Securities Industry

Former star technology banker Frank Quattrone has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to reverse the decision by a securities industry watchdog to ban him from the profession for refusing to answer its questions in 2003. Lawyers for Quattrone, who has appealed his May conviction for obstruction of justice, sent the SEC written arguments dated Monday saying that the ban by the NASD (formerly the National Assn. of Securities Dealers) was unconstitutional.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled against California in the state's long-running battle to impose certain disclosure rules on brokerage industry arbitration panels. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said arbitration-panel policies of the NASD, formerly the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, superceded rules California imposed in 2002.

Top Biogen Idec Inc. insiders sold $15 million in company shares at near-record prices in the days and even hours before Biogen warned regulators about patients' becoming ill in clinical trials of its multiple sclerosis drug, records show. The drug, Tysabri, was pulled from the market Monday after a patient's death, causing shares in the Cambridge, Mass., company to plummet 43%. Biogen told the Food and Drug Administration on Feb.

A key measure of commodity prices hit a 24-year high Friday as the bull market in hard assets continued to attract more investors and traders. The Reuters-CRB index of key commodity futures closed at 300.23, up 0.7% from Thursday and the first time it has topped 300 since April 1981 -- the end of the last raw materials boom a generation ago.

Citigroup Inc. mistakenly bought and sold hundreds of thousands of option contracts on the Nasdaq-100 tracking stock on the Pacific Exchange on Tuesday, leading to price swings in the stock market. New York-based Citigroup, a specialist in options trading at the Pacific Exchange, received an "incorrect price quote from a third-party data vendor, which we resolved within seconds," spokeswoman Danielle Romero-Apsilos said.

Brokerage giant Wachovia Securities said Tuesday that it was investigating stock trading, including the possible use of fictitious accounts to reap short-term gains, at one of its Westlake Village offices. The NASD, the brokerage industry's self-regulatory agency, also has opened a probe into the office, according to people familiar with the matter. The NASD declined to comment.

Securities brokers are getting a sweet deal on Valentine's Day that may or may not endear them to their clients. Beginning Monday they'll be able to use investment analysis tools aimed at helping clients predict how their portfolios may fare over time. These tools have been used by institutional investors for years, but weren't available to retail brokers because regulators had barred them from predicting investment returns.

The Mexican stock market zoomed to a record high Tuesday after credit-rating firm Standard & Poor's lifted the country's debt rating. The main IPC share index jumped 243.40 points, or 1.9%, to 13,340.52, bringing its year-to-date gain to 3.3%. The index is off to a strong start after soaring 44% in 2003 and 47% last year.

Investment advisor Todd Eberhard, who pleaded guilty in September to federal charges that he defrauded clients of as much as $20 million, has agreed to be barred from the investment industry, the NASD said Monday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing to bring an enforcement action against the New York Stock Exchange, possibly in mid-February, for failing to supervise some of its floor-trading specialists, sources familiar with the matter said Tuesday. The action will come as part of a settlement of a long-running probe into improper specialist trading, with the SEC also hoping to unveil simultaneously a number of separate agreements with smaller stock exchanges, the sources said.