Free Republic

Elizabeth Warren will exit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before it officially launches, according to a single-sourced Bloomberg report last night. According to an unnamed “briefed” person, Obama will dump the controversial Warren for someone already working at the CFPB, and the announcement will come next week: Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor, was appointed last fall by Obama to set up the consumer bureau until a director was named. Warren previously was head of the congressional watchdog panel overseeing the bank bailout. This was one of those “temporary” assignments that an administration would eventually make permanent. Warren, however, became a...

NEW YORK – With all the anti-establishment, power-to-the-people refrains sounded in its IPO manifesto, it's curious that Google Inc. chose to reward the most notorious investment bank of the IPO boom to spearhead the initial public offering. Although Credit Suisse First Boston presumably cleansed its reputation two years ago with a $100 million settlement of federal charges, Monday's conviction of the firm's former star banker was a perfectly timed reminder of the greedy past that shadows one of Google's new Wall Street pals. It's not that the search engine company was obligated to jeopardize its chances of a big IPO...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Credit Suisse Group helped clients in Iran and elsewhere conduct financial transactions in secret, saying Wednesday the Swiss bank "established a business model to allow these rogue players access to U.S. dollars." Mr. Holder and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau detailed a decade-long effort by the bank to carry out transactions from Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba. The men announced a $536 million settlement by Credit Suisse, one of several banks accused in a long-running case that has netted roughly $1 billion in fines. The bank, which paid the biggest of the fines,...

Credit Suisse Group to pay $536M in Iran case By DEVLIN BARRETT and MARCY GORDON, Associated Press Writers Wed Dec 16, 8:20 pm ET WASHINGTON – Credit Suisse Group has agreed to pay $536 million to settle a Justice Department probe and admit to violating U.S. economic sanctions by hiding the booming illegal business it was doing for Iranian banks. The Justice Department announced the settlement Wednesday, saying it was the biggest forfeiture ever against a company for violations of that type. "Credit Suisse's decades-long scheme to flout the rules that govern our financial institutions robbed our system of the...

The US government already had to crack down on one Swiss bank, UBS, fining it $780 million earlier this year for illegally aiding American citizens in evading their taxes. Now, it’s Credit Suisse in the crosshairs for helping clients in Iran, Libya, Sudan, and other countries perform illegal transactions. The bank has since “accepted and acknowledged responsibility for its criminal conduct” and is now settling with New York City, New York State, and the federal government on fines totaling nearly $1 billion. According to the Wall Street Journal: “The men announced a $536 million settlement by Credit Suisse, one of...

Reporting from Sacramento — The name of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, a billionaire who has been defending her ties to embattled investment banking giant Goldman Sachs throughout her campaign, appears in the federal investigation of another Wall Street firm tarnished by scandal. Court documents filed by prosecutors in the aftermath of the dot-com bust show Whitman, then chief executive of EBay, listed among about 200 executives who were to receive gifts of deeply discounted stock from Frank Quattrone, then a banker at Credit Suisse First Boston. A star dealmaker during the late 1990s, Quattrone was twice indicted on obstruction-of-justice...

Democrats' hypocrisy on Bolton exposed Joel Mowbray May 5, 2005 Call it the tale of two confirmation hearings. Two of the four men most recently nominated to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations found their candidacies challenged, though they could not have faced more different receptions.  Both men were supremely qualified, but the similarities end there. The divergent paths for each reveal Democrats' rabid partisanship and belies their claims that they oppose John Bolton on the grounds that character matters. Six years ago, Foreign Service veteran Richard Holbrooke was awaiting Senate confirmation.  As former a ambassador to Germany,...

NEW YORK - High-powered technology banker Frank Quattrone was granted a new trial Monday when a federal appeals court tossed out his conviction on charges he obstructed a government probe of stock offerings at the height of the dot-com boom. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the evidence was sufficient to sustain a conviction but that the May 2004 verdict must be thrown out because the jury was improperly instructed on how to interpret the law. It also ordered that the case be reassigned to another judge. The government is weighing whether to retry the case....

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Frank Quattrone, a former banker famous for taking hot technology companies public, was found guilty on Monday of obstructing federal investigations into some of the most popular stock offerings of the 1990s. Jurors delivered their verdict after deliberating about seven hours over two days, concluding the ex-banker tried to block grand jury and regulatory investigations by forwarding an e-mail to co-workers reminding them to "clean up" their files. It was the second trial for Quattrone, 48, who will likely face one to two years in prison at his sentencing, set for Sept. 8. The first trial...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jurors in the trial of former star banker Frank Quattrone obstruction of justice case asked late on Thursday to hear key testimony read back to them, as the second day of deliberations wound down without a verdict. The jury sent several notes to the judge presiding over the trial, including a request to hear again Quattrone's testimony about his role in the allocation of hot stock offerings at Credit Suisse First Boston, where he was head of technology investment banking. Quattrone resigned under pressure from CSFB, an affiliate of Switzerland's Credit Suisse Group (CSGZn.VX), in March...

<p>FRANK Quattrone's defenders claim that the obstruction of justice charges against the former star investment banker are pretty thin.</p> <p>Until a court decides the matter, Quattrone is innocent.</p> <p>But when Quattrone's defenders claim there was nothing wrong during the Internet bubble at Credit Suisse First Boston's technology group, which Quattrone ran like a personal fiefdom, they ignore reality.</p>

<p>Frank Quattrone's battle to clear his name has entered a new phase: the public-relations campaign.</p> <p>The former star banker is under fire on many fronts. He faces charges of criminal obstruction of justice for helping to urge colleagues in an e-mail to ``clean up'' files that regulators say were sought in several investigations. He also faces expulsion from his industry of 23 years for allegations that he improperly offered overly optimistic stock research and hot stock offerings to win investment-banking business.</p>

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Former Credit Suisse First Boston star banker Frank Quattrone surrendered to federal authorities Wednesday morning and will face criminal charges, prosecutors said. James Comey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, will unveil the charges at a 1 p.m. ET press conference. Quattrone, a former star banker for CSFB, allegedly advised his colleagues in late 2000 to destroy documents while regulators were investigating the ways Wall Street investment banks were doling out shares of lucrative initial public offerings. The former banker is charged in a three-count criminal complaint with obstruction of justice, document destruction...

<p>Regulators charged investment banker Frank Quattrone with violating a series of securities rules as he pushed to land clients for Credit Suisse First Boston.</p> <p>The National Association of Securities Dealers alleged that Quattrone improperly enticed clients by offering them the opportunity to buy shares in potentially lucrative IPOs and by promising that analysts who were supposed to be independent would provide favorable research.</p>