Bankruptcy

SACRAMENTO - Vallejo, Calif., and Union Bank of California are not close to an agreement to restructure the city's debt, according to testimony a bank official gave in bankruptcy court late last week.

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service has agreed to close 26 examinations of roughly $800 million of bonds issued by several California school districts without finding the bonds taxable in exchange for $5 million from the lead banker on the controversial deals.

WASHINGTON - An energy nonprofit that a Nebraska judge this month barred from involvement in a $529 million bond-funded public power deal plans to appeal the decision.

BRADENTON, Fla. - The long-awaited Florida Supreme Court decision over the fate of tax increment financing in the state has temporarily blocked a legal decision in the Florida Marlins quest for a new, $515 million Major League Baseball stadium in Miami.

SACRAMENTO - Is Vallejo, Calif., broke or just unwilling to pay its bills?

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo became the second state regulator to file securities fraud charges against UBS Securities LLC and UBS Financial Services yesterday, arguing that UBS executives sold $21 million of their personal auction-rate securities while the firm aggressively marketed to retail ARS they knew had liquidity risk.

BRADENTON, Fla. - Negotiators for Jefferson County, Ala., are preparing to take a complex plan to Wall Street they hope will restructure the county's troubled $3.2 billion of outstanding sewer debt, most of which is in auction- and variable-rate securities.

BRADENTON, Fla. - Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and the Seminole Tribe of Florida have asked the state Supreme Court to reconsider its unanimous decision invalidating their gambling compact signed last November.

CHICAGO - Regulators from the Missouri secretary of state's office - joined by their colleagues from five other states - led a special inspection yesterday of Wachovia Corp.'s St. Louis-based securities division in an ongoing probe of its practices involving auction-rate securities following the $330 billion market's collapse.

The Securities and Exchange Commission claims that even if a federal court in Alabama finds the swaps Jefferson County sold earlier this decade are not "securities-based" and therefore outside the SEC's jurisdiction, the case against two former county officials and a lobbyist should still go forward because they allegedly violated anti-fraud regulations as well as Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board rules.

DALLAS - A computer technician became the fifth person to plead guilty to bribing an El Paso County commissioner this week, but more than a year after the first guilty plea, none of the five commissioners have been charged with any crime.

BRADENTON, Fla. - Jefferson County, Ala., now appears poised to add Citi as the third member of its new banking team to work on restructuring the county's troubled $3.2 billion sewer debt program, county officials said.

WASHINGTON - A federal appellate court ruled yesterday that i-Deal LLC's Parity electronic bidding system does not infringe on a 2001 patent obtained by MuniAuction Inc., rejecting a lower court's ruling that i-Deal pay MuniAuction $84.6 million.

CHICAGO - Wisconsin finance officials will spend the next several months "assessing" the full impact - projected to be $277 million - of a state Supreme Court decision last week overturning the sales tax on customized computer software, but no budget action is expected until after November when new revenue estimates are due.

BRADENTON, Fla. - Jefferson County, Ala., Commissioner Jim Carns late Friday said the government had a tentative plan to restructure its $3.2 billion sewer debt program that was "very near acceptance" by creditors when the commission last week fired its top negotiators.

BRADENTON, Fla. - Jefferson County, Ala., commissioners yesterday fired top negotiators working on the county's $3.2 billion sewer debt crisis, including Merrill Lynch & Co.

SACRAMENTO - Unions representing public employees in Vallejo, Calif., asked a judge to dismiss the city's Chapter 9 bankruptcy case Friday, arguing that Vallejo can afford to pay its bills.

Vallejo’s creditors face a deadline today to object to the San Francisco Bay-area city’s bankruptcy filing.

WASHINGTON - In the first state-level lawsuit against an investment firm over auction-rate securities, Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin filed securities fraud charges yesterday against UBS Securities LLC and UBS Financial Services for selling retail investors auction-rate paper as "liquid, safe, money-market" instruments even though the defendants knew it was not.

WASHINGTON - The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday sought to limit the influence of credit rating agencies and boost the role of analysts at investment firms, in the last of three sets of new rating agency rules the SEC has proposed in response to the subprime mortgage crisis.