Morgan Stanley faces $850m payout (BBC News)

(It amazing how $850 Billion doesn't seem like that much anymore, compared to the War spending)

Wednesday, 18 May, 2005, 23:27 GMT 00:27 UK

Morgan Stanley faces $850m payout

Morgan Stanley will have to pay $850m (£462m) in damages to Revlon boss Ron Perelman after being found guilty of conspiring to defraud the financier.

A Florida court concluded that the US investment bank had acted improperly in relation to a 1998 deal in which Mr Perelman sold Coleman Inc. for $1.5bn. Sunbeam, which bought Coleman, filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after a huge accounting fraud was uncovered. Morgan Stanley, which advised Sunbeam, said it would appeal the verdict.

Appeal

The bank is facing a total pay-out of $1.45bn, having previously been ordered to pay $604m in compensation to Mr Perelman, who is chairman of cosmetics giant Revlon. Mr Perelman, who sought $1.8bn in punitive damages, had argued that Morgan Stanley had played a vital role as Sunbeam's advisors in attracting him to the company. The financier acquired more than 14 million shares in Sunbeam as a result of the deal, shares which subsequently became worthless once the scale of the fraud at Sunbeam emerged.

Lawyers for Morgan Stanley argued that Mr Perelman - who is married to the actress Ellen Barkin - had benefited financially from the Coleman deal, by receiving $160m in cash as well Sunbeam shares. They claimed that the $604m award was adequate compensation. Morgan Stanley said it had also been a victim of the Sunbeam fraud, losing $300m.

"This court has done a great injustice to the employees and shareholders of Morgan Stanley," its chief executive Philip Purcell said in a statement responding to the verdict. "We will fight to have this decision overturned and we fully expect to prevail."

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I read that on either the Bloomberg or AP wire.