The 11th Circuit Revives SEC Fraud Lawsuit Against Morgan Keegan Over Auction-Rate Securities

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has revived the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s fraud lawsuit against Morgan Keegan & Co. accusing the financial firm of allegedly misleading investors about auction-rate securities. The federal appeals court said that a district judge was in error when he found that alleged misrepresentations made by the financial firm’s brokers were immaterial. The case will now go back to district court. Morgan Keegan is a Raymond James Financial Inc. (RJF) unit.

The SEC had sued Morgan Keegan in 2009. In its complaint, the Commission accused the financial firm of leaving investors with $2.2M of illiquid ARS. The agency said that Morgan Keegan failed to tell clients about the risks involved and that it instead promoted the securities as having “zero risk” or being “fully liquid” or “just like a money market.” The SEC demanded that Morgan Keegan buy back the debt sold to these clients.

In 2011, U.S. District Judge William Duffey ruled on the securities fraud lawsuit and found that Morgan Keegan did adequately disclose the risks involved. He said that even if some brokers did make misrepresentations, the SEC had failed to present any evidence demonstrating that the financial firm had put into place a policy encouraging its brokers-dealers to mislead investors about ARS liquidity. Duffey pointed to Morgan Keegan’s Web site, which disclosed the ARS risks. He said this demonstrated that there was no institutional intent to fool investors. He also noted that a “failure to predict the market” did not constitute securities fraud and that the Commission would need to show examples of alleged broker misconduct before Morgan Keegan could be held liable.

Citing the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Basic v Levinson, the circuit court found that the misleading statements made by Morgan Keegan brokers and the alleged failure to reveal the known risks involving ARS could have easily been perceived by a reasonable investor to be a modification of the information about ARS that Morgan Keegan had made available. The 11th circuit panel also said that seeing as Morgan Keegan knew there were auctions that were failing in 2007 and early 2008, giving clients “general cautionary language” about the debt behind trading confirmations was not enough. (Although the panel agreed that a written disclosure of the risks involved could trump any sales pitch omissions, it pointed to circuit precedent, which did not allow this “as a matter of law.”)

The appeals court rejected the district judge’s narrow focus on how many alleged victims there might have been, as well as his emphasis on the Commission having to prove institutional intent.

Investors were left in a financial bind when the $330 billion ARS market froze in February 2008. They could not get their now frozen money from this largely, illiquid debt, which was a shock to them seeing as most of them were told that auction-rate securities were liquid, like cash. Morgan Keegan and other financial firms have since been pursued by regulators, as well as investors seeking financial recovery.

Over the last few years, a number of financial firms have had to pay back billions in dollars of ARS to their clients. Our auction-rate securities lawyers have been helping investors recover such losses. Contact Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas, LTD, LLP today.

Broker Omissions Could Doom Morgan Keegan, Courthouse News Service, May 7, 2012

More Blog Posts:

Raymond James Financial to Buy Morgan Keegan from Regions Financial for $930 Million, January 14, 2012

Texas Securities Fraud: Raymond James Financial Services Pays Elderly Senior Investor About $1.8M Following Loss of Appeal, Stockbroker Fraud Blog, December 2, 2011