Thursday, March 24, 2011

SEC clears shareholder vote for foreclosure reviews at major banks

The Securities and Exchange Commission upheld a New York City pension funds request that big bank shareholders will get to vote on whether or not those vested financial institutions conduct foreclosure reviews.


Shareholders of Bank of America (BAC: 13.65 -1.66%), Citigroup (C: 4.40 -0.45%) and Wells Fargo (WFC: 31.45 -0.19%) will vote at annual meetings this spring, because of the ruling. Wells did not contend the proposal at the SEC. In January, The New York City Comptroller John Liu asked the boards of the banks and JPMorgan Chase (JPM: 45.60 +0.29%) to conduct the reviews to catch potential problems related to robo-signing and other documentation issues.

Because a similar group of shareholders requested Chase conduct reviews, the SEC allowed the bank to remove the pension funds request from its annual meeting agenda.

After these issues surfaced in the third quarter of 2010, major banks and servicers began internal reviews and began refiling affidavits. But the SEC rejected the banks' arguments that the problems were "technical glitches."

Read on.

No comments: