Brokers

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

WASHINGTON — It may be the best-kept secret in residential real estate: For a couple of hundred dollars, a potential buyer bidding on an existing house can ask for a formal energy audit along with the standard inspection clause. That audit, in turn, can save the buyer thousands of dollars in future operating costs and pinpoint the specific features of the house that need correction to improve efficiency. It might also be a tipoff to a sobering reality: This house is an energy guzzler.

A young former Merrill Lynch analyst caught in a sprawling, $7-million insider trading scheme must serve more than three years in prison to show Wall Street that sharing valuable inside secrets will not be met with leniency, a judge said Friday. U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Karas said he was sending Stanislav Shpigelman, 24, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

CAIRO - The decorum of diplomacy has devolved into embarrassing headlines and testy one-liners in the increasingly strained relations between Egypt and Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Egypt's Sinai peninsula had become a "kind of Wild West" overrun by militants, terrorists and arms smugglers. Over the weekend, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had suggested massing more Israeli troops along the border with Egypt. That drew a bit of mafia parlance from Egypt's military ruler, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi: "Our borders, especially the northeast ones, are inflamed.

Alleging that 10 brokers made millions of dollars at the expense of retirees, federal regulators accused them Thursday of misrepresenting complex and illiquid mortgage investments as safe and suitable for conservative investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a civil fraud lawsuit filed in West Palm Beach, Fla., federal court, said the brokers worked for Brookstreet Securities Corp. of Irvine, which went out of business in 2007.

I'm flattered that Patrick Goldstein considers tickets brokers to be "the music industry's real insiders," but several of his observations cry out for clarification. Goldstein's allegations of "brokers' access to large amounts of tickets" are completely unfounded and unsubstantiated and the charge of KLSX's Phil Hendrie who states ". . . (the brokers) get tickets before they even go on sale" is patently false. The California Legislature has examined the ticket business in great detail and at considerable cost over the years and has come to the conclusion that any type of price control would not be in the best interest of anyone because it would result in higher ticket prices, because a black market situation would then exist.

Old-line Morgan Stanley Group's plan to marry Middle-America-anchored Dean Witter, Discover & Co., the big securities industry merger deal of last week, tells you that Wall Street wants Main Street in the worst way. Coincidentally, that's exactly how many Americans believe their money would be managed if they put it in the hands of a full-service brokerage.

Prudential Financial Inc., the second-biggest U.S. life insurer, fired some of its brokers because they may have failed to properly inform customers about risks involved in buying annuities, a violation of New York regulations. Newark, N.J.

A Wall Street regulatory body has been too quick to let brokers wipe their records clean of customer complaints, and in many cases made allegations disappear without a hearing, an organization of lawyers who represent individual investors said Monday. Arbitration panels convened by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority approved brokers' requests to wipe out 98% of customer complaints, according to a study by the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Assn.

The brokerage industry's self-regulatory group on Thursday proposed rules to increase the supervision of brokers who have a history of customer complaints and to require securities firms to take action to address the accusations. Firms with brokers who have three or more complaints in five years, three or more regulatory actions or two or more internal firm reviews involving wrongdoing would be required to adopt "heightened supervision plans" for them, said the NASD, formerly the National Assn.

With the economy apparently stabilizing, commercial real estate investors have jumped into several markets in the West, brokers said. “There is a lot of capital that needs to get out,” said broker Kevin Shannon of CBRE Group Inc. “People have fresh allocations for both debt and equity and … want to put it to work.” The hottest markets for buyers in search of Class A office buildings are Seattle and San Francisco, he said, but...

Mariner's Mile Marine Center, a nautical landmark in Newport Beach, has been acquired by a local investor for $25 million, real estate brokers said. The property at 2429-2507 West Coast Highway holds five New England-style buildings that date to the 1960s. Mariners Mile holds offices and shops as well as a shipyard and large boat slips, said broker Mark Larson of Lee & Associates Investment Services Group. One of the boats docked there is the Wild Goose, a minesweeper-turned-yacht once owned by actor John Wayne and now operated by Hornblower Cruises.

On Wednesday night, debate viewers will see the now-familiar four: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Some of those watching, though, will still be dreaming of Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan or Mitch Daniels. As Romney's campaign has faltered and his candidacy has lost the aura of inevitability, there has been as much talk about the possibility of a white knight candidate making a late entry into the race as there is about one of the remaining three candidates emerging as the Republican nominee.

When it comes to lawsuits, real estate agents and brokers tangle mostly among themselves. But a good number of cases are brought by disgruntled buyers or sellers. To be fair, the vast majority of real estate deals go off without a hitch, or at least without problems that leave buyers or sellers feeling so wronged that they are willing to spend the time and money to take someone to court. If the latest edition of "Legal Scan" tells us anything, it is that a handful of agents and brokers and their clients either don't know the law or don't care to follow it. "Legal Scan" is a biennial research report by the National Assn.

Prominent Los Angeles property brokerage Ramsey-Shilling Commercial Real Estate Services Inc. has been bought by Avison Young, Canada's largest independent commercial real estate services company. Avison Young plans to acquire more Southern California brokerages and other real estate companies in the U.S. in the months ahead, Managing Director Neil Resnick said. Resnick, a broker formerly with Grubb & Ellis, opened Avison Young's first Los Angeles office in August. The acquisition of Ramsey-Shilling for an undisclosed amount added 23 employees, including 18 brokers, to Avison Young.

Europe's worsening debt crisis has been a source of mounting fear and frustration for U.S. government officials and the biggest single threat to the struggling American economic recovery. On Wednesday, policymakers found an opening to act, with the Federal Reserve coordinating a move by six central banks to give European lenders cheaper access to dollars. The effort, designed to quell fears of a credit squeeze, triggered a huge rally in global stock markets, with the Dow gaining 490.05 points, the biggest one-day advance since March 2009.

A federal appeals court Friday overturned a rule that allowed securities brokers to avoid some requirements faced by financial planners in advising customers, saying both groups must be held to the same standards to protect investors. The 2-1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the Securities and Exchange Commission had overstepped its authority in adopting the rule in 2005. The Financial Planning Assn.

Question: In a recent column, you said that, under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, yield spread premiums retained by brokers are legal if they are "reasonably related" to the value of the services provided to the borrower. How does the Department of Housing and Urban Development enforce this rule? Answer: It doesn't.

Syrian President Bashar Assad finds himself in an unenviable position reminiscent of the late Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi's: an autocrat who may fall victim to the shifting geopolitical landscape in an "Arab Spring" that is reshaping the balance of power in the Middle East. Once a wellspring of Arab pride and nationalism, Syria is confronting the changing dynamics of the region as old alliances fade and new brokers emerge, most notably the tiny emirate of Qatar, which in recent years has boldly challenged traditional powers with a clever mix of wealth and populism through its Al Jazeera network.