
Ten major brokerage houses agreed to take steps to address conflicts of interest in their securities research work and pay $1.3 billion in penalties to settle multistate litigation. The penalties were also announced later by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after it had approved the settlements; for Merrill Lynch at: . That entry shows a total of $200 million for Merrill, which includes a separate $100 million that company had reached with New York State in May 2002. For more info visit https://web.archive.org/web/20101116004505/http://www.ag.ny.gov/media_center/2002/may/may21a_02.html