Amid increasing pressure from many fronts to resign, New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso told the Board Wednesday night that he is calling it quits.Richard Grasso's compensation package was severely criticized after it was recently made public as part of an effort to add transparency to the activities of the New York Stock Exchange.

With executive pay packages under increased scrutiny after recent scandals, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking into the compensation of Richard A. Grasso, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.The NYSE claims it will save about $3.5 million this year by paying out a lump sum of $140 million to Grasso in the form of accrued savings and incentives.

Scammers have a new way of grabbing your identity - and some cold hard cash too. Realistic-looking fake advertisements for financial institutions offering loans are cropping up in newspapers. Victims are finding they are getting more - and less - than they bargained for when they sign up for these loans.The way the scam works is that an advertisement appears in a print publication bearing the actual logo of a recognized financial institution. The contact information, however, is bogus and typically leads to prepaid cell phone numbers.

Morgan Stanley is under investigation by Massachusetts and New York for allegedly pushing its in-house mutual funds and not disclosing to investors that brokers made better commissions when they sold the house funds.The practice of pushing house funds is not illegal, but full disclosure to investors about commissions is required. Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin filed a complaint on Monday, and long with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, plans to look into whether other investment firms improperly tied bonuses and commissions to sales of house funds.

Just two weeks after a shake up at Freddie Mac led to the ouster of three executives in the nation’s No. 2 mortgage company, the No. 1 company, Fannie Mae, now finds itself under the microscope.The New York Times is reporting that industry insiders are asking about profits reported by Fannie Mae. They claim that Fannie Mae’s letter-of-the-law reporting may have shielded substantial losses last year, a statement Fannie Mae hotly contests.

While investors and creditors, burned in some of history’s most dramatic corporate meltdowns, wait to hear if they will ever see a dime of the money they are owed, one thing is certain — many of the legal and accounting firms investigating what went wrong in the first place are profiting handsomely from the situation.Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and Conseco all declared bankruptcy in the last two years, wiping out shareholders, employees and pensioners in the process.

Provided by CCH, Inc.The recent passage of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA) (P.L. 108-27) has left people wondering how effective these new tax cuts will be in stimulating the economy. According to various industry representatives, it appears that the stimulative effect of JGTRRA can be measured on two fronts: real and perceived, both of which are vital to their respective recoveries.

Bankruptcy filings for the year ended March 31, 2003, rose 7.1 percent to reach record levels, according to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts last week. As reported in February, the last three months of 2002 saw a slight dip in filings to 395,129 but that trend reversed itself during the first quarter of 2003 when bankruptcy filings increased to 412,968.

On the face of it, corporate sponsorship of a prestigious golf event is a smart marketing move as it’s a cost-effective way to get a company’s name out in the media. But tough economic times are causing companies to pull the plug on sponsorships, leaving event organizers scrambling to find last-minute replacements.The PGA Tour has had to find new sponsors for 18 of its 48 events this year. One of the most stable sponsors of golf tournaments has been the accounting profession.