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Post by Franko10 ™ on Apr 13, 2005 4:58:27 GMT -5
StockGate: DTCC Stuns With Admission It Interfered With News Media
April 13, 2005 (FinancialWire) In yet another stunning development in the StockGate saga that has roiled the financial industry, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, through its outside counsel, Proskauer Rose LLP, has admitted it sent communications that resulted in a newswire’s censorship at Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) Finance via Investors Business Daily and Markethingych, now owned by Dow Jones (NYSE: DJ) but then partly owned by Viacom’s (NYSE: VIAb) CBS.
This comes hard on the heels of a seeming cancellation of a Dateline NBC purported expose of the DTCC’s alleged role in a “Stock Borrow Program” that lawsuits say it aids and abets through its controversial “Stock Borrow” program, in the same week that DTCC publicly posted a “preemptory” challenge to the legitimacy of “broadcasts.” NBC is a unit of General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), and its producers denied to FinancialWire that the program was cancelled, saying instead that it has been “postponed.”<br>
NBC did not respond to follow-up questions as to when a new air date is intended, or to whether the piece is being reedited due to pressure from the corporation or from outside. Ironically, after FinancialWire’s distribution was curtailed via the Investors Business Daily feed, its publishers joked in an email to the producers that Dateline NBC might be “next.”<br>
On February 7, Investors Business Daily asked Markethingych, then co-owned by Viacom (NYSE: VIAb) but now owned by Dow Jones (NYSE: DJ) to shut off its FinancialWire feed that it also re-propogated to Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO).
An investigation by FinancialWire revealed that the newsfeed was shut down at the request of an official of the DTCC, who had complained to Investors Business Daily that FinancialWire publishes “opinions and not news.” FinancialWire learned that this is contained in emails sent by Investors Business Daily to the Dow Jones publication.
Despite the purported efforts by the DTCC, however, FinancialWire has since been provided to another 300 outlets.
In a letter to FinancialWire’s attorney, Marshal Shichtman, Esq., Charles S. Sims, a member of Proskauer Rose LLP contended that his client’s communication “is not actionable, and DTCC was fully privileged to send it under the protections for free speech afforded by New York and federal law.”<br>
Sims appeared to be more concerned with Shichtman’s characterization of such interference as “cheap thuggery” and “strong-arm tactics more suitable to organized crime than an SRO,” and that he was “appalled” by “any conduct of DTCC.”<br>
Sims said that “unlike the opinions stated in DTCC’s correspondence, for example that FinancialWire is not a bona fide news provider, these charges assert, and would be understood as asserting, criminal misconduct.”<br>
He added that “DTCC takes the matter with utmost seriousness, and will hold you and your client responsible for any resulting harm. DTCC has a sterling reputation, as you seem to be aware, hard-won through years of responsible business meeting the highest standards of conduct, and it ought not be trifled with by careless, reckless charges such as yours.
“We demand that you cease any further dissemination of those charges, and further demand that you identify any and all distributions and copy us on the retraction of these charges that should be forthcoming from you as well.”<br>
Shichtman, contacted at press deadline, said that he may have further comments after legal review, but as to the DTCC’s admittance of media interference and possible First Amendment violations, “I am stupefied.”<br>
A major protagonist has sprung up via the National Coalition Against Naked Short Selling, with recent posts at bobosrevenge.blogspot.com and www.ncans.net/sanity1.htm . It includes an open letter to the DTCC regarding what it perceives to be significant holes in the organization’s recently posted interview.
The sudden cancellation of the “Dateline NBC” expose, scheduled Sunday, April 10, has reminded many of the corporate conflicts in NBC’s previous ownership by Westinghouse that resulted in the infamous cancellation of the “60 Minutes” expose on Big Tobacco after Westinghouse was leaned on by Brown and Williamson, an RJ Reynolds (NYSE: RJR) unit. That resulted in an award-winning movie, “The Insider,” starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe, and produced by Disney’s (NYSE: DIS) Touchstone Pictures and distributed by its Buena Vista unit.
