NYSE bars 3 ex-Merrill brokers over market timing
ju4 wa4i dia4n zo1ng he2 ba4o da4o :\n  By Jonathan Stempel\nBANGALORE, June 11 (Reuters) - The New York Stock Exchange\nhas permanently barred three former Merrill Lynch & Co <MER.N>\nbrokers accused by regulators of helping a hedge fund make tens\nof thousands of improper trades in mutual funds.\nThe bar follows the revocation by New Jersey regulators in\nMarch 2005 of the licenses of the brokers Christopher Chung,\nKevin Brunnock and William Savino, known as the CBS Group.\nRegulators accused the three of helping Millennium Partners\nLP, a $4 billion hedge fund, make more than 25,000 improper\n"market timing" trades from October 2000 to October 2003.\nThey said more than 19,000 of the trades came while the men\nworked at UBS AG's <UBSN.VX> UBS PaineWebber Inc unit, and the\nrest after they joined Merrill in January 2002. Millennium was\ntheir main client.\nMerrill fired the men in October 2003, and all have been\nout of the securities industry since December 2004, NYSE papers\nshow. None admitted wrongdoing in agreeing to the NYSE bar.\nWalter Timpone, a lawyer for Brunnock, said that for his\nclient, "it was simply the lesser of two evils for him to give\nup his license than to continue to fight this."\nSusan Necheles, the lawyer for Chung and Savino, said her\nclients "have long moved on with their lives. It was best to\nput this behind them."\nIn March 2005, Merrill agreed to pay $13.5 million to\nsettle related regulatory charges. The following January, UBS\nagreed to pay $54 million to settle charges it failed to\nsupervise several brokers, including the CBS Group.\nMarket timing involves rapid trading at the expense of\nordinary investors who lack such privileges. It is widely\nconsidered improper, though not necessarily illegal.\nThe mutual fund trading scandal first publicly surfaced in\nSeptember 2003. It resulted in well over $3 billion of fines,\nrestitution and other payouts by fund companies and\nindividuals.\n(Editing by John Wallace)\n((jon.stempel@thomsonreuters.com; 1 646 223 6317; Reuters\nMessaging: jon.stempel.reuters.com@reuters.net))\nKeywords: MERRILLLYNCH/NYSE BROKERS