If you are facing a bankruptcy proceeding, you can rest a little easier now that the Supreme Court has ruled your individual retirement accounts (IRAs) can't be seized.The court's unanimous decision puts IRAs on the list with Social Security benefits, 401(k)s and pension as assets that may not be touched by creditors in a bankruptcy case.However, President Bush has indicated his support for a bill working its way through Congress that would make it difficult for many people to declare bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported.With more than 1.6 million people filing for bankruptcy

The FBI has started an investigation into irregular accounting practices at Delphi, the world's largest auto parts supplier.Delphi, based in Troy, Mich., announced last week that it had incorrectly accounted for $237 million in cash payments made in 2000 to General Motors, its former parent company. The errors, Delphi said, resulted in overstatement of pretax income by about $61 million in 2001, the Detroit News reported.The probe stems from an investigation launched by the Securities and Exchange Commission in August.

On Friday, March 24, 2005, a class action lawsuit was filed against Fannie Mae in the District of Columbia federal court. Attorneys from the Law Office of Frank J. Johnson filed the complaint on behalf of traders in Fannie Mae stock options against the mortgage giant.The complaint alleges Fannie Mae and its top executives misrepresented or failed to disclose the troubled company’s true financial condition in public statements between April, 2001 and September, 2004.

A partner who left his Boston accounting firm to join another is now suing his former partners, saying they wrongly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars.Scott Kanter, formerly of Kanter Troy Orleans & Wexler LLP, left the firm last August and, along with 10 others, joined Brown & Brown LLP, also based in Boston. Two months later, his former partners merged with competitor DiCicco, Gulman & Co., the Boston Business Journal reported.Kanter, in a complaint filed March 10, says that he notified his partners on Aug.

On Friday, March 18, 2005, regulators at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) voted 5-0 to approve a ruling that would force U.S.

In a settlement that has sent shock waves through corporate boardrooms, 11 former WorldCom Inc. board members have agreed to pay $20.2 million of their own money to settle a lawsuit tied to the company's $11 billion accounting fraud.The Wall Street Journal reported that the settlement, once sidelined by a legal technicality, was reached on Friday.It is highly unusual for board members to have to tap into their own resources to pay settlements such as this, and the WorldCom settlement, first announced in January, shocked many corporate boards.

Upon viewing the disturbing results of a recent U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce national survey of women business owners which found a remarkable 62 percent unable to access capital they need to be competitive -- despite their preparedness and available collateral --, the leaders of the USWCC decided to take dramatic action.To significantly increase access to capital for the more than 10 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., the USWCC announced a groundbreaking partnership with Newtek Small Business Finance.

In a closing chapter in what has become the nation's largest accounting fraud, former WorldCom chief executive Bernard Ebbers was found guilty today on all counts, the Wall Street Journal reported.The verdicts were a major victory for Justice Department prosecutors who spent nearly three years investigating the $11 billion fraud that pushed the company into bankruptcy and decimated a stock that was once worth $100 billion. The company, now known as MCI, emerged from bankruptcy in 2004 and is courting acquisition offers from Verizon Communications Inc.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Zvi Fuks and Sabina Ben-Yehuda, two friends of the former CEO of ImClone Systems Inc., Samuel Waksal, with insider trading in ImClone securities in December 2001. The Commission charged that Ben-Yehuda and Fuks sold ImClone stock after receiving an illegal tip from Waksal just before the FDA denied approval of ImClone's cancer treatment drug.Fuks is the Chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York, and in December 2001 was a member of the ImClone Scientific Advisory Board.