GE, Delphi Financial, Barclays, TD, News Corp. in Court News
17.05.12
Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- General Electric Co. agreed to pay $70.4 million to resolve a criminal investigation and civil claims for conspiring to rig bids on U.S. municipal-bond deals, overcharging state and local governments on investments.
GE Funding Capital Market Services, a former unit, is the fifth company to settle in a federal probe of more than five- years. The accord will settle cases with the Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, Internal Revenue Service and 25 states, the Justice Department said Dec. 23 in a statement.
“GE Funding’s former traders entered into illegal agreements to manipulate the bidding process on municipal investment contracts,” said Sharis A. Pozen, acting assistant attorney general in charge of the department’s antitrust division. “This anticompetitive conduct harmed municipalities as well as taxpayers.”
The settlement will bring to $743 million the amount that banks have paid to end the investigation. Some of which is being returned to localities that were overcharged, the SEC said in a news release. Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS AG and Wells Fargo & Co. previously settled similar cases.
Source: BusinessWeek