5 Years Later, Jon Corzine May Avoid Trial With $5 Million Settlement

Nearly five years after Jon S. Corzine presided over the collapse of the brokerage firm MF Global and became a target of federal investigations, his legal ordeal might be drawing to a close.

In recent weeks, Mr. Corzine and the federal regulatory agency that sued him have struck a tentative agreement to settle the case, according to people briefed on the matter. The agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which sued Mr. Corzine in 2013 over MF Global’s collapse and misuse of $1 billion in customer money, could announce a deal by the end of this year if the agency’s three commissioners approve it.

Should that happen, the settlement would avert a high-profile trial that almost certainly would have led Mr. Corzine, a 69-year-old former Democratic United States senator and New Jersey governor, to testify. The trial was originally scheduled to begin this month in the United States District Court in Manhattan.  read more »

EpiPen Maker Mylan Will Pay $465 Million to Settle Medicaid Overcharging Case

Mylan, the maker of the allergy treatment EpiPen, said Friday that it had reached a $465 million settlement with the Justice Department and other government agencies over questions about whether the company had overcharged Medicaid for the EpiPen by improperly classifying it as a generic drug.

The federal government said this week that Mylan had been told multiple times that it was improperly classifying the EpiPen, which led the Medicaid and Medicare programs to overpay for the product. Although it did not say how much it had overpaid, officials said total spending on the EpiPen totaled nearly $1.3 billion from 2011 to 2015. read more »

Pound Is the Latest Flash Crash That Traders Won’t Easily Forget

Algorithmic trading seen exacerbating pound’s extreme drop

Stock, futures and Treasury markets have all suffered

Traders watching the pound’s 6.1 percent plunge against the dollar in minutes on Friday morning in Asia could be excused for feeling disbelief -- and perhaps some déjà vu.

A decline in currency transactions is making moments of extreme volatility more common as participants find it harder to enter or exit positions without affecting prices. And as computers take over the market, algorithmic traders who some say exacerbate swings have more than tripled foreign-exchange volumes over the last three years, according to Aite Group.

But wild moves that market watchers struggle to immediately explain aren’t confined to currencies. Across assets, here’s a recap of days in the past few years that traders would rather forget:  read more »

Illinois AG says lender to pay $3.5 mln in fraud case

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on Thursday announced a $3.5 million settlement with All Credit Lenders, a consumer lender accused of charging excessive interest rates disguised as account fees.

Elgin, Illinois-based All Credit also agreed to stop collecting on disputed loans and waive outstanding balances for thousands of consumers, Madigan said in a statement.  read more »

Fugitive Stanford Ponzi Scheme Exec Liable For $14M

A Texas federal judge on Wednesday found an executive for the Latin America branches of Stanford International Bank Ltd. liable for nearly $14 million for his role in the Ponzi scheme run by R. Allen Stanford, though the man remains an international fugitive.  read more »