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March 03, 2006 at 07:32 PM
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says a financial services giant can continue to have easy access to the U.S. capital markets.
Mary Kosterlitz, an official in the SEC’s corporate finance division, has issued a determination letter permitting MetLife Inc., New York, to continue to operate as a “well-known seasoned issuer” of securities, or “WKSIs.”
The determination means that MetLife will be able to take advantage of a new, streamlined SEC financial document filing process.
The process, which took effect Dec. 1, 2005, permits large, publicly traded companies to file registration statements that take effect immediately, without SEC review, and to pay registration fees as they go along. The changes may mean that the WKSIs can sell stocks and bonds more quickly than other companies can.
The new WKSI rules prohibit a company that has recently been the subject of a judicial or administrative decree or order in connection with violations of federal securities fraud laws from being a WKSI. But the WKSI qualification rules apply to settlements only if the settlement decree or order was issued on or after Dec. 1, 2005.
New England Securities Corp., a MetLife unit, agreed in February to pay $2.6 million in restitution in connection with allegations that it failed to rebalance assets properly for customers who had purchased asset rebalancing services.
