State Street Corp. (NYSE: STT) said today that its State Street Bank & Trust Co. unit received a Wells Notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The notice, which indicates that civil charges may be brought against the company, relates to disclosures and management of certain fixed-income strategies during 2007 and previous periods.

Some investors have accused State Street of misleading them about the risks involved in mortgage-related investments. A legal reserve fund worth $625 million was established in 2007 to cover investor claims, and $418 million has already been paid out. The firm says it is currently cooperating with the SEC, as well as state and other regulators.

Pequot Capital Management is coming to an end, closing the book on two decades of hedge fund history. Arthur Samberg, at one point the biggest hedge fund manager in the world, is closing the company as a result of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) insider trading investigation.

At its peak in 2001, Pequot had $15 million in assets under management. By November 2008, it was only $4.3 billion ... and $3.47 billion as of May 15, 2009, according to a regulatory filing.

The shares of Regions Financial Corporation (NYSE: RF) surged this afternoon after the regional bank said it expects to report a first-quarter profit. In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Chairman and CEO Dowd Ritter attributed the unexpectedly profitable quarter to recent strength in new account openings and customer deposit growth.

If Wall Street seems shocked by the news, it's because analysts were predicting Regions to swallow a quarterly loss of about $290 million, or 42 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters. Plus, with nearly 5% of the equity's float sold short, it seems that many investors were also betting on the bank to report gloomy earnings.

According to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, last year was horrible for IPOs. The number of deals plunged 80.7%, with the overall amount raised down 54.9%. In all, there were 57 IPOs and total proceeds came to $29.4 billion. Interesting enough, the Visa (NYSE: V) IPO accounted for $17.9 billion (it was the largest IPO in U.S. history).

Basically, the deal activity has been the slowest since the 1970s. In fact, there was only one public offering in Q1 of this year.

Unfortunately, the malaise could continue. After all, there are only a handful of filings in registration. Plus, it can easily take half a year to get an IPO through the SEC process.

The shares of Tiffany & Co. (NYSE: TIF) are taking a beating today, down nearly 3% at last check. Traders are reacting to news that Trian Fund Management L.P., under the helm of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, reduced its stake in TIF from 8.5% to 6.9%.

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Trian sold 2.25 million shares on Wednesday and Thursday at prices ranging from $22.58 to $22.61 per share. Now, the fund beneficially owns 8.49 million shares of TIF.

Another day, another item about excessive compensation. While American International Group (NYSE: AIG) pays out a ton of money to its own employees, the Hershey (NYSE: HSY) board has seen fit to bestow a rich compensation package to CEO David J. West.

Oh well, what can you do, I suppose. I always hate reading these reports. They always get under my skin. If you're a shareholder of Hershey, you're not doing that great right now. The stock will probably do well over the long term, but in the meantime, your shares are down over the last several years.

While rival automaker General Motors Corporation (NYSE: GM) was monopolizing headlines this morning with its quarterly earnings report, Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) quietly slashed its forecast for 2009 auto sales. However, unlike GM, Ford says it has "no substantial doubt" about its ability to continue as a going concern.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ford predicted that total U.S. car and truck sales could tumble to 10.5 million in 2009. The new figure represents a drop of 1 million vehicles from Ford's previous estimate. On the plus side, the automaker thinks sales could arrive as high as 12.5 million vehicles if demand begins to recover in the second half of the year.

I read a very interesting cover story article in BusinessWeek about Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM). I am usually skeptical of cover story articles, but they are onto something with this story (ok, that is maybe because I agree with them).

As I've said in the past, Exxon is a classic religion stock, meaning investors own it because it has done so well in the past and because it is the best-managed oil company. Exxon is not analyzed; it is just owned -- bought or inherited and never sold