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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace (INSP): Where GNET went! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 10K a day who wrote (27040)	5/13/2002 9:40:23 PM
From: sandintoes	Respond to of 28311

INSP will probably be delisted, and Merrill Lynch will go its merry way...scamming people. Merrill under pressure as court deadline looms By Joshua Chaffin in New York Published: May 12 2002 19:07 \| Last Updated: May 13 2002 00:35 Merrill Lynch and Eliot Spitzer will return to the bargaining table on Monday in an attempt to hammer out an agreement, although the New York state attorney general said there was "a long way to go" before they resolved the 10-month probe into conflicts of interest at the largest US brokerage. Mr Spitzer, in an interview with ABC's This Week programme, also criticised the US Securities and Exchange Commission for implementing "porous" rules last week to force stock analysts to reveal more about their ties to companies they research. Despite the progress in the talks, many of the reform measures have yet to be laid out in specific detail. Mr Spitzer's staff was still waiting on Sunday for a written proposal from Merrill. "We have a long way to go, many substantial issues, where I do not believe they [Merrill] yet understand what they have to do to restore integrity to the marketplace," he said. The two sides broke a deadlock late last week when Mr Spitzer dropped his demand that Merrill create a restitution fund for investors who were allegedly misled by the firm's stock research. Merrill is racing to reach a deal before Thursday, when the two sides are due in state court. The attorney general is threatening to submit a list to the court of senior Merrill executives to testify in the investigation. Two areas of conflict are whether or not analysts should be paid from the same pool as investment bankers and whether the two should be permitted to visit companies together. Mr Spitzer has accused Merrill's internet analysts of recommending shares to investors in order to drum up more business for the firm's investment bankers. On April 8, he released a series of internal e-mails that showed Merrill analysts - including Henry Blodget, the firm's former star internet analyst - privately disparaging companies they were touting to investors. Mr Spitzer had hinted at criminal charges, and demanded that Merrill admit wrong-doing, create a restitution fund for investors and implement a series of structural reforms that would sever all links between bankers and research analysts. Standard & Poor's, the ratings agency, said on Friday that it expected an agreement shortly, and that it did not believe Merrill's credit quality would be affected. S&P said it believed that any fine Merrill paid would be "insubstantial", and that reform measures it would adopt to insulate its research analysts from the influence of its investment bankers would not put it at a disadvantage to its competitors.