E F Hutton Group Inc

The E. F. Hutton Group Inc. brokerage firm, clearing the decks of bad news ahead of its final takeover by Shearson Lehman Bros., said Friday that it had an after-tax loss of $112.7 million in October and November. The company said the losses were because of a decline in the value of securities it held for investment, bad debts by customers and equity trading losses. In addition, $36.6 million of the loss, or more than a third, was caused by tax changes.

E. F. Hutton Wins Suit by Investor: A two-week trial against E. F. Hutton and two of its brokers ended with jurors refusing to award $300,000 plus punitive damages to retired businessman Irwin H. Goldenberg, who claimed he was defrauded. Goldenberg filed the case in U.S.

A former branch manager's defamation suit against E. F. Hutton Group Inc. must be arbitrated under New York Stock Exchange rules before it is tried in court, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here made the ruling in the suit filed by former branch manager John M. Pearce over a Hutton report that named him as a participant in an illegal check kiting scheme to which the brokerage firm pleaded guilty in 1985.

A federal judge in Los Angeles Tuesday sentenced a Malibu man to 16 years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $2.6 million in restitution to six financial institutions he was convicted of defrauding. U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall imposed the stiff sentence on Michael Saul Scherzer, 46. "It is an appropriate sentence for one of the worst recidivists whom we've prosecuted in the bank fraud area," said Terree A. Bowers, chief of the major frauds section of the U.S.

The New York Stock Exchange said Monday that it would reassign the stock of E. F. Hutton Group Inc., A. G. Edwards Inc. and Neiman-Marcus Group Inc., amid questions about the behavior of the market makers in those shares during the October crash. The NYSE said it had been reviewing the performance on Oct. 20 of LaBranche & Co., a specialist in the stocks of Edwards and Hutton, which is soon to be merged with Shearson Lehman Bros. Holding Inc. and taken off the Big Board.

Federal prosecutors in Rhode Island have recommended that the Justice Department seek an indictment against E. F. Hutton & Co. and at least one of its former brokers for allegedly helping organized crime figures launder hundreds of thousands of dollars, sources familiar with the case said Friday.

Former Atty. Gen. Griffin B. Bell went on trial in U.S. District Court in Washington as the defendant in a defamation suit filed by John M. Pearce, a former E. F. Hutton branch manager criticized in a report Bell wrote as a private lawyer after Hutton pleaded guilty in a check-kiting scheme.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the agency that insures deposits at banks, said Friday that it brought a $516-million lawsuit against Drexel Burnham Lambert, E. F. Hutton and others over the failure of a Texas thrift. The suit, filed in federal court, stems from an alleged fraud scheme that the FDIC claims led to the demise of the Guaranty Federal Savings & Loan Assn. in Dallas, the sixth-largest thrift in Texas.

E. F. Hutton & Co. has been fined $400,000 and censured by the New York Stock Exchange in connection with the firm's 1985 check overdraft scandal, the NYSE announced Tuesday. Two former Hutton officers, President George L. Ball and Executive Vice President Thomas P. Lynch, the company's chief financial officer, also were censured, the NYSE said in a statement. A censure is one of the mildest forms of sanctions the exchange can impose on members.

A jury on Monday cleared former Atty. Gen. Griffin B. Bell in a civil suit that charged him with libeling a former E. F. Hutton brokerage manager in a 1985 report about the company's check-kiting practices. The U.S. District Court panel found that Bell, who had been hired by Hutton to investigate the scheme after the company pleaded guilty to mail and wire fraud charges, had not defamed John Pearce. Pearce, who managed Hutton branches in Bethesda, Md., and in St.

Shearson Lehman Bros. and E. F. Hutton Group said Friday that they were suspending computerized program trading for their own accounts, a move that could increase pressure on the securities industry to curb the controversial practice. The giant brokerage firms, which are in the process of merging, said their action came in response to concerns by institutional and retail clients and their own brokers that program trading may exacerbate market volatility.

Former Atty. Gen. Griffin B. Bell went on trial in U.S. District Court in Washington as the defendant in a defamation suit filed by John M. Pearce, a former E. F. Hutton branch manager criticized in a report Bell wrote as a private lawyer after Hutton pleaded guilty in a check-kiting scheme.