Frank Quattrone

Jurors in the trial of Frank Quattrone heard several character witnesses Monday describe the honesty of the former Silicon Valley investment banker, as his second obstruction-of-justice case drew toward a close. It was unclear whether Quattrone would take the stand in his own defense.

Silicon Valley financiers expressed relief Friday when a federal judge in New York declared a mistrial in the obstruction-of-justice case against Frank Quattrone, the former Credit Suisse First Boston investment banker who rose to fame by orchestrating some of the biggest initial public stock offerings of the dot-com era. "I am personally thrilled for Frank," said Richard Kramlich, founder of New Enterprise Associates, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park. "I thought the case was weak."

Nine days before he was due in federal prison, former Silicon Valley star technology investment banker Frank Quattrone was granted permission Tuesday to remain free while he appealed his obstruction-of-justice conviction. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a lower court judge who had ordered Quattrone to report to prison Oct. 28 to begin serving an 18-month sentence. Quattrone, 49, hugged his lawyers after the decision was announced in a Manhattan courtroom.

Former star investment banker Frank Quattrone was fined $30,000 on Friday and suspended from working in the securities industry for one year by a securities industry regulatory panel that said he interfered with an investigation. The National Assn.

Frank Quattrone, Credit Suisse First Boston's head of technology banking, sent an e-mail to clients defending his business and describing critical news accounts of his practices as "inaccurate." Quattrone was responding to articles about a Securities and Exchange Commission probe into how CSFB distributed shares of initial public offerings arranged by his unit. Other firms also are being investigated.

A new judge has been assigned to the case of former star investment banker Frank Quattrone, but the government has yet to decide whether it plans to put him on trial for obstruction and witness tampering charges for a third time. "The only comment we have is we will be advising the judge about the status of the proceedings," Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, said Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has been assigned the case, she said.

Former Silicon Valley investment banker Frank Quattrone should report to prison this month to begin serving his 18-month sentence for obstruction of justice, federal prosecutors argued in court papers Monday. Quattrone is due to report to prison by Oct. 28 to serve his sentence for obstructing investigations of possible kickbacks in hot stock offerings of the 1990s.

Frank Quattrone's second obstruction-of-justice trial is set to begin March 22, after a jury was unable to decide the first time around whether the ex-Silicon Valley financier had broken the law when he endorsed the destruction of internal records. U.S. District Judge Richard Owen, who presided over the first case, set the date for the second criminal trial of Quattrone, who was a star investment banker with Credit Suisse First Boston during the 1990s.

The judge presiding over the obstruction-of-justice trial of former Credit Suisse First Boston banker Frank Quattrone violated the 1st Amendment by barring the news media from publishing juror names, a court ruled. U.S. Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor, writing on behalf of a three-judge panel of a U.S. appeals court in New York, said nothing in the record of the case justified the order by U.S. District Judge Richard Owen.

The federal judge presiding over the obstruction-of-justice prosecution of former Silicon Valley investment banker Frank Quattrone on Friday gave both sides another month to work out an agreement to avoid a third trial. A U.S. appeals court in March threw out Quattrone's conviction and ordered a new trial, citing faulty jury instructions. Quattrone's first trial ended in a hung jury in October 2003. He was convicted after a second trial in May 2004.