Reuters: Regulatory News: UPDATE 1-Appeals court reinstates $9.2 mln Morgan Keegan ruling

Reuters: Regulatory News Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

UPDATE 1-Appeals court reinstates $9.2 mln Morgan Keegan ruling Oct 23rd 2012, 20:54 Tue Oct 23, 2012 4:54pm EDT By Suzanne Barlyn Oct 23 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated a $9.2 million securities arbitration ruling against Morgan Keegan & Co stemming from a group of bond funds that became the subject of a civil fraud action by regulators. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th circuit ruled that a district court's decision to throw out the arbitration award was made in error, according to an opinion released Tuesday. U.S. District Court Lynn Hughes in Houston ruled in September, 2011, that the arbitration ruling should be thrown out because, in part, it was obtained through the alleged "fraudulent" testimony of Craig McCann, a prominent expert witness and former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission economist. But the federal appeals panel noted that there was a "total absence of any evidence" to support that finding. The evidence "supports nothing more than a conclusion that a member of Dr. McCann's staff made a calculation error that he did not discover until after he testified," the court wrote. Investors filed more than 1,000 arbitration cases for losses stemming from the troubled bond funds, which lost as much as 80-percent of their value in 2008. Morgan Keegan agreed to a $200 million civil fine to resolve the SEC's enforcement action against the brokerage. The $9.2 million arbitration ruling was the largest to date against Morgan Keegan in the bond fund cases. The brokerage has been aggressively defending the claims, including going to court in efforts to overturn certain arbitration rulings. Earlier in October, lawyers for Morgan Keegan argued in a California appeals court that an award to former NBA all star Horace Grant, who arbitrators awarded $1.46 million over the same bond funds, should be overturned because of arbitrator bias, among other things. A lawyer for the investors in the $9.2 million award case could not be immediately reached for comment. A spokesman for Raymond James Financial Inc, which acquired Morgan Keegan from Regions Financial Corp, declined to comment. A spokesman for Regions Financial Corp, which retained financial responsibility for the bond fund cases, also declined to comment. A Morgan Keegan spokeswoman could not be immediately reached. Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions