Wells Fargo has become the latest firm to offer a belated “my bad” on auction-rate securities.
The bank’s Wells Fargo Investments today agreed to repay clients who bought the unfortunate securities some $1.3 billion. It’s also paying an additional “I’m sorry” penalty of $1.9 million, for allegedly promising clients that ARS were highly liquid and that nothing could possibly go wrong.
Of course, something did go wrong: The ARS market collapsed in February 2008 and all of those billions–Wells Fargo sold some $2.95 billion in ARS–were frozen.
The settlement follows more than a dozen others, many with larger, better banks, including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse, as well as with lesser banks, like Bank of America and Merrill Lynch (separately) and Citigroup. Those deals have won more than $61 billion back for woebegone investors.
In exchange for the ARS buybacks and making investors who sold their investments at a loss whole, the state securities regulators behind the deal have agreed to stop looking into what else Wells Fargo did wrong with ARS. But here at Dealbreaker, we will continue to investigate the obvious link between these awful products and Times-boy.
NASAA press release
Wells Fargo to Buy Back $1.3 Billion in Auction-Rate Securities [Bloomberg]
Wells Fargo To Repay Clients Who Held Auction Rate Securities [WSJ]
Shazam!!
picture doesn’t fit – even if you are trying to be funny.
I think is awesome that FINRA somehow had the foresight to dump their entire 700 million portfolio of ARS in December of 2007. In no way is that shady at all or appear to be a conflict of interest and/or acting on information not available to the public.
@2 how does it not fit? are you an idiot?
Is that a picture of you, Shazzy Shabot Shalom?
So the bottom fell out of the ARSE market and now we are all covered in sh**
They call me haduken cause I’m down right fierce
Dis dual meaning of da acronym ARS causes me great fuckin’ confusion. Plus, I can’t stand dat NY Times wimp, for what he did to me.
-cg
DB gratuitously refers to the gimp of financial reporting before Gaspo? Did the Gaspo marketing bucks run dry?
Selecting an ARS pic to accompany an ARS article is better than anything Greg ever came up with.
@2 you are a tard; this subtle shazam just slammed my humor receptors
- Jeffories SVP
@9 – I don’t know, you kinda have to give credit to Greg for ‘coming up’ with Jeff Macke….he’s since dissapeared, and that’s sad.
‘disappeared’….mi scuzzi.
-Idiot
‘scusi’…what is wrong with me.
-Guy’s who’s showing himself the door.
Sharzarbinx- Nice post. Coming along nicely.
@14
The Shazarshank Redemption!
Greg
I’m going to write euphemisms for mild obscenities in your NYT crossword. In ink.
-not Jeff Macke but a fan of his work
THE CURSE OF SHAZAREZAHD… HAS BEFALLEN GREGGUMS
@15: how shazella got his groove back?