Credit Suisse

Gana LLP Investigates Investor Losses In Oil-Linked Structured Notes

November 18, 2015 | by Staff Attorney

The law offices of Gana Weinstein LLP are announcing their investigation into potential securities claims against brokerage firms over sales practices related to the recommendation of structured notes linked to oil & gas. These structured products are issued by Barclays (NYSE:BCS), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB), UBS (NYSE:UBS), Citigroup (NYSE:C), Bank of America Merrill Lynch (NYSE:BAC), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS), and BNP Paribas among others firms. The structured notes are issued under the names Principal Protected Notes, Principal Protected Booster Notes, Buffered Bullish Notes, Accelerated Return Notes, Strategic Return Notes, Capped Leverage Return Notes, Target Term Securities, Market Linked Notes, E-Tracs, Return Optimization Notes, Auto-Callable Securities, Performance Leveraged Upside Securities (PLUS), and Equity Linked Securities (ELKs).

Brokers often pitch structured products as providing “downside protection” against losses to a related index while allowing modest up side gain potential. However, today investors are waking up to the fact that structured products linked to the oil market are offering no protection. According to Bloomberg, retail structured notes meant to protect against a drop in crude failed to do so. Of the $437.1 million in oil related structured products that have matured this year, 44 percent, or $194.3 million of principal has been lost. The largest deal in the oil space is a $104.6 million Barclays issuance in April 2014 that has lost 42 percent of its value.

Indeed, Bloomberg found that all but three of the 39 notes examined protected against a certain percentage of losses, typically in the range of 10 percent to 20 percent. These notes quickly breached these loss limits as crude oil prices have declined more than 60 percent. Once the securities breached the “soft barriers” investors became exposed to the full loss at maturity and the value of the notes became wholly dependent on the change in oil prices.

FINRA Fines 10 Brokerage Firms $43.5 Million For Conflicts of Interests in Toys “R” Us IPO

January 16, 2015 | by Staff Attorney

The merry go-round of Wall Street fraud continues. After the housing crisis where Wall Street sold terrible home loans to investors we’ve arrived back to dot.com era frauds of selling favorable research. Enter the recent fine imposed by The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) that 10 of the largest brokerage firms were fined a total of $43.5 million for allowing their equity research analysts to solicit investment banking business by offering favorable research coverage in connection with the 2010 planned initial public offering of Toys “R” Us.

FINRA fines are as follows:

Barclays Capital Inc. – $5 million

Gana LLP Investigates Alleged Fraudulent Activity Related to Credit Suisse’s TVIX Notes

February 21, 2014 | by Staff Attorney

Gana Weinstein LLP, a full-service nationally recognized securities litigation firm, is investigating Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC for underwriting and VLS Securities, LLC (VLS) for marketing the VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX Short Term Exchange Traded Notes (TVIX). According to TVIX’s offering documents and marketing materials, TVIX was linked to twice the daily performance of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index. The offering documents stated that TVIX was designed for investors who seek exposure to the applicable underlying index.

TVIX do not represent ownership in any basket of securities, instead TVIX acts as a debt instrument that is supposed to track an index and on which the issuer pays the note based on the terms of the offering documents. As a result, investors may receive a cash payment at maturity. TVIX began trading on November 30, 2013 at a $100 per share price. On February 21, 2012, Credit Suisse temporarily suspended the issuance of new shares of TVIX, due to internal limits reached on the size of TVIX, according to Credit Suisse.

On March 22, 2012, the TVIX shares decline in price by over 29% as rumors were circulating that Credit Suisse was considering whether to begin reissuing shares of TVIX. On March 23, 2012 after Credit Suisse announced that it would reopen issuance of TVIX, the shares dropped another 30% in value.