U.S. securities regulators plan to penalize Morgan Stanley 6.1 million U.S. dollars for allegedly overcharging customers on 59 million dollars in bond sales, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. (File Photo)

    WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. securities regulators plan to penalize Morgan Stanley 6.1 million U.S. dollars for allegedly overcharging customers on 59 million dollars in bond sales, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

    Morgan Stanley allegedly overcharged customers of its retail brokerage unit in more than 2,800 separate bond sales from the firm's own inventory, the report quoted people familiar with the case as saying.

    The securities regulators plan to fine the blue-chip securities firm 1.5 million dollars and order 4.6 million dollars in restitution to customers who paid markups as high as 18 percent in 2001 for surplus notes issued by Kemper Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Co., according to the report.

    The case shows how difficult it can be for individual investors to know what price they should be paying for individual bonds -- unlike stocks or mutual funds whose current market prices are widely disseminated, said the report.

Morgan Stanley settles fraud charges with SEC

    WASHINGTON, May 9 (Xinhua) -- Morgan Stanley & Company Inc. on Wednesday agreed to pay nearly 8 million dollars to settle fraud charges for its failure to provide best execution to certain retail orders for over-the-counter (OTC) securities.

    From Oct. 2001, through Dec. 2004, Morgan Stanley's automated trading system failed to provide best execution to more than 1.2 million executions valued at approximately 8 billion dollars, said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in announcing its settlement with the investment bank.