Business 8th Edition by Marianne Jennings

تمرين 19

Frank Quattrone was head of the technology division of Credit Suisse First Boston Corporation (CSFB), earning about $120 million per year. He managed 400 technology investment bankers from the firm's Palo Alto, California, office. Quattrone and members of the Tech Group did the underwriting of the Tech Group's initial public offerings (IPOs).
Following the market bubble burst in 2000, the tech firms and their investment banking firms became a target for shareholder suits as well as government prosecution. In response to a question Mr. Quattrone raised to legal counsel about the investigation, legal counsel responded,
[T]hey are not formally accusing us or the [subpoenaed] individuals yet, but they are investigating because they think something bad happened. They are completely wrong but merely being investigated and having something leak could be quite harmful, so the idea is to get them to back off their inquiry, we educate them as to the entire IPO process, inclusding [sic] the allovcation [sic] issues and criteria, and urge them to back off.
Other communications occurred between the time of this November e-mail and the holidays. Just before Christmas, Quattrone received an e-mail from his supervisor that he added an endorsement to and then forwarded along to all of his employees;
having been a key witness in a securities litigation case in south texas (miniscribe) i strongly advise you to follow these procedures.
The e-mail from his boss follows.
With the recent tumble in stock prices, and many deals now trading below issue price, the securities litigation bar is expected to [sic] an all out assault on broken tech IPOs.
In the spirit of the end of the year (and the slow down in corporate finance work), we want to remindl ] you of the CSFB document retention policy. [The policy was reproduced here.]
Note that if a lawsuit is instituted, our normal document retention policy is suspended and any cleaning of files is prohibited under the CSFB guidelines (since it constitutes the destruction of evidence). We strongly suggest that before you leave for the holidays, you should catch up on file cleanup.
Early in 2001, the CSFB faced charges from several agencies on the allocation issue as well as on other alleged violations. Mr. Quattrone was then charged with obstruction of justice because e-mails were removed from the system following the direction given in this e-mail. Was this obstruction of justice? [ U.S. v Quattrone, 441 R3d 153,174 (2d Cir.2006)]