Deals & People August 17, 2010

PFM Group Names Chris Blackwood Senior Managing Consultant

Chris Blackwood has been tapped as Senior Managing Consultant at the new Denver office of PFM Asset Management LLC (PFMAM) .
Reported by

Blackwood will focus on growing PFMAM’s asset management portfolio in the West, with his main focus on Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.  

Chris Blackwood brings thirty years of experience in the public finance and public funds investment business to the firm, and has served as a public finance banker at several regional investment banks and as a senior economist for the state of Colorado. Most recently, he was a managing director at Davidson Fixed Income Management, where he helped start and manage local government investment pools in Florida and Colorado for Davidson and its predecessor, Kirkpatrick Pettis.  

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Blackwood is a graduate of the University of Colorado with a B.A. and M.A. in Economics, and attended post-graduate programs at the University of Denver and MIT.  

Compliance August 17, 2010

Raymond James Lawsuit Dismissed

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit accusing Raymond James of misleading investors and reserving too little for loan losses.  
Reported by

U.S. District Judge Robert Patterson said the class-action complaint did not provide sufficient evidence to suggest that Raymond James Financial Inc. intended to defraud investors by purposely underfunding and then misleading investors about the adequacy of its reserves. 

During the class period that ran from April 22, 2008 to April 14, 2009, Raymond James stated that an abnormally high level of bad loans would nearly wipe out profit in its just-completed quarter. Shares of the St. Petersburg, Florida-based company fell 13.5% the next day. 

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The judge ruled that most of the alleged misstatements made by Raymond James and its executives were too general to be considered purposely misleading while others were simply the results of mistakes in their projections.  

Patterson also claimed that the 112-page, 356-paragraph complaint was itself grounds for dismissal, under a federal rule that requires a pleading to contain “a short and plain statement” of the claim. 

The case is Woodward v. Raymond James Financial Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 09-05347.  

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