Ubs Painewebber

UBS PaineWebber said it will penalize brokers when individual clients sell newly issued stock too quickly, a move that some analysts called a bid by the fourth-biggest brokerage to win more investment banking business. If their client sells the shares within 40 trading days, UBS PaineWebber's 8,900 brokers will not only lose the commission on the purchase--standard industry practice--they will be fined by the firm an amount equal to the lost payment, spokesman Paul Marrone said.

UBS PaineWebber's computer network was infected with a virus that has hindered brokers' ability to execute trades and retrieve client data. The firm said it was working to repair the problem and was investigating how the virus made its way into the internal browser-based system, blocking access to data and trade execution methods. The virus forced brokers to use back-up systems and phone trades to the NYSE.

UBS PaineWebber's computer network was infected with a virus that has hindered brokers' ability to execute trades and retrieve client data. The firm said it was working to repair the problem and was investigating how the virus made its way into the internal browser-based system, blocking access to data and trade execution methods. The virus forced brokers to use back-up systems and phone trades to the NYSE.

UBS PaineWebber said it will penalize brokers when individual clients sell newly issued stock too quickly, a move that some analysts called a bid by the fourth-biggest brokerage to win more investment banking business. If their client sells the shares within 40 trading days, UBS PaineWebber's 8,900 brokers will not only lose the commission on the purchase--standard industry practice--they will be fined by the firm an amount equal to the lost payment, spokesman Paul Marrone said.

UBS PaineWebber is dropping a new policy that called for fining brokers who buy shares of new stocks and quickly sell them. Instead, the nation's fourth-largest brokerage firm will reward brokers with records for selling shares of initial public stock offerings--or IPOs--to longer-term investors, according to a company source who spoke on condition of anonymity. The reward will consist of rights to greater number of those shares, the source said Thursday.

Federal prosecutors Tuesday charged a disgruntled former employee of UBS PaineWebber with fraud and accused him of trying to sabotage the brokerage's computer network with an electronic "logic bomb." The Justice Department's New Jersey district accused Roger Duronio, 60, of planting the logic bomb in about 1,000 of PaineWebber's 1,500 networked computers. So-called logic bombs are pieces of software code buried within another program that are designed to disrupt computer systems.

A year and a half of market malaise is beginning to wear investors down. Investor optimism sank to its lowest level in almost five years this month as the nation's sluggish economy and shrinking corporate profits rattled the stock market, according to a poll by brokerage UBS PaineWebber Inc. and research firm Gallup Organization. Only 40% of Americans expressed optimism over the stock market in the monthly Index of Investor Optimism poll, down from 45% last month.

Investor confidence in the stock market and the economy dropped in early April to a three-year low, a survey showed. And people's return expectations also are sliding. UBS PaineWebber's investor confidence index fell 21 points to 116 in the firm's monthly survey, completed April 15, the brokerage said. Investors on average are expecting their return on investments over the next 12 months to be 8.7%, the lowest in the survey since June 1998, when the data started to be reported, and down from 10.

Individual investors' expectations of stock market returns during the next 12 months have fallen back into the single-digit range, according to UBS PaineWebber Inc.'s latest monthly survey of investor optimism. The firm's August poll, released Monday, showed that investors on average expected a return of 9.4% from stocks over the next year. It was only the second time in the survey's relatively short history that the expected rate of return was below 10%. The lowest figure was 8.

Biovail Corp., Canada's biggest publicly traded drug maker, defamed analyst Jerry Treppel after he urged investors to sell the stock, the former Banc of America Securities analyst said in a $100-million lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York. Treppel contends that Biovail falsely accused him of criminal conduct after he issued critical research reports. A year ago, Biovail shares fell 21% when Treppel cut his rating to "sell" from "market perform."

Only a year after selling one of Century City's most prominent skyscrapers, Los Angeles billionaire and real estate investor Marvin Davis has purchased one of Chicago's most prestigious office towers. Financial details of the transaction were not released, but people familiar with the deal say Davis paid about $235 million for 181 West Madison in Chicago. The 50-story tower in the heart of downtown has almost 1 million square feet of space and is close to full occupancy.

Oncor Electric Delivery Co. on Tuesday doubled its bond sale to $1 billion from $500 million, a sign that strong investor demand may lead to a flurry of new corporate debt sales starting next week. Investment-grade corporate bond offerings last week topped $16 billion, the most since January, as a rebounding stock market gave investors more confidence to take a chance on company debt. While there have been just three new sales this week, totaling $2.