NEW YORK, May 18, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
Barneys New York, the luxury specialty retailer, announced today that its website, Barneys.com (
www.Barneys.com ) has been redesigned to establish the most personalized and socially-engaging e-commerce site in the luxury market. Fusing Barneys’ unparalleled product offering with a best-in-class digital experience, the redesign allows customers to engage with the visually sophisticated site in a unique and effective way.

Barneys has revamped its site with new architecture and product categorization, making navigation and shopping faster and more streamlined. Registered users are now able to purchase products with as few as two clicks, and the site will highlight, in a dynamic way, products that are exclusive to Barneys throughout the shopping experience. Customers are also able to use unique filters such as New Arrivals and Most Loved.

Working with digital agency Huge, this set of new and unique features has been created to make the new Barneys.com a more personal and social shopping experience and sets it apart from other e-commerce websites.

Favorites and My List: The new Favorites tool is a way for customers to keep track of fashion they like on Barneys.com. Customers can “Favorite” individual items, entire product categories, designers, or size and color choices and add these selections to their “List.” Barneys.com is then able to update these “Lists” by suggesting new products that may be of interest to the customer– providing users with a personalized shopping experience every time they return. Additionally, customers have the ability to share their “List” across multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, The Fancy, and Pinterest.

The Favorites tool allows users to browse, follow, and be inspired by “Lists” that have been created by Fashion Influencers and featured on the Barneys.com homepage. As part of the site’s launch, several fashion influencers have created and shared their own “Lists”. Among them:

Fashion Designers Mary-Kate Olsen & Ashley Olsen

Actor and Author Julianne Moore and her stylist Leslie Fremar

Blogger Jane Aldridge from Sea of Shoes

Stylist Keegan Singh

Photographer Rachael Chandler Guinness & her husband, Creative Director Tom Guinness

Fashion Designers Katie Holmes & Jeanne Yang

Chefs Melia Marden from The Smile & Michael Chernow from Meatball Shop

Most Loved: When multiple users select an item as one of their Favorites, it becomes designated as a Most Loved or “trending” item on Barneys.com.

Exclusively Ours:The new Barneys.com offers a unique perspective on style, culture, and lifestyle throughout the online shopping experience by providing its customers with specially-curated products and designer goods that are Exclusively Ours. All exclusive merchandise is tagged with the Exclusively Ours icon, making it easy to filter and locate exclusive designs when sorting by collection or by the curated look books featured within Barneys.com.

The Window: Barneys’ luxury content site, The Window, provides users with relevant and exclusive information about art, lifestyle, culture, and of course fashion. The new Barneys.com now features designer pages as a home for each brand available to its customers. By highlighting editorial content from The Window and linking to each designer’s newest products, users receive insider fashion access to all designers/brands available on Barneys.com.

Barneys.com features enhanced product photography and detailed editorial stories highlighting the unique characteristics of each item available. The majority of products on Barneys.com are now featured as part of a styled outfit in a curated look book, allowing users to “Complete the Look.” Content from The Window is also integrated into the new product pages to tell each product’s story.

To learn more about the new Barneys.com and experience this one of a kind online shopping destination, please visit
www.Barneys.com

About Barneys New YorkBARNEYS NEW YORK (Barneys) is a luxury specialty retailer with flagship stores in New York City, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, Dallas, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Scottsdale. The Company also operates a highly successful online business at Barneys.com. Founded as a men’s retailer in 1923 in downtown Manhattan it turned into an international arbiter of high style for both women and men in the 1970s and became renowned for discovering and developing new and innovative design talent. Barneys is famous for selling the most intriguing edit from the world’s top designers including women’s and men’s ready-to-wear, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, fragrances, and gifts for the home. Barneys’ signature sense of wit and style is manifested in its creative advertising campaigns, original holiday themes, and celebrated window displays. Barneys’ innovative CO-OP, a mecca for young and emerging designers, was launched in 1985 and has since expanded into a freestanding store concept. Barneys operates more than a dozen CO-OP stores in eight states across the U.S. For more information about Barneys New York please visit
www.Barneys.com .

