<http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2005/02/14/ap1826161.html> Forbes Associated Press Update 1: J.P. Morgan Paying $2.1M in Settlement 02.14.2005, 06:02 PM The securities arm of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. has agreed to pay $2.1 million to settle regulators' charges that it failed to preserve e-mails sought by the authorities in their 2002-2003 investigation of alleged conflicts of interest at Wall Street investment houses. J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. is paying $700,000 in civil fines in each of three separate settlements with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Securities Dealers, which is the brokerage industry's self-policing organization. The investment firm neither admitted nor denied the allegations of violating record-keeping rules. J.P. Morgan spokesmen declined comment. J.P. Morgan was among ten of Wall Street's biggest firms that paid a total $1.4 billion and adopted reforms as a result of the investigation, in which regulators found that they issued biased ratings on stocks to lure investment-banking business. J.P. Morgan's share of the industrywide settlement, reached in April 2003, was $80 million. In the course of the investigation, begun in April 2002, J.P. Morgan told the regulators that all the relevant e-mails had been provided, the SEC said. In fact, the agency, said, the firm's systems and procedures for retaining e-mails "were inadequate to ensure that all electronic communications relating to (its) business were preserved for three years and for the first two years in an easily accessible place" as required by the rules. Companies' retention of internal documents took on new importance after the Enron scandal, in which key papers were shredded, and the landmark anti-fraud law enacted in July 2002 created new penalties for document destruction. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'