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Non-Tech : The ENRON Scandal -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (4875)	5/29/2003 4:12:37 PM
From: The Duke of URL©	Respond to of 5185

Bank of America paid for Feet research-report May 29, 2003 10:28:00 AM ET NEW YORK, May 29 (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp. (BAC) paid U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray to publish research on Just For Feet Inc. (FEETQ), a shoe retailer that went bankrupt later that year, Bloomberg News reported Thursday. Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that the payment to Piper Jaffray came two months after Bank of America managed the sale of $200 million of junk bonds for Just for Feet. Most of the proceeds were used to repay loans to Bank of America. Representatives of Bank of America and Piper Jaffray declined to comment to Reuters. Piper Jaffray received $400,000 in connection with the Just for Feet bond sale, which was made in April 1999. By the end of May, Piper Jaffray was the only brokerage to recommend buying the stock, according to Bloomberg. Morgan Stanley and four other firms violated securities rules by paying other firms to issue research on their investment banking clients, according to securities regulator NASD in a $1.4 billion industrywide settlement over misleading research last month. Piper Jaffray paid $32.5 million as part of the settlement, which ended charges that securities firms used research to win investment banking business. Bank of America was not included in the settlement. Piper Jaffray retail analyst Brent Rystrom cut his recommendation of Just for Feet to "buy" from "strong buy" in late May. He dropped it to "neutral" in September, after the stock had dropped by 81 percent during the year, according to the Bloomberg report. U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray is a unit of Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp (USB). REUTERS news.moneycentral.msn.com