UBS joins the buy-back brigade

To settle U.S. regulatory claims, UBS has agreed to buy back $19 billion of auction-rate securities and pay $150 million in fines. This comes a day after Citigroup’s $7.5 billion in buy backs and Merrill Lynch’s $12 billion on Thursday night. UBS will reach the settlement with New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a group of state regulators, according to Bloomberg. Bloomberg also had a nice quote about the instutions’ buy-back rush:

“There is no way for the institutions to win this fight, and they know that,” Thomas Ajamie, a securities lawyer in Houston, who represents investors and won a $429 million arbitration award against Paine Webber Group in 2001.