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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Tokyo Joe's Cafe / Societe Anonyme -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TokyoMex who wrote (6959)	7/9/1998 9:22:00 AM
From: Yoav Chudnoff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8798

Thought this to be interesting: Nasdaq Dealers and 100 Traders Face SEC Case Over Violations By ANITA RAGHAVAN and MICHAEL SCHROEDER Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Nearly three dozen Wall Street securities firms have begun preliminary settlement discussions with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over alleged trading violations in the past on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The SEC has already been telling the firms and more than 100 traders -- a higher number than originally expected -- that it is preparing civil charges against them. The talks, while in the early stages, could lead to an industrywide SEC settlement over disciplinary cases stemming from the SEC and Justice Department investigations begun in 1994 over alleged price manipulation by dealers on Nasdaq. Nasdaq's Trouble May 1994: Study from two finance professors suggests Nasdaq dealers "tacitly collude" on prices. October and November 1994: The Justice Department and the SEC launch probes into Nasdaq dealers and their self-regulator, the National Association of Securities Dealers. July 1996: 24 firms agree to beef up oversight of Nasdaq desks in settlement with Justice Department July 1998: Nearly three dozen Wall Street securities firms have begun preliminary settlement discussions with the SEC over alleged trading violations on Nasdaq. This is the first time that Wall Street firms have discussed a settlement of the Nasdaq matter with the SEC. The SEC and U.S. Justice Department probe, started in 1994, yielded thousands of hours of taped conversations between Nasdaq traders upon which the SEC has built its cases, people familiar with the situation say. First Set of Fines The settlement talks, if successful, are likely to result in Wall Street forking over its first set of fines to settle regulators' allegations of trading violations on the Nasdaq market. The firms have, however, agreed to pony up more than $1 billion in total in a settlement made in December of class-action litigation on behalf of investors who said they were overcharged in the Nasdaq market. While Wall Street reached a settlement in 1996 with the Justice Department, the accord was more injunctive in nature, requiring securities firms to beef up oversight of their trading desks but falling short of imposing fines on Nasdaq dealers. Among the firms that the SEC has held settlement discussions with are Merrill Lynch & Co., the nation's biggest brokerage firm; Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co.; PaineWebber Group Inc.; Warburg Dillon Read, formerly known as UBS Securities Inc.; and Charles Schwab Corp.'s Mayer & Schweitzer Inc. unit. Spokesmen at the firms declined to comment. The SEC also declined to comment. Although the SEC hasn't sent out so-called Wells notices, formally notifying traders that they are about to be charged, the commission has been briefing Wall Street lawyers in recent weeks on the cases against the individual traders and the firms, people familiar with the situation say. It was reported earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal that the SEC was planning civil charges against dozens of traders, but the recent briefings and preliminary settlement talks suggest that the SEC is ready to file civil charges against the Nasdaq traders and Wall Street firms. It's unclear at this stage if the settlement talks will actually yield an accord or result in litigation, these people say. Any accord, they say, is likely to result in securities firms paying fines, ranging from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to between $5 million and $10 million, depending on the firm. The SEC has been informing each firm about its liability, and, people familiar with the situation say, PaineWebber and Warburg Dillon Read, formerly UBS, are two of the Wall Street securities firms that have a bigger exposure than most rank-and-file firms and could be subject to the heftiest fines. Both firms declined to comment. Fate of Individual Traders One of the main issues that the SEC and the Wall Street securities firms are tussling over is the fate of the individual traders. The SEC is seeking 30-day, 90-day and, in some cases, lifetime suspensions for individual traders, these people say. But Wall Street firms have been battling such suspensions, arguing that it would be career-killing, these people say. In addition, it appears that Wall Street firms would hold out for the SEC not to name any individual traders as part of an accord with the commission, these people say. The SEC's two-year probe into Nasdaq dealers resulted in the publication of a 157-page supplemental report that shed light on trading practices in the Nasdaq Stock Market. The so-called 21(a) report, chock full of conversations among Nasdaq traders, both to one another and in sworn testimony, offered instances of traders coordinating their price quotations in a bid to fix prices on Nasdaq. In one tape transcript, one trader holding a position in a stock in spring 1994, Parametric Technology, asked another to move up his bid -- what he will pay for it -- to 1/4 point above the selling price. At one point in the conversation between the two traders, the second trader admitted to "goosing [the stock], cuz." To which the first trader replied: "Thank you." In another tape transcript, two traders unwittingly predicted what many traders say is the result of the SEC's investigation and the remedies it is forcing on the National Association of Securities Dealers. "It's the end of your profits," one trader laments to another, explaining that publicity about wide Nasdaq trading spreads forced his firm to narrow them. "If you make 600 a month, you gonna make 400 a month." The talks with the SEC come just two years after two dozen securities firms agreed to random taping of conversations on over-the-counter trading desks and stepped up monitoring of these conversations as part of an accord with the Justice Department. The discussions also follow an accord the SEC reached with the NASD in August 1996 that called for the NASD to spend $100 million over five years to prevent abuses on Nasdaq. The 21(a) report was issued in conjunction with that settlement.

