Company news: SEC charges dozens in kickback schemes

Thirty-eight people, including former and current employees at major Wall Street firms such as Morgan Stanley and Oppenheimer, ran elaborate kickback and bribery schemes in the stock loan industry, federal authorities charged Thursday.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged the people in a series of fraudulent schemes involving phony finder fees and illegal kickbacks in the stock loan industry.

“The defendants in these cases devised a host of brazen schemes to enrich themselves and others at the expense of firms engaged in securities lending transactions,” said Linda C. Thomsen, who directs the SEC’s enforcement division.

The traders conspired with stock loan “finders” to skim profits on transactions, pocketing more than $12 million from 1998 until June 2006, the SEC said.

According to prosecutors, the firms borrowed securities for certain financial transactions. Stock-loan finders then helped the firms locate securities, prosecutors say.

“The United Auto Workers union says Delphi Corp.’s plan to pay up to $37.6 million in bonuses to top executives violates the terms of a labor settlement it reached with the company in June.

The union asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan to deny the auto-parts supplier’s request to implement the bonus plan, saying the proposal is in “no way” consistent with a provision in the labor settlement that requires Delphi to ensure its executives “sacrifice financially for the reorganization in a manner equivalent to the sacrifices made by the UAW-represented employees,” the union said.

“Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs has been subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to give a deposition in a stock-options backdating case against Apple’s former general counsel, a person familiar with the case told The Associated Press Thursday.

Jobs was subpoenaed as part of the discovery process in the SEC’s civil case against Nancy Heinen, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing.

The case, filed in April in the U.S. District Court of Northern California in San Jose, centers on two large options grants to Apple executives in 2001, including one to Jobs.

Jobs has not been charged by the SEC, and people familiar with the matter say the subpoenas do not indicate he is being targeted. He is being ordered to testify.