Tech IPO star charged with 'spinning' By Chris O'Brien Mercury News
Regulators charged Silicon Valley investment banker Frank Quattrone on Thursday with violating a series of securities rules for the aggressive strategies he pushed to land clients for his firm, Credit Suisse First Boston.
After years of being at the center of one of the valley's most influential networks of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and executives, Quattrone now faces the prospect of being permanently barred from the securities industry.
In a civil complaint, the National Association of Securities Dealers alleged that Quattrone improperly enticed clients by offering them the opportunity to buy shares in potentially lucrative IPOs and by promising that analysts who were supposed to be independent would provide favorable stock ratings.
Along the way, Quattrone made hundreds of millions of dollars and was given what the NASD claims was the power to run his technology banking group as a ``firm-within-a-firm.'' The result was a strategy that the NASD said enriched hundreds of insiders at companies while typical investors with less access and less information suffered large losses.
Quattrone also was charged with failing to cooperate with part of the NASD investigation related to possible destruction of documents. That latest twist prompted Quattrone to resign from Credit Suisse earlier this week
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