The U.S. Senate approved a proposal to let regulators decide who rates asset-backed securities after investors, including public pensions, said Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service assigned inflated assessments to mortgage bonds because the companies were paid by Wall Street firms selling the debt.
The Senate in a 64-35 vote yesterday approved an amendment to the financial overhaul legislation that would create a ratings board overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The panel would assign a credit-rating company to rank an offering.
Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat who introduced the amendment, said the credit-rating industry is affected by “a staggering conflict of interest,” and issuers of securities “shop around” for the credit ratings.
Lawmakers and regulators have been debating for three years how to reduce conflicts at the companies. Under Franken’s amendment, the SEC would determine the size of the board. The majority of members would be investors, at least one member would be from a credit-rating company and at least one member would be from an investment bank.
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Compliance Policy
Clement Says Canada Can Open Telecommunications Alone
Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement yesterday said his country can open its telecommunications industry to foreign investment while leaving its broadcasting industry protected, contradicting the country’s regulator and other groups.
Clement told a Parliamentary committee studying the loosening of Canada’s foreign ownership restrictions that distinctions can be drawn between telecommunications “as a field of endeavor, and activity and broadcasting.”
Clement’s assertion puts him at odds with the country’s telecommunications regulator, which said last month Canada needs to limit foreign ownership of companies such as Telus Corp. and BCE Inc. to no more than 49 percent to have effective content policies.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in March that opening Canada’s C$40 billion ($39.3 billion) telephone industry is a priority for him, which could herald the biggest changes to ownership rules since caps were imposed in the 1980s.
EPA Says Emission Rule Will Shield Small Businesses
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said final rules for greenhouse-gas emissions will shield small companies from permitting requirements aimed at power plants and oil refineries. Initially, the EPA will regulate greenhouse gases from existing power plants and oil refineries that increase emissions by more than 75,000 tons per year, and from new plants that emit more than 100,000 tons per year, under rules announced yesterday. Legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate May 12 would halt EPA’s proposed rules under the Clean Air Act and substitute legal restrictions on greenhouse gases, Steve Schleimer, a New York-based director of energy and environmental regulation for Barclays Capital, said yesterday on a conference call with reporters. Republicans and some Democrats in Congress are trying to block EPA’s efforts to regulate carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming.
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FCC Chairman Says Policies to Help U.S. Catch Up in Broadband
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said his push for more stringent regulations on Internet providers is designed to help the U.S. catch up to the leading countries in broadband services.
The FCC’s priorities are to extend broadband access and adoption, while keeping the Internet open and fair, he said at a conference in Los Angeles yesterday. Those priorities were threatened after a U.S. court ruled April 6 the FCC lacked authority to regulate Comcast Corp.’s Web practices, he said.
Genachowski said his proposal last week to extend a suite of regulations for telephone services to Internet-access providers is an effort to reclaim the FCC’s “legal foundation.” Cable and phone companies such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast say the new regulations will make it harder for them to justify network investments because the FCC may require them to share their pipes with rivals in the future, limiting returns.
Nigeria Limits Banks’ Non-Performing Loans to 10% of Portfolio
Nigeria’s central bank said commercial lenders must limit non-performing loans to 10 percent of their portfolios, according to guidelines published on the bank’s website yesterday. If toxic debt exceeds the limit, banks will have to provide an action plan within six months.
Banks will only pay a dividend if they have made “adequate” provisions for actual and contingent losses, and all preliminary expenses have been written off, the central bank said.
Compliance Action
Banks, Rating Agencies Said to Be Subpoenaed by Cuomo
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, UBS AG and five other banks were subpoenaed by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo over whether they misled rating companies about mortgage- backed securities, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
Cuomo is probing the relationships between the banks and the major companies, which also were subpoenaed, said the person, who declined to be identified because the investigation is continuing.
The subpoenas were sent yesterday, the person said.
State and federal regulators since at least 2008 have been looking into why Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings gave top grades to subprime-mortgage backed securities and collateralized debt obligations that later plummeted in value.
Subpoenas also went to Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, Citigroup Inc., Credit Agricole SA and Merrill Lynch & Co., which was acquired by Bank of America Corp., the person said.
UBS received a subpoena from the New York attorney general and will comply, said Doug Morris, a spokesman.
Michael Duvally, a Goldman Sachs spokesman, and Morgan Stanley’s Mark Lake declined to comment.
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Lawyer Fined $591,000 for Helping Boiler Room Scam, FSA Says
The founding partner of a London law firm will be fined 400,000 pounds ($591,000) for aiding a multimillion-pound illegal share scam, Britain’s Financial Services Authority said yesterday in a statement.
Andrew Greystock, a former investment banker at NM Rothschild & Sons Ltd. and senior partner of Atlantic Law LLP, will also be banned by the FSA from working in financial services for signing off on advertising from four Spanish firms that were boiler rooms, the FSA said. Around 130 British consumers lost a total of 3 million pounds in the scam, according to the regulator.
The U.K. has been trying to crack down on boiler rooms, which defraud Britons out of at least 200 million pounds a year, according to FSA data.
Shale-Gas Producers Apply Tougher Pennsylvania Water Standards
Shale-gas producers told Pennsylvania regulators most of them are already complying with new regulations for protecting aquifers that aren’t scheduled to be adopted until October.
Thirty-five shale-gas producers, members of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, also agreed yesterday to work with the state to develop better tests, record-keeping and drilling procedures to prevent methane gas from contaminating groundwater.
The state Department of Environmental Protection called energy companies to Harrisburg yesterday to make sure they understand proposed rules for cementing metal casings around their wells. The state last month ordered Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. to cap three wells with defective casings in the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania.
Cabot has made “significant” progress in complying with the order, Chief Executive Officer Dan Dinges said in an April 27 statement. The company said it accepted the order without agreeing that it caused the gas migration into wellwater.For more, click here.
Coventree Followed Law in Commercial Paper Sale, Lawyer Says
Coventree Inc., once the biggest seller of non-bank asset- backed commercial paper in Canada, complied with Ontario regulatory law, the company’s lawyer said at an agency hearing, denying allegations the bank misled investors.
The Ontario Securities Commission “sought to attribute to Coventree knowledge that it did not have,” Kent Thomson, Coventree’s lawyer, said yesterday at the OSC hearing in Toronto. “One can’t disclose what one does not know.”
OSC lawyer Jane Waechter May 12 said Coventree misled investors about the risks of its commercial paper investments and failed to disclose that institutional buyers, including Caisse de depot et Placement du Quebec, were pulling out of the market on concern that the notes had ties to U.S. subprime mortgages. The market for the notes froze in August 2007.
The collapse resulted in the biggest insolvency in Canadian history.
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CourtsEx-J&J Unit Executive Wins Appeal of London Jail Time
Robert John Dougall, 44, a forer employee at Johnson & Johnson’s U.K. unit who admitted to joining a scheme to pay bribes to Greek doctors, had his prison sentence overturned. The ruling may limit the U.K. Serious Fraud Office’s ability to offer plea bargains.
The ruling yesterday by the Court of Appeal in London overturns a 12-month prison term given to Dougall, who agreed with Britain’s SFO to admit his role in the plot and help with the probe in exchange for avoiding jail.
Judges David Clarke and Lloyd Jones said Dougall should have his prison sentence suspended because he cooperated with authorities and didn’t profit from the scheme. They also said the SFO shouldn’t offer such deals to whistleblowers.
A plea agreement in which a sentence is agreed upon between the prosecution and the defense to which the court is expected to assent “is contrary to principle,” the judges wrote in a 19-page decision.
The ruling is the second to challenge the SFO’s ability to offer plea bargains. David Corker, a criminal defense lawyer at Corker Binning in London, said the ruling is a rebuke to the agency.
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Transocean Ltd., the owner and operator of the oil rig leased to BP Plc that exploded last month and killed 11 workers, asked a U.S. judge to limit its liability to $26.7 million.
The request, filed yesterday in Houston federal court under a 150-year-old law originally designed for the shipping industry, applies to all litigation the company faces over the explosion and subsequent oil spill.
“I think there are more than 100 cases now,” Guy Cantwell, Transocean’s spokesman, said in a telephone interview.
The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana exploded on April 20 and sank two days later. Transocean and co-owners of the Deepwater Horizon, which now lies wrecked a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico, say the state- of-the-art rig has a present value of zero and had accrued almost $27 million in unpaid rental fees before it exploded.
The company also asked that all litigation against the rig owners be consolidated before one federal judge in Houston, where Transocean’s U.S. operations are based. Vernier, Switzerland-based Transocean said it would create a court- administered fund, equal to the unpaid fees, from which all claims against the company could be paid on a pro-rata basis.
The case is In Re The complaint and petition of Triton Asset Leasing GmbH, 4:10-cv-01721, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (Houston).
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Interviews
SEC’s New York Head Canellos Discusses His Focus, Goals
George Canellos, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Manhattan office, spoke with Bloomberg’s Suzanne O’Halloran about his staff’s focus on sales to institutional investors, as well as the outlook for a regulatory overhaul, future investigations and the challenge of overseeing a more sophisticated financial investment market.
For the video, click here.
Hintz Says It’s Unclear If Banks Broke Rules With CDOs
Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, talked with Bloomberg’s Lori Rothman about the Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil lawsuit against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and the prospects for litigation pertaining to collateralized debt obligations.
Hintz also discussed the outlook for the CDO market and bank stocks.
For the video, click here.
Fisher Calls Overseeing Community Banks a ‘Vital’ Role of Fed
U.S. Senate approval of an amendment to the financial- overhaul bill to let the Federal Reserve retain oversight of smaller banks was “a miracle,” Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher said. He made the remarks yesterday at a speech in Odessa, Texas, adding that having the responsibility to oversee and regulate community banks “is a vital part of our franchise.”
--With assistance from Laurel Brubaker Calkins in Houston; Joe Schneider in Toronto; Karen Freifeld, Jim Efstathiou Jr. and Caroline Salas in New York; Erik Larson and Caroline Binham in London; Kelly Riddell, Jesse Westbrook, Alison Vekshin and Joshua Zumbrun in Washington; John Lippert in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Vincent Nwanma in Lagos; and Alexandre Deslongchamps in Ottawa. Editor: Steve Farr Achievements
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