About HugeRecognized by Advertising Age as one of the ten leading agencies across all marketing disciplines in 2012, Huge is responsible for core digital strategy, marketing and implementation for some of the largest companies and brands in the world. Founded in 1999, Huge has evolved a methodology and a culture that combines the most powerful aspects of research, user-centered design, technology and marketing to transform brands and grow businesses. Huge’s 500 employees operate out of offices in New York, Los Angeles, London and Rio de Janeiro. Learn more about us at hugeinc.com/about.

SOURCE Barneys New York

Copyright (C) 2012 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Financial Glossary

Words used in this article:

Kerry Wood had struck out 20 batters.

He was 20 years old, making his fifth career major league start for the Chicago Cubs, and he had just blown away the Houston Astros, one of the best hitting teams in the league. We saw the highlights on SportsCenter. Yes, it was a gray, overcast day at Wrigley Field, and maybe the Astros had trouble picking up the ball, but Im not sure it mattered all that much. I remember the SportsCenter highlights, in which they showed all 20 strikeouts in rapid-fire fashion. Ive since watched the game on replay.

You can talk about Nolan Ryan or Roger Clemens or Randy Johnson at their best, but Ive never seen a more dominating pitching performance. His pitches were moving like whiffle balls thrown in the middle of the Columbia River Gorge, except they were moving at 95 miles per hour.

The Astros had no chance.

They managed one infield single and Wood hit a batter, so it wasnt a perfect game or even a no-hitter. But by the Bill James Game Score method, it was the best game ever pitched. Game Score rewards pitchers for strikeouts, and subtracts points for runs, hits and walks. There have been just nine starts of nine innings in which a pitcher scored 100 or better. Ryan (twice), Johnson, Curt Schilling, Warren Spahn and Brandon Morrow scored 100; Ryan (with a 16-strikeout, two-walk no-hitter) and Sandy Koufax (his 14-strikeout perfect game) scored 101.

Kerry Woods game? 105. Nine innings, one hit, no walks, 20 Ks. Untouchable.

We all know what happened after that. Wood threw across his body, causing an abrupt snap as his shoulder crashed into his chest, and analysts predicted that motion would eventually lead to an injury. It didnt help that Cubs manager Jim Riggleman had Wood run up some high pitch counts that rookie season — 133, 129, 128, 123, 123, eight games of 120-plus in all. He missed the final month of the season with a sore elbow, but the Cubs brought him back to start a playoff game. The following spring, his elbow gave out. Tommy John surgery.

To his credit, Wood never blamed Riggleman. My elbow was going to go, Wood told The Washington Post in 2010. If it didnt go with [Riggleman] it wouldve gone with someone else. It was the way I was throwing, the stuff I had, the torque I was generating. It was a matter of time.

Wood recovered and returned as a power pitcher, although his stuff was never quite as electric. In 2003, he made the All-Star team and led the National League in strikeouts. The Cubs won the division. Dusty Baker worked him hard that year. He threw 141 pitches in a May victory against the Cardinals, 130 in a 1-0 shutout against the Marlins in July. In his final six starts of the regular season, he threw 125, 120, 122, 114, 125 and 122 pitches.

In Game 5 of the division series, Wood allowed one run in eight innings to beat the Braves in the series clincher. It was one of the great moments in Cubs history, getting them one round closer to the World Series, the unthinkable becoming believable. And then, in the NLCS against the Florida Marlins … Game 6, the heartbreaker. But the Cubs still had Game 7 and Wood on the mound.

I remember sitting at home alone that night, watching the game. I wasnt a Cubs fan but of course you were rooting for them, rooting for Wood, a reward for all the elbow pain, the surgery, the rehab hed gone through over the years. Miguel Cabrera hit a three-run homer off him in the top of the first, but the Cubs fought back. Wood himself hit a two-run homer in the second; the Cubs led 5-3. Wood to the rescue.

