Simply stated, I think when the dust settles on this dispute, the gurus of international investment banking will find that their jobs have been made permanently more difficult by the appearance of a new social investment category that has been declared taboo by some of their largest customers, and by the addition of a new and highly complicated variable to their already crowded due-diligence agendas.
Merrill Lynch and the lead plaintiffs in a class action involving about 70 municipal pension plans in Florida together filed a proposed settlement recently seeking to end a dispute over whether the wirehouse breached its fiduciary duties as the investment consultant to these pensions.
Chinese investors caught up in a high-profile dispute with local bank Huaxia over losses related to an increasingly scrutinized type of short-term investment product have been repaid.
Although its president, Richard Iannuzzi, says he does not dispute Spitzer's findings of wrongdoing at the union, no NYSUT officials have been fired over the investment scandal.