New UBS Lawsuit Sprouts

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley reached a settlement to repurchase a combined $7 million of the troubled securities from investors. Additionally, Morgan Stanley agreed to pay a fine of $35 million, while JPMorgan will pay a fine of $25 million, according to news reports. The settlements follow UBS and Citigroup last week (see The Bill Gets Bigger for UBS ), and regulators continue investigation of other bank giants. Last week, the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth charged Merrill Lynch & Co. with fraud relating to the sale of auction-rate securities (see Massachusetts Charges Merrill with Fraud over ARS Sales).

New Hampshire securities regulators sued UBS AG Thursday for allegedly improperly selling securities to help students finance their education, adding to a string of lawsuits against the Swiss bank. UBS plans to fight the charges. “This complaint attempts to link a single client interaction with overall market conditions which affected all student-loan issuers, and as such we believe there is no basis for these specific allegations,” UBS told the Boston Globe.