To: TokyoMex who wrote (6959)	7/9/1998 9:24:00 AM
From: Emec	Respond to of 8798

IMNR NEWS OUT! To: AHM (854 ) From: David Furstenberg Thursday, Jul 9 1998 9:01AM ET Reply # of 861 Schering-Plough and Immune Response in Agreement to Develop Hepatitis Gene Therapy Products PR Newswire - July 09, 1998 08:45 MADISON, N.J., and CARLSBAD, Calif., July 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Schering- Plough Corporation (NYSE: SGP) and The Immune Response Corporation (Nasdaq: IMNR) today announced a research collaboration and option agreement to combine Immune Response's proprietary GeneDrug(TM) gene delivery technology with the interferon alfa-2b gene and other Schering-Plough proprietary genes to develop gene therapy products for the treatment of hepatitis B and C, and other diseases. Under terms of the agreement, Schering-Plough may obtain rights to existing and future gene therapy technology developed by Immune Response in conjunction with type-1 interferon genes. Under terms of the initial preclinical research agreement, The Immune Response Corporation could receive approximately $5 million in initial fees, reimbursement expenses and technical milestone payments related to the delivery of the interferon alfa-2b gene for the treatment of hepatitis B and C. As part of the agreement, Schering-Plough has the option to license Immune Response's gene delivery system for additional proprietary Schering-Plough genes. If Schering-Plough exercises its option to utilize Immune Response's delivery system for additional proprietary genes, total payments to Immune Response could exceed $75 million in additional licensing fees and milestone payments. The agreement also provides for Schering-Plough to pay royalties on future product sales. "Schering-Plough is a market leader in alpha interferon therapy," said Dennis J. Carlo, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of The Immune Response Corporation. "Immune Response now has two separate collaborations in place using our GeneDrug delivery technology. We believe this collaboration between Immune Response and Schering-Plough continues to validate the technological approach and further strengthens our gene therapy program. We hope that the results of this collaboration will ultimately prove beneficial to individuals afflicted with hepatitis," Carlo said. The Immune Response Corporation is a biopharmaceutical company based in Carlsbad, California, developing immune-based therapies to induce specific T cell responses for the treatment of HIV, autoimmune diseases and cancer. The company is conducting clinical trials for its immune-based therapies for HIV, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, colon cancer and brain cancer, and preclinical studies for melanoma and prostate cancers. In addition, the company is developing a targeted delivery technology for gene therapy that is designed to enable the intravenous injection of genes for delivery directly to the liver. The company's gene therapy program is currently focused on diseases of the liver and is in preclinical studies for the treatment of hemophilia and hepatitis. Schering-Plough is a research-based company engaged in the discovery, development, manufacturing and marketing of pharmaceutical and health care products worldwide. THE IMMUNE RESPONSE CORPORATION DISCLOSURE NOTICE: This news release contains forward-looking statements. Actual results could vary materially from those expected due to a variety of risk factors, including whether Schering-Plough will terminate the research and collaboration agreement, whether Schering-Plough will exercise its option to utilize Immune Response's delivery system for additional proprietary genes, whether any potential product will enter clinical development, the uncertainty of successful completion of clinical trials, and those risks set forth from time to time in The Immune Response Corporation's SEC filings, including but not limited to its report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1997. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly release the result of any revisions to these forward-looking statements which may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. SOURCE Schering-Plough Corporation; The Immune Response Corporation /NOTE TO EDITORS: The Immune Response Corporation news releases are available at no charge through the company's automated attendant 800 number at 800-491-0153. News releases are also available through PR Newswire's Company News On-Call fax service. For a menu of available news releases or to retrieve a specific release made by The Immune Response Corporation, please