Thursday, March 3, 2011

JPMorgan (JPM), Citigroup (C), UBS (UBS) Fighting Madoff Trustee Over Disclosure

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), sued for $6.4 billion by the trustee for Bernard L. Madoff’s firm, said the trustee has no right to “abrogate” a yearlong agreement to protect trade secrets by revising his rules for handling confidential information.

The trustee, Irving H. Picard, seeking $100 billion for investors in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme in lawsuits, has asked a judge for more freedom to use information demanded for his investigations. JPMorgan’s objection is one of at least eight filed yesterday by banks and investment managers including UBS AG (NYSE:UBS), Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) and HSBC Holdings Plc. (NYSE:HSB)

JPMorgan, based in New York, said it gave Picard documents 22 times in the past 15 months, relying on his agreement not to share the information with competitors or other parties.

“The proposed order would permit the trustee to disclose JPMorgan’s confidential and proprietary information to any party or its agent in any one of the more than one thousand adversary proceedings that have been commenced by the trustee,” the second-biggest U.S. bank said in a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. “The trustee is not entitled to abrogate confidentiality arrangements that have been relied upon by JPMorgan and other parties.”





Full Story

No comments: