Securities And Exchange Commission

There wasn't much to like about Facebook's first day as a public company. The social media giant's stock rose by mere pennies in its initial public offering. The shares closed at $38.23, barely above the $38 IPO price. The performance fell far short of the grandiose expectations of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and raised questions about whether the company's stock will be the sure bet many had counted on. "There was all this pressure and hype and attention with all eyes on Facebook — and the starlet tripped on the red carpet," said Max Wolff, an analyst at GreenCrest Capital Management in New York.

Clothing retailer The Talbots Inc. says it has received a $210.9 million takeover offer from private equity firm Sycamore Partners. Sycamore, Talbot's largest shareholder, is offering $3.05 per share for the company. That's a 9 percent premium from the stock's closing price on Friday. Talbots, based in Hingham, Mass., announced the offer on Monday. Talbots had 69.2 million shares outstanding as of Jan. 28, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into an Orange County real estate lending company that is owned by the husband of a California state assemblywoman. In an e-mail to his firm's roughly 3,000 investors, Point Center Financial Inc. President Dan J. Harkey disclosed that the SEC had subpoenaed records from the firm last week.

In a year when Bank of America Corp.'s stock plunged 58% and the company announced plans to lay off 30,000 employees, Chief Executive Brian Moynihan's compensation package more than quadrupled to nearly $8.1 million. Here's why: In 2011, the Charlotte, N.C., bank recorded $1.4 billion in profit after losing $2.2 billion the year before. So although the bank's compensation and benefits committee kept Moynihan's salary the same at $950,000, he landed $6.1 million in performance-reliant stock.

The new Republican Congress has made it known that the Securities and Exchange Commission is one of the U.S. government agencies that it is targeting for budget cuts and curbs on litigation. With more money than ever pouring into stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other investments, this is not the time to scale back on the watchdog agency assigned to oversee the securities business and look out for consumer interests.

Barbara Bunte thought her success was evident and her retirement savings assured. During six years as West Coast regional director of Franklin Mortgage Capital Corp., she built the operation into a major mortgage banking business, expanding it from 13 employees to 180, from funding $5 million in new home loans each month to funding $200 million a month.

In October, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey L. Pitt uttered three words that he's been trying to live down ever since. In his first official speech since taking office two months earlier, Pitt indicated to a gathering of accountants that he wanted a "kinder and gentler" SEC that would be less combative with the firms it regulates. Barely a month later, Enron Corp.

The Securities and Exchange Commission ordered corporations Thursday to provide shareholders with easy-to-understand reports on the compensation of top executives and opened the door for easier challenges to management policies. The new rules, adopted after more than two years of study, are a significant expansion of shareholder rights. The measures take effect against a backdrop of public revulsion at excessive executive pay and complaints of entrenched corporate management.

In a move that should avert immediate fiscal disaster for county government, the Securities and Exchange Commission staff has tentatively agreed to allow Los Angeles County to borrow as much as $125 million from its employee savings program, officials said Monday. County officials have been counting on the money to balance the 1992-93 budget and to pay for law enforcement, hospitals and other items. The money is to be used to fund the county's early retirement program.

What should have been a disturbing examination of a colossal financial crime in "Chasing Madoff" is instead a disturbed one. Using an irritably distracting collage of hopped-up graphics, archival footage and faux-noir re-creations in black and white, director Jeff Prosserman's frenzied documentary focuses on the scandal's much-noted whistle-blower, a securities analyst named Harry Markopolos, who had been trying for 10 years — before Bernard Madoff's...

Regulators are proposing dramatic reforms to one of the most popular places for retail investors to put their cash: money-market funds. The staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission is drawing up new rules that would govern the $2.7-trillion money-market-fund industry after the ultra-safe reputation of the funds came into question during the financial crisis. Money-market funds have long provided the safety and accessibility of a checking account with slightly higher returns thanks to a strategy of making almost risk-free short-term loans.

What should have been a disturbing examination of a colossal financial crime in "Chasing Madoff" is instead a disturbed one. Using an irritably distracting collage of hopped-up graphics, archival footage and faux-noir re-creations in black and white, director Jeff Prosserman's frenzied documentary focuses on the scandal's much-noted whistle-blower, a securities analyst named Harry Markopolos, who had been trying for 10 years — before Bernard Madoff's...

Barnes & Noble Inc. is set to announce a new e-reader May 24, according to a regulatory filing from the company. "In a meeting with investor analysts on May 4, 2011, Barnes & Noble Inc. ... indicated it expects to make an announcement on May 24, 2011, regarding the launch of a new e-reader device," Barnes & Noble said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The bookseller and e-reader maker didn't say what the new device would be called, cost or look like.

Intensifying a crackdown on alleged insider trading by hedge funds, federal prosecutors have brought criminal charges against four more people, two of whom have already pleaded guilty. The actions in federal court in New York are the latest in a widening investigation by a special hedge fund task force created by the Securities and Exchange Commission and coordinated by the Obama administration that is designed to stem financial crimes. Two of those charged had connections to Primary Global Research of Mountain View, Calif.

U.S. regulators, saying mutual funds don't fully inform customers about the billions of dollars they charge every year to pay for marketing, took a step toward imposing new rules on the practice. Securities and Exchange Commission members voted 5-0 on Wednesday to seek comment on a proposal that would increase disclosure and cap the cumulative fees investors pay over time. Under the measure, a company couldn't charge more in so-called 12b-1 fees for a class of fund shares that continue to solicit new investors than they charge for classes that don't.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday dropped a stock-options backdating lawsuit against four Broadcom Corp. figures, the latest legal victory for the Irvine chip company. SEC attorney Molly M. White said the commission chose not to pursue the litigation against Broadcom co-founders Henry Samueli and Henry T. Nicholas III and two former executives "after careful consideration" of comments that a judge made about the case at a hearing in January. The lawsuit, filed in 2008 in the Santa Ana federal courthouse, had sought civil penalties against the men for failing to disclose that they had backdated stock-option grants.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. said the Securities and Exchange Commission opened a formal investigation of the company's accounting.

The Securities and Exchange Commission named six people Wednesday to lead new investigative units as the agency reorganizes its enforcement efforts. The SEC was scorched by its failure to detect the stunning, long-running fraud by money manager Bernard Madoff despite numerous red flags and credible warnings. The new units and their leaders are: asset management, headed by Bruce Karpati and Robert Kaplan; market abuse, led by Daniel Hawke; structured and new products, Kenneth Lench; foreign corrupt practices, Cheryl Scarboro; and municipal securities and public pensions, Elaine Greenberg.

The host of a popular Persian-language radio talk show was accused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of defrauding investors out of more than $20 million in a long-running investment scheme that targeted the Iranian American community. In a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Los Angeles, the SEC accused John Farahi; his wife, Gissou Rastegar Farahi; and their company, NewPoint Financial Services, of losing millions of dollars in volatile investments they had promoted as safe.