Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Settle to Avoid Suit, Get Sued Anyway?

I don't have any first hand information about this, but something is odd. The NYT is reporting that Spitzer's office has sued the mutual fund manager J. & W. Seligman & Company on Tuesday, contending that it owes investors $80 million in compensation for improper market-timing trades.

According to the Times, Seligman claimed that it only had 4 cases of market timing arrangements, repaid investors the damages from those arrangements and reduced its management fees going forward. Spitzer still required documents and testimony, and claims to have uncovered another 35 timing agreements for prior years, going back to 1998.

I'm not sure whether this is a case of unclear reporting, a vindictiveness by the government, or mis-reporting by the company, but something is certainly odd about this series of events.

In what might be a bit of nastiness, the suit also names Seligman's president, personally.