advisers that would replace a temporary system for firms the SEC put in place in September.