The DTCC has been accused by many of acting with impunity, and is hardly a role model for unconflicted governance. Its 21 directors include Bradley Abelow, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS); Jonathan E. Beyman, Chief Information Officer, Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH); and Frank J. Bisignano, Chief Administrative Officer and Senior Executive Vice President, Citigroup / Solomon Smith Barney's Corporate Investment Bank (NYSE: C).
The largely unregulated DTC has become something of a defacto Czar presiding over the entire U.S. markets system, wielding more day-to-day influence and control than the SEC, the NASD and NASDAQ combined. Transparency is not of the DTCC’s strong suits. In the past it has stonewalled all requests for full and complete trading records.
The DTCC’s two preferred shareholders are the New York Stock Exchange and the NASD, a regulatory agency that also owns the Nasdaq and until recently, the American Stock Exchange.
Other DTCC board members include Michael C. Bodson, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MWD); Gary Bullock, Global Head of Logistics, Infrastructure, UBS Investment Bank (NYSE: UBS); Stephen P. Casper, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, Fischer Francis Trees & Watts, Inc.; Jill M. Considine,Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC);
Also, Paul F. Costello, President, Business Services Group, Wachovia Securities (NYSE: WB); John W. Cummings, Senior Vice President & Head of Global Technology & Services, Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER); Donald F. Donahue, Chief Operating Officer, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC); Norman Eaker, General Partner, Edward Jones; George Hrabovsky, President, Alliance Global Investors Service; Catherine R. Kinney, President and Co-Chief Operating Officer, New York Stock Exchange; Thomas J. McCrossan, Executive Vice President, State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT); Eileen K. Murray, Managing Director, Credit Suisse First Boston (NYSE: CSR); James P. Palermo, Vice Chairman, Mellon Financial Corporation (NYSE: MEL); Thomas J. Perna, Senior Executive Vice President, Financial Companies Services Sector of The Bank of New York (NYSE: BNY); Ronald Purpora, Chief Executive Officer, Garban LLC; Douglas Shulman, President, Regulatory Services and Operations, NASD; and Thompson M. Swayne, Executive Vice President, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).
April 13, 2005 (FinancialWire) In yet another stunning development in the StockGate saga that has roiled the financial industry, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, through its outside counsel, Proskauer Rose LLP, has admitted it sent communications that resulted in a newswire’s censorship at Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) Finance via Investors Business Daily and Markethingych, now owned by Dow Jones (NYSE: DJ) but then partly owned by Viacom’s (NYSE: VIAb) CBS.
This comes hard on the heels of a seeming cancellation of a Dateline NBC purported expose of the DTCC’s alleged role in a “Stock Borrow Program” that lawsuits say it aids and abets through its controversial “Stock Borrow” program, in the same week that DTCC publicly posted a “preemptory” challenge to the legitimacy of “broadcasts.” NBC is a unit of General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), and its producers denied to FinancialWire that the program was cancelled, saying instead that it has been “postponed.”<br>
NBC did not respond to follow-up questions as to when a new air date is intended, or to whether the piece is being reedited due to pressure from the corporation or from outside. Ironically, after FinancialWire’s distribution was curtailed via the Investors Business Daily feed, its publishers joked in an email to the producers that Dateline NBC might be “next.”<br>
On February 7, Investors Business Daily asked Markethingych, then co-owned by Viacom (NYSE: VIAb) but now owned by Dow Jones (NYSE: DJ) to shut off its FinancialWire feed that it also re-propogated to Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO).
An investigation by FinancialWire revealed that the newsfeed was shut down at the request of an official of the DTCC, who had complained to Investors Business Daily that FinancialWire publishes “opinions and not news.” FinancialWire learned that this is contained in emails sent by Investors Business Daily to the Dow Jones publication.
Despite the purported efforts by the DTCC, however, FinancialWire has since been provided to another 300 outlets.
In a letter to FinancialWire’s attorney, Marshal Shichtman, Esq., Charles S. Sims, a member of Proskauer Rose LLP contended that his client’s communication “is not actionable, and DTCC was fully privileged to send it under the protections for free speech afforded by New York and federal law.”<br>
Sims appeared to be more concerned with Shichtman’s characterization of such interference as “cheap thuggery” and “strong-arm tactics more suitable to organized crime than an SRO,” and that he was “appalled” by “any conduct of DTCC.”<br>
Sims said that “unlike the opinions stated in DTCC’s correspondence, for example that FinancialWire is not a bona fide news provider, these charges assert, and would be understood as asserting, criminal misconduct.”<br>
He added that “DTCC takes the matter with utmost seriousness, and will hold you and your client responsible for any resulting harm. DTCC has a sterling reputation, as you seem to be aware, hard-won through years of responsible business meeting the highest standards of conduct, and it ought not be trifled with by careless, reckless charges such as yours.
“We demand that you cease any further dissemination of those charges, and further demand that you identify any and all distributions and copy us on the retraction of these charges that should be forthcoming from you as well.”<br>
Shichtman, contacted at press deadline, said that he may have further comments after legal review, but as to the DTCC’s admittance of media interference and possible First Amendment violations, “I am stupefied.”<br>
A major protagonist has sprung up via the National Coalition Against Naked Short Selling, with recent posts at bobosrevenge.blogspot.com and www.ncans.net/sanity1.htm . It includes an open letter to the DTCC regarding what it perceives to be significant holes in the organization’s recently posted interview.
The sudden cancellation of the “Dateline NBC” expose, scheduled Sunday, April 10, has reminded many of the corporate conflicts in NBC’s previous ownership by Westinghouse that resulted in the infamous cancellation of the “60 Minutes” expose on Big Tobacco after Westinghouse was leaned on by Brown and Williamson, an RJ Reynolds (NYSE: RJR) unit. That resulted in an award-winning movie, “The Insider,” starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe, and produced by Disney’s (NYSE: DIS) Touchstone Pictures and distributed by its Buena Vista unit.
The DTCC has been accused by many of acting with impunity, and is hardly a role model for unconflicted governance. Its 21 directors include Bradley Abelow, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS); Jonathan E. Beyman, Chief Information Officer, Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH); and Frank J. Bisignano, Chief Administrative Officer and Senior Executive Vice President, Citigroup / Solomon Smith Barney's Corporate Investment Bank (NYSE: C).
The largely unregulated DTC has become something of a defacto Czar presiding over the entire U.S. markets system, wielding more day-to-day influence and control than the SEC, the NASD and NASDAQ combined. Transparency is not of the DTCC’s strong suits. In the past it has stonewalled all requests for full and complete trading records.
The DTCC’s two preferred shareholders are the New York Stock Exchange and the NASD, a regulatory agency that also owns the Nasdaq and until recently, the American Stock Exchange.
Other DTCC board members include Michael C. Bodson, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MWD); Gary Bullock, Global Head of Logistics, Infrastructure, UBS Investment Bank (NYSE: UBS); Stephen P. Casper, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, Fischer Francis Trees & Watts, Inc.; Jill M. Considine,Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC);
Also, Paul F. Costello, President, Business Services Group, Wachovia Securities (NYSE: WB); John W. Cummings, Senior Vice President & Head of Global Technology & Services, Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER); Donald F. Donahue, Chief Operating Officer, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC); Norman Eaker, General Partner, Edward Jones; George Hrabovsky, President, Alliance Global Investors Service; Catherine R. Kinney, President and Co-Chief Operating Officer, New York Stock Exchange; Thomas J. McCrossan, Executive Vice President, State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT); Eileen K. Murray, Managing Director, Credit Suisse First Boston (NYSE: CSR); James P. Palermo, Vice Chairman, Mellon Financial Corporation (NYSE: MEL); Thomas J. Perna, Senior Executive Vice President, Financial Companies Services Sector of The Bank of New York (NYSE: BNY); Ronald Purpora, Chief Executive Officer, Garban LLC; Douglas Shulman, President, Regulatory Services and Operations, NASD; and Thompson M. Swayne, Executive Vice President, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).
