Sense on Cents

How can auction-rate securities investors receive liquidity from the remaining $165 BILLION in frozen ARS securities?

Let’s review a recently announced settlement that Pinnacle Airlines negotiated with Citigroup. Bloomberg reported this morning, Pinnacle Airlines Flight From Auction Rate Costs $16 Million. Pinnacle is under severe cash constraints with a $109 million note maturing in early 2010. Bloomberg provides details how Pinnacle received liquidity along with a call option to repurchase the ARS from Citigroup at the same price it is selling the ARS. What does it all mean? Bloomberg highlights:

Pinnacle received $112 million from Citigroup Global Markets Inc. for its $128 million auction-rate portfolio, according to Williams. The $16 million loss amounted to a 12.5 percent discount. The deal allows Pinnacle to buy the securities back at the same discount anytime during the next three years, Williams said.

“We are pleased to have been able to provide a liquidity solution to our client,” said an e-mailed statement from Danielle Romero-Apsilos, a spokeswoman for Citigroup, which sold Pinnacle the auction-rate securities.

Sense on Cents asks the following questions:

1. Would Citigroup offer this settlement to every other investor to which it sold ARS?

2. What do ARS investors who are regular readers of Sense on Cents think of this settlement?

3. Does this settlement preclude investors from participating in a larger settlement that may include penalties?

4. Why shouldn’t other banks, brokers, and money managers who sold and marketed ARS in a fraudulent fashion be mandated by the courts to provide a temporary liquidity facility similar to this? If these entities, which engaged in the fraud, maintain they can not ‘afford’ this settlement, isn’t that a de facto admission of guilt and an ongoing perpetuation of the fraud?

When will ALL investors in auction-rate securities receive an expedited settlement which leads to full and total restitution? The feet dragging on behalf of issuers, banks, regulators, and the courts is a gross injustice of massive proportions.

Perhaps the claim embedded in the Amerivet Securities complaint against FINRA can help to unlock the ARS mess and expose the incestuous relationship between the financial self-regulator and Wall Street. At that point, perhaps ARS investors may move closer to receiving their funds and some justice from this fraud.

LD

This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 12:34 PM and is filed under ARPS, ARS, Auction Rate Securities scandal, Citigroup, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.