Word: settlements
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...issue of Lewis' honesty resurfaced this week when a judge in U.S. district court rejected a proposed settlement struck between Bank of America and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over Merrill bonuses. The SEC and Bank of America had earlier agreed that the bank would pay a $33 million penalty to settle an investigation into whether it misled shareholders about year-end payouts on the eve of a vote to approve the merger. As part of the proposed settlement, Bank of America neither admitted nor denied that it had done anything wrong...
...Judge Jed Rakoff, in striking down the settlement, said fining the company - and thus its shareholders - for a misdeed of management was misplaced. "This proposal to have the victims of the violation pay an additional penalty for their own victimization was enough to give the court pause," wrote Rakoff in his decision...
...judge has ordered the case to go to trial as soon as next February. The SEC could instead try to strike a new settlement that satisfies the judge, but based on Rakoff's ruling, law professor John Coffee, who teaches a class with Rakoff at Columbia, says it is unlikely the judge would accept a substitute settlement that doesn't name any individual executives. Lewis, as the chief executive of the bank, is an obvious target. The SEC has yet to say whether it plans to pursue charges against Lewis or any other executive at Bank of America...
...they would relaunch direct talks, but right now the differences between the two sides make such an event unlikely. And at least one Israeli commentator, Haaretz's Aluf Benn, wondered whether Obama might use the help Israel will need in getting Goldstone's report shelved as leverage on the settlement question. That, too, is highly unlikely for a variety of reasons, including the fact the the Administration may have concluded from Netanyahu's surge in popularity for resisting Obama's settlement-freeze demand that publicly holding the conservative Israeli leader's feet to the fire doesn't get the desired...
...either. First, it's not in the United States. Yanga, on Mexico's Gulf Coast, is a sleepy pueblito founded by its namesake, Gaspar Yanga, an African slave who led a rebellion against his Spanish colonial masters in the late 16th century and fought off attempts to retake the settlement. The second thing that is immediately evident to vistors who reach the town's rustic central plaza: there are virtually no blacks among the few hundred residents milling around the center of town...