The World Series, of course, was not to be. The Marlins scored three runs in the fifth. Baker stuck with Wood, unwilling to admit Wood couldnt will the Cubs to victory that night, no matter how sentimental that storyline. Baseball isnt like that. Finally, after two singles in the sixth, Baker went to the mound. The Cubs fans gave Wood a loud ovation, bittersweet and melancholy.

Wood was never the same after that. He got injured in 2004, made just 10 starts in 2005 and four in 2006, then spent the past six seasons pitching in relief, moving from the Cubs to the Indians to the Yankees and back to the Cubs.

Its weird; youre only supposed to feel sad, I suppose, when your favorite player retires. But for some reason, I felt a pit in my stomach Friday when I heard Wood was retiring. I cant help but think back to the May afternoon and those 20 strikeouts and how a co-worker of mine always referred to him as Baby Kerry after that because he looked so young and was a little chubby in his appearance, a kid in a mans sport, a kid with unhittable stuff. Maybe its just remembering your own younger days, when you could watch in awe of an athletic performance, thinking of that golden arm.

Wood won 86 games in his career, never pitched in the World Series, made a lot of money. He does have one important lasting legacy, beyond that 20-strikeout game: In part because of what happened to Wood (and teammate Mark Prior and others), teams are more careful with how they handle young starters. You wont see 20-year-old kids throwing 130 pitches in a game, no matter their ability. One reason were seeing so many good young pitchers now and declining levels of offense is that pitchers are healthier and not flaming out in the minors or early on in their major league careers.

Sure, maybe teams are too cautious with this approach, but Id rather see that than what happened with Wood. He undoubtedly wont view himself as an unfortunate trailblazer, but rather as a pitcher who grinded his way through 14 major league seasons, giving his best.

In the end, thats all each of us can do, no matter our gifts.

Author JR Holbrook unveils an interesting tour de force that tells a story of life and family exploits that will hook readers from start to finish in Making Sense From The Guy On The Edge. It is an inspiring narrative that fuses life, family, relationships, and many more into one riveting book that will provide insights to help readers in their own journey.

This book will take readers on exciting and memorable trips and adventures as the author relates about the life in the eastern part of Kentucky and how his family came to live there for more than a decade. Aside from sharing the author’s personal experiences and travels, this book offers readers a glimpse of his family’s way of life, their beliefs and principles, and their unique bond. It also details of their different exploits, various acquaintances, many struggles, successes, and so much more. This book is a family story–a beautiful journey shared by each member of a wonderful family.

A captivating book packed with diverse emotions fit to every situation, Making Sense From The Guy On The Edge is a beautiful story not everyone can relate with, but can surely learn from.

This book will be featured at the Ohio Library Council Book Exhibit in Columbus, Ohio on September 7, 2012 and at the Pennsylvania Library Association Book Exhibit in Gettysburg, Pa. on September 30 – October 3, 2012.

For more information on this book, interested parties may log on to http://www.Xlibris.com.

About the Author

JR Holbrook has traveled to many places in his life and lived in more than just a few places over nearly fifty years. While in Hawaii, he had many wonderful experiences, and some of these are in his book. He has been to the Grand Canyon, and saw eagles and condors fly over its enormously high cliffs. When he traveled to Punta Cana and Costa Rica with college students, he had a great learning experience. He was amazed as he watched the water fall over the edge of Niagara Falls. He also enjoys writing and has studied it through the many years while being in college. He has served as a security officer for many years and has an interest in legal issues. Most of his family members from his father’s side who lived in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, were medical doctors, and this is also in his book.

Making Sense From The Guy On The Edge * by JR HOLBROOK

Publication Date: May 4, 2011

Trade Paperback; $15.99; 90 pages; 978-1-4628-9962-3

Trade Hardback; $24.99; 90 pages; 978-1-4628-9963-0

eBook; $9.99; 978-1-4628-9964-7

Members of the media who wish to review this book may request a complimentary paperback copy by contacting the publisher at (888) 795-4274 x. 7879. To purchase copies of the book for resale, please fax Xlibris at (610) 915-0294 or call (888) 795-4274 x. 7879.

