JURIST - Paper Chase: Corporations & securities brief ~ SEC probe prompting traders to quit Fidelity

[JURIST] Leading Friday's corporations and securities law news, Fidelity Investments [financial website] announced two more traders have left the firm over the government's investigation into employees who inappropriately solicited and received expensive gifts and entertainment from brokers who wanted the company's business. This is the second set of traders to leave the firm over the SEC [official website] and company's internal probe. Read more about Fidelity's policy on brokers taking gifts [Fidelity press release]. The Boston Globe has more.

In other news...

Enron Corp. [corporate website; JURIST Hot Topic] has won court approval to pay as much as $45 million in bonuses to the employees ending the energy giant's operations. The company, which is selling its assets to raise $12 billion to pay-off creditors, believes that the employees will most likely receive about $16.8 million in bonuses. Bloomberg has more.
As previously reported in JURIST's Paper Chase, US bankruptcy court Judge Letitia Clark ruled late Thursday that Russian oil company Yukos [official website] cannot seek information as to whether the Gazprom monopoly illegally took part in the sale of Yukos' main oil-producing unit. Reuters has more.
In a decision likely to make bringing lawsuits for the technology bubble burst difficult, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court's decision to throw out a class-action lawsuit against Merrill Lynch [corporate website] and Henry Blodget, its onetime analyst best known for hyping Internet companies in research reports. Read the Second Circuit decision [PDF]. CBSMarketWatch has more.
Hewlett-Packard [corporate website] announced it will pay Intergraph [corporate website] $141 million to settle a patent infringement dispute related to Intergraph's Clipper chip technology. Read the Hewlett-Packard press release. Read the Integraph press release. CNET News has more.

Click for previous corporations and securities law news.

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