trade on
NYSE is ‘freaking out’ looking for leakers after Post exposé because the exchange does not have cuomo mojo. Thanks for the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy, if you give me a mailing address.
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
2150 Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
The New York Stock Exchange scrambled to contain the fallout from The Post’s exclusive Friday report that revealed a special side deal allowing Morgan Stanley to trade large blocks of stock after the closing bell.
Exchange officials were on a witch hunt for leakers who spilled the beans on how a broker was able to make trades on the Big Board even after the markets were closed, a source told The Post.
“NYSE is freaking out,” said one source. “They are going crazy looking for who told.”
The side deal, which prevented Morgan Stanley from either risking a trade in an after-hours auction with less price discovery or waiting until Monday morning facing the uncertainty of holding the trade over the G-20 meeting weekend.
The trades prompted accusations of unfairness from Wall Street insiders, who said smaller brokers wouldn’t have gotten such treatment.
“If this has occurred recurrently, it is a BIG story because it suggests systematic favoritism,” said John C. Coffee Jr., a Columbia law school professor and former member of NYSE’s legal advisory board.
He added that the side deal with Morgan Stanley could be a “misdemeanor level in terms of securities violations” in isolation.
The NYSE’s internal regulators are looking into the incident, according to a source briefed on the investigation.
It’s unclear if federal regulators have started to probe the incident. Kristen Kaus, an NYSE spokeswoman, didn’t return a call seeking comment.
The incident, which occurred on Nov. 30, has brought up bad memories for Wall Street over recent allegedly unfair treatment by exchanges.
Earlier this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined NYSE $14 million for five separate investigations — including one around a secret electronic order that gave some investors data about what other traders were doing.
Investors said that exchanges bend or break rules to keep their largest clients happy — because they know that competition is fierce.
“If this exchange doesn’t do it, the exchange down the block will do it,” said Joe Saluzzi, co-founder and co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading.
“Are there other special deals? Based on history, I’d say so,” he added.
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