For more information on self-publishing or marketing with Xlibris, visit http://www.Xlibris.com. To receive a free publishing guide, please call (888) 795-4274.

They will be producing herbicides, fungicides and insecticides, which they believe would help promote and expand agriculture in Ghana.

This came to light when the Ghana News Agency (GNA) interviewed some of the 35 Chinese Agro-chemical companies in the country to interact with Ghanaian importers and agro-chemical dealers, sellers and farmers, interested in importing what the Chinese has to offer at an exhibition at the Accra International Conference Centre.

Already, the largest manufacturer of agro chemicals in China, Zheviane Xinam Chemical industrial Group Company Limited, had established an agro chemical branch, known as Wynca Sunshine, in Kumasi, which started production on May 01.

Every year, Wynca Sunshine will donate agriculture products to the National and Local Farmers Day and also train farmers on how to use the agro- chemicals scientifically and efficiently to reduce cost of production.

Mr. Kelvin Zhang, Sales Manager of Shansung Qiaochang Chemical Company Limited, described their encounter with the Ghanaian farmers and agro chemical dealers as fruitful.

He said his company was one of the largest agro-chemical manufacturers and exporters in China and was looking forward to long term cooperation with Ghana’s Agric sector.

Mr. Sarpong Asante, Director of Asantepon Farms, praised the Chinese for producing high quality agro- chemicals, which were helping Ghanaian farmers to solve their farming problems and increase production.

An agro- chemical dealer, Mr. David Bediako, Director of Power of God Agro- chemicals, said the variety of agro- chemical from China were highly patronized and hoped to increase their operations for Ghanaian farmers.**

The Silver Boot will be up for grabs between the two Texas combatants with the
Rangers aiming for bragging rights in a fourth consecutive year. The Rangers
went 4-2 against the Astros last season and are 14-4 in the past 18 matchups
in the series. Texas also has won eight of nine in Space City and is 37-29
overall in the Lone Star Series.

Texas currently leads the AL West by four games over Oakland, but went 3-4 on
a recent homestand. It split a two-game series with the Athletics and suffered
a 5-4 loss in 10 innings on Thursday, as Kila Kaaihue singled home Jonny
Gomes in the top of the 10th inning for the game-winning run. Rangers reliever
Mike Adams was dealt the loss and starter Matt Harrison allowed three runs and
eight hits in 5 1/3 innings of work.

I wouldnt call it frustrating, said Rangers manager Ron Washington. Its a
tough loss. Its not frustrating because we still have a lot of games on the
schedule. You cant get frustrated about one game, because that frustration
ends up snowballing.

Rangers slugger Josh Hamilton got the day off until a pinch-hitting role in
the eighth inning and had his 16-game hitting streak come to an end. Hamilton
went 0-for-2 and was riding the longest hit streak of his career since a 23-
game run back in June 2010.

It allows you to be stress-free for a few innings, Hamilton said. Not
really having to think about the game, but just out there supporting your
teammates and encouraging them. If we have a day off, about the sixth inning,
Im still getting ready. In about the sixth inning, I went to the cage, and I
was ready to go.

Washingtons club, which will visit Seattle as well on this road trip, is
scheduled to send Neftali Feliz to the mound Friday. Feliz has won two
straight starts and is 3-1 with a 3.32 ERA in seven games (6 starts) this
season. He last toed the rubber in a 13-6 win over the LA Angels on Sunday, as
he held the Halos to a pair of runs and four hits in six innings.

Feliz is 0-1 with a 6.00 ERA in six relief appearances against the Astros.

Houston will resume an eight-game homestand tonight and swept Milwaukee in two
games to kick off the residency. In Thursdays 4-0 victory, starting pitcher
JA Happ evened his 2012 mark at 3-3 with six shutout innings, four
strikeouts and one walk.

Im just trying to be aggressive and throw strikes, said Happ. With the
pitches that I miss and that they get on, the guys behind me do a great job.

Jed Lowrie hit a two-run homer and both Chris Snyder and Jordan Schafer added
RBI singles for the Astros, whose two-game winning streak comes on the heels
of a four-game slide.

The Astros are slated to host the NL Central-rival Cubs on the homestand and
hope Wandy Rodriguez can pitch the ballclub past Texas tonight. Rodriguez
hopes to follow up Happs performance with a stellar showing of his own. Since
a personal three-game win streak from April 22-May 2, Rodriguez is 0-1 in two
trips to the mound and did not record a decision in a 3-2 loss at Pittsburgh
on Sunday. He threw eight innings of one-run ball, struck out seven batters
and issued one walk.

Rodriguez is 3-3 in eight starts to go along with a 1.99 earned run average
this season, and is 4-2 with a 5.13 ERA in six career starts against Texas.

Houston will don its 1965 uniforms for tonights series opener with the
Rangers. Former Astros legend and current Rangers president Nolan Ryan will
throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

Texas owns a 135-131 mark in interleague play and Houston is 107-123 against
the American League.

Diplomats from the region’s 27 nations decided yesterday
that more talks are needed by officials on the draft law before
it can be agreed on by finance ministers, said an EU official.

The draft law has been taken off the agenda of a meeting of
finance ministers on May 15, said the official, who can’t be
identified in line with EU policy.

Michel Barnier, the European Union’s financial services
chief, proposed last year to force businesses to rotate the
credit ratings companies they use. Barnier has said the measure
would boost competition and address conflicts of interest.
Regulators and industry have warned that the step could reduce
the quality of ratings in the short term.

The measure is part of a broader draft law presented by
Barnier which would also allow investors to sue ratings
companies in cases of misconduct or gross negligence, and give
the European Securities and Markets Authority increased
oversight powers over the industry.

Governments reached an agreement in March to scale back the
rotation plans, without settling the details.

Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, has
proposed limiting rotation so that it only covers ratings of
securitizations and other so-called structured finance
instruments.

National diplomats are weighing whether to scale back the
measures further so that rotation would apply only to so-called
resecuritizations, such as collateralized debt obligations that
are repackaged and used to back another round of securitized
debt, the official said.

The credit-ratings law requires approval by national
governments and by lawmakers in the European Parliament, before
it can come into effect.

Compliance Action
Martin Currie Fined by SEC, UK FSA for Client Manipulation

Martin Currie Investment Management Ltd., an Edinburgh-
based fund management group, was fined about $14 million by
finance regulators in the US and UK for manipulating a
client to aid a hedge fund the firm managed.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission charged Martin
Currie Investment Management Ltd. and Martin Currie Inc. with
advising The China Fund Inc. (CHN) to invest in its struggling hedge
fund with a “largely illiquid exposure” to a Chinese company,
the regulator said yesterday.

“The misconduct in this case strikes at the heart of the
fiduciary relationship between an investment adviser and its
client,” said Robert Khuzami, SEC enforcement director, in the
agency’s statement. The SEC investigation into individuals is
continuing.

Martin Currie settled the charges with the SEC for $8.3
million and was fined 3.5 million pounds ($5.7 million) by the
UK Financial Services Authority. It is the largest fine levied
by the FSA for failing to manage a conflict of interest, the
British regulator said.

Since it disclosed the conflict of interest in July, Martin
Currie’s assets under management have fallen to about 5 billion
pounds, according to its website, compared with 10.1 billion
pounds in mid-2011.

The firm gave preferential treatment to its client, the
Martin Currie China Hedge Fund LP, which had invested heavily in
a Chinese printer-cartridge recycling company, Jackin
International Holdings, and was facing increasing requests for
redemptions from its investors, the SEC said.

Martin Currie’s unlisted investments division has now been
closed, the firm said in a statement.

