By Patrick Clark 7/25/12 10:37am

Complaint box

bensam

Cardozo Law Student Benula Bensam Really Making a Summer of Rajat Gupta Case

Remember Benula Bensam? She’s the Benjamin M. Cardozo School of Law student who couldn’t land a summer internship, decided to spend her summer haunting the U.S. Southern District courthouse in downtown Manhattan. Which was going just fine, thank you, until Ms. Bensam started writing letters to Judge Jed Rakoff during the insider-trading trial of former McKinsey & Co. CEO Rajat Gupta.

That led to Ms. Bensam being summoned from the courtroom by U.S. Marshals,who instructed the eager law student that her correspondence (read the letters here) could be construed as an attempt to influence the case. At least, so go the press accounts of the incident. Read More

By Patrick Clark 6/14/12 7:44am

Morning Read

Moody’s Cuts Spain to Near-Junk Status as Europe Awaits Greek Elections: Wall Street Roundup

Whither Europe: “The Spanish government has very limited financial market access,” Moody’s said in a statement yesterday to announce the ratings company had cut Spain’s grade three levels to Baaa3, one level above junk. Spain’s borrowing cost on 10-year bonds hovered near 7 percent, up from 5.1 percent at the beginning of the year. Moody’s also cut Cyprus’s grade on fears of contagion following the results of the Greece’s June 17 elections.

The downgrade didn’t prevent Spain’s Amancio Ortega, founder of retail giant Inditex, from becoming Europe’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.

“We have no sense that European partners will follow this tactic of blackmail heard from some quarters and stop funding,” Alex Tsipras, leader of Greece’s anti-bailout Syriza party told Bloomberg Television. Rather, Mr. Tsipras thinks that Greece can break the terms of the European rescue agreement signed by a previous Greek government without being forced to exit the eurozone. Read More