A Wall Street adviser who served as vice-chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers and chaired Nasdaq’s trading committee has been charged with securities fraud after prosecutors said they had uncovered an “epic” deception that has cost investors at least $50 billion.
In a statement, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says Bernard L Madoff and his firm – Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities – were charged after the broker apparently admitted to “two senior employees” that he had been running “a giant Ponzi scheme”, paying returns to investors using the principal of other investors.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the “employees” were Madoff’s two sons.
Madoff, who formed his investment firm in 1960, is also alleged to have admitted that the company has been insolvent for years.
It added that regulatory filings for the firm show it had assets worth more than $17 billion at the start of the year, adding that “virtually all” of these assets are now missing.
“We are alleging a massive fraud – both in terms of scope and duration,” says Linda Chatman Thomsen, SEC director of enforcement.
The investigation continues.This should treble capacity, allowing the UTP to handle approximately 30,000 orders a second.
Following on from the European bond migration, NYX now plans to roll-out the UTP to the rest of its European and American markets.
“This important first step will facilitate the migration of European cash equities and ETFs onto the Universal Trading Platform, planned for early 2009,” says Anthony Attia, the company’s executive director and head of the UTP program.
D.C.