“The FSA and SEC investigations related to historic
investments in a series of three unlisted bonds, the first of
which took place five years ago,” the firm said. “Those
investments gave rise to a conflict of interest between two
client accounts, which also exposed certain weaknesses in Martin
Currie’s systems and controls.”

The firm said it compensated the client and returned all
related fees.

Martin Currie’s directors and external shareholders have
also invested about 25 million pounds in the company, which gave
it more than 300 percent of its regulatory capital requirement,
the money manager said.

Compliance Policy
CFTC Votes to Finish Dodd-Frank Derivatives Exchange Rules

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted to
require swaps exchanges to have pauses and halts in trading and
abide by other restrictions to limit market risks under final
Dodd-Frank Act regulations.

The agency voted 5-0 yesterday to complete a series of
rules, including record-keeping and reporting requirements, that
will apply to exchanges. The agency intends many of the
regulations to be flexible guidelines for compliance instead of
prescriptive rules, according to a CFTC summary.

“These exchanges for the first time will be able to list
and trade swaps to bring the benefit of pre-trade
transparency,” Gary Gensler, the agency’s chairman said before
the vote.

Dodd-Frank, the financial-regulation overhaul enacted in
2010, seeks to have most swaps traded on exchanges or other so-
called swap execution facilities, governed by separate rules yet
to be completed. The rules are intended to increase transparency
in the $708 trillion global swaps market after largely
unregulated swaps helped fuel the 2008 credit crisis.

The agency delayed a final vote on the most controversial
element of the rules governing exchanges, a restriction on the
amount of trading that must occur in a centralized market. The
agency postponed a vote on the provision amid internal dissent
and opposition from CME Group Inc. (CME), owner of the world’s largest
futures exchange. “The commission will be best served by
continued dialog,” said Mark Wetjen, a Democratic commissioner.

For more, click here.

Obama’s Regulation-Killing to Save $6 Billion in Five Years

US rule changes involving street signs, train control
systems and hospital practices will save consumers and
businesses almost $6 billion in the next five years, President
Barack Obama’s administration said.

The savings is a large part of the annual cost of
rulemaking, said Cass Sunstein, administrator of the White House
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, in announcing the
reforms yesterday at an American Bar Association meeting in
Washington.

“That’s a significant chunk of the total costs of
rulemaking in any given year and we have on one day taken away
that cost,” he said.

Republicans have criticized some regulations Obama issued
as too burdensome on business and made a campaign issue of his
rule-making approach. Some of yesterday’s changes, including
rules for vapor-recovery systems at gasoline stations, a partial
exemption from installing railroad crash-avoidance technology,
and streamlined health-care reporting, were disclosed last year.

“They’ve already taken credit for this,” said James
Gattuso, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Heritage
Foundation, which says it advocates conservative political
positions.

For more, click here.

Big Four Auditors Welcome China’s Rule to Localize Their Firms

Two of the biggest global auditing firms are accepting a
new directive from China to staff their operations with Chinese
citizens, saying they are already trending that way.

Within three years, all senior partners for auditors’
operations in China must be Chinese citizens with local
accountant certifications, according to rules posted on the
website of China’s Ministry of Finance May 9. Two of the so-
called Big Four auditing firms, whose US affiliates are Ernst
amp; Young LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, said they support
the move.

“Our business is well-positioned for this transition,”
Ernst amp; Young said in a statement. “The new measures are in
line with EY’s existing strategy to accelerate localization of
our business in China.”

China drew particular attention last year as dozens of
Chinese companies disclosed auditor resignations or accounting
irregularities, leading to the suspension or delisting of their
shares. The US Securities and Exchange Commission and the
auditor watchdog group it supervises have met repeatedly with
Chinese counterparts to discuss lifting barriers for inspectors
to review auditors of US-listed companies in China.

PwC China, the local affiliate of PricewaterhouseCoopers,
said in a statement that it has been “actively localizing its
China practice by investing heavily in developing local talent
and promoting local partners in past years.”

