The Australian investment bank Macquarie Capital Group Ltd. appears to have made peace with U.S. regulators over its underwriting of a $108 million stock offering for Puda Coal Inc., a Chinese company that went bust and lost its U.S. listing four years ago amid an accounting fraud scandal. But Macquarie’s fight against its former lawyers at Morrison & Foerster related to the Puda Coal debacle is just heating up.
Macquarie agreed in March to pay $15 million to resolve its potential liability in connection with Puda’s 2010 secondary public offering, which came at a time when the company had virtually no assets. In a “no-action” letter on Monday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission explained that it wouldn’t banish Macquarie Capital (USA) Inc. from the private securities industry. Macquarie and its lawyers, led by Sidley Austin’s Thomas Kim, had urged the SEC to allow the company to continue taking part in securities transactions.