Colleen Brennan, a spokeswoman for the US Public Company
Accounting Oversight Board that oversees auditors, declined to
immediately comment on the rules. Deloitte LLP and KPMG LLP, the
remaining members of the Big Four, didn’t immediately respond to
requests for comment.

The SEC sued Shanghai-based Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu CPA
Ltd., the agency said May 9, alleging that the firm refused to
provide documents related to a China-based company under
investigation for potential accounting fraud against US
investors.

Filings
Goldman Lifts ‘Reasonably Possible’ Legal-Loss Estimate 13%

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), the fifth-biggest US bank by
assets, raised estimates of potential losses from legal claims
by 13 percent and said a probe into its handling of Greek
finances includes trading and research.

The forecast of “reasonably possible” legal costs rose to
$2.7 billion as of March 31 from $2.4 billion three months
earlier, according to a regulatory filing yesterday. The New
York-based firm didn’t give specific reasons for the increase.

Banks started releasing estimates of possible losses after
the US Securities and Exchange Commission told finance chiefs
in October 2010 that they should disclose such costs “when
there is at least a reasonable possibility” they may be
incurred, even if the risk is too low to require reserves.

The estimate doesn’t include potential losses from legal
matters that are at an early stage or where the firm can’t
determine the potential amount, according to the filing.

An investigation of the firm’s financing and swap
transactions with the Greek government, which started about two
years ago, also includes “trading and research activities with
respect to Greek sovereign debt,” according to the filing.
“Goldman Sachs has cooperated with the investigations and
reviews,” the company said.

The company also disclosed that the US Department of
Justice and SEC are investigating the firm’s role in the 2008
financial crisis. Those inquiries stem from last year’s report
by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which
said the firm misled clients about mortgage-related investments
before the crisis. Goldman Sachs has denied wrongdoing.

The company is in arbitration with a California school
district and the cities of Houston, Texas, and Reno, Nevada,
over Goldman Sachs’s role as an underwriter and broker-dealer
for more than $1.7 billion in auction-rate securities from 2004
and 2007, according to the filing.

Goldman Sachs is also facing a suit from the founders and
majority shareholders of Dragon Systems Inc. who exchanged their
stake in Dragon for stock in Lernout amp; Hauspie Speech Products
NV in 2000, according to the filing. Lamp;H went bankrupt on Nov.
29, 2000.

Settlements
Deutsche Bank to Pay $202.3 Million in Mortgage Fraud Accord

Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) agreed to pay $202.3 million to settle
civil claims that its MortgageIT unit lied to qualify thousands
of risky mortgages for a federal insurance program in what the
US called a “massive fraud.”

The US claimed in a lawsuit filed May 3, 2011, that
Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank and MortgageIT falsely certified
that they properly assessed the default risk of borrowers,
qualifying loans for insurance by the Housing and Urban
Development Department’s Federal Housing Administration.

The bank admitted to some of the conduct alleged in the
complaint, according to a statement yesterday by the office of
US Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan. The US sued under
the False Claims Act, which permitted it to seek triple damages
and penalties of more than $1 billion.

“MortgageIT and Deutsche Bank treated FHA insurance as
free government money to backstop lending practices that did not
follow the rules,” Bharara said in the statement.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan approved the settlement
yesterday, according to the statement.

“We are very pleased to have reached this settlement, for
which we have already fully reserved, and to put this issue
behind us,” Renee Calabro, a Deutsche Bank spokeswoman, said in
an e-mailed statement. “This marks a significant step in
resolving our mortgage-related exposures.”

The case is US v. Deutsche Bank AG, 11-cv-2976, US
District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

In the Courts
Santander Wins EU Court Challenge to French Tax on Funds

Banco Santander SA (SAN) and other financial services companies
including Societe Generale SA (GLE) won a court bid to overturn a
French levy on some mutual funds in a ruling that may lead to
rebates for investors.

The European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that France was
wrong to charge a 25 percent withholding tax on dividend
payments to a type of EU-regulated funds, known as UCITS,
outside France. French-based products aren’t required to pay the
tax.

The measure “constitutes a restriction on the free
movement of capital, which is in principle prohibited under EU
law,” the court said in a statement yesterday.

France has already received claims for tax refunds of more
than 4 billion euros ($5.2 billion) and could face more, said
Kit Dickson, a tax partner at Deloitte amp; Touche LLP, in a
telephone interview. EU countries have reacted to similar claims
by changing rules that tax foreign-based funds differently.

“We’ll see tax policy changes coming in from different
member states and they’ll either be starting to tax resident
funds as well as non-resident funds or they’ll choose to exempt
them,” Dickson said. “Spain changed some of its withholding
tax rules in 2010, the Netherlands changed them in 2008, France
chose to tax resident pension funds from 2009.”

The French Finance Ministry press office didn’t immediately
respond to calls and e-mails requesting comment on the decision
and the potential tax rebate.

While the ruling from the EU’s highest court is binding,
final decisions on the case must be taken by an administrative
court in Montreuil, France.

The cases are: C-338/11 FIM Santander Top 25 Euro Fi,
Direction des residents a l’etranger et des services generaux,
C-339/11 Cartera Mobiliara, C-340/11 Alltri Inka, C-341/11 DBI-
Fonds APT no 737, C-342/11 SICAV KBC Select Immo, C-343/11 SGSS
Deutschland Kapitalanlagegesellschaft, C-344/11 International
Values Series of the DFA Investment Trust, C-345/11 Continental
Small Series of the DFA Investment Trust, C-346/11 Sicav GA Fund
B, C-347/11 AMB Generali Aktien Euroland.

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Speeches/Interviews
Traders Shifting to Risk Control Over Speed, Corvil’s Byrne Says

Traders dealing with the current electronic market are
willing to sacrifice some speed if it allows them to better
manage their risks, said Donal Byrne, chief executive officer of
technology company Corvil Ltd.

“The environment we work in today is dramatically
different,” Byrne said yesterday at the Bloomberg Enterprise
Technology Summit hosted by Bloomberg Link in New York. “In
2008, 2009, it was speed at any cost. Now it’s speed fast enough
at the right cost,” with the ability to manage the risks
associated with the trading, he said.

The proliferation of high-speed, computer-driven trading
means the profitability of transactions can be influenced in
fractions of a second. Traders have invested in more powerful
servers and techniques such as co-location, in which exchanges
let them place computers close to the market, to improve
execution speed. The faster speeds come with greater risks,
Byrne said.

“A problem with these infrastructures is that they tend to
have a cliff-edge failure scenario,” said Byrne, whose
company’s products and services help clients measure latency, or
the time it takes to process data, and speed up stock trades.
“If we observe that there is a cliff, the risk is how close you
want to go to the cliff edge,” he said. “Latency is really
inversely proportional to risk.”

Speed isn’t only about how quickly a trader can access
orders at a market, Stephen Ehrlich, CEO of New York-based
Lightspeed Financial LLC, said at the same event. It’s about how
quickly the trader’s systems can get the quotation and
transaction data and analyze the information, he added.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Ellen Rosen in New York at
erosen14@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Michael Hytha at
mhytha@bloomberg.net

Instead, Facebooks IPO — like dozens of others lately — is being underwritten by giant Morgan Stanley. Reflecting the financial industrys increasing competition and consolidation, big banks like Morgan Stanley now account for the lions share of such corporate coming-out ceremonies.

But critics say the trend has contributed to the average number of annual IPOs dropping from more than 300 during the 1980s and 1990s to less than 100 since 2000. They say big banks generally only find it worth their while to underwrite big companies. And as a result, they claim, its gotten harder for small firms to grow and flourish.

With fewer companies having access to capital in the public markets, there will necessarily be fewer success stories, said David Golden, Executive Chairman of the San Francisco bank Code Advisors. The occasional Facebook will break out. But there wont be as many.

Fewer IPOs also mean fewer people getting hired, warned a study in October for the US Treasury Department, which blamed the scarcity of companies going public in part on the dwindling participating of small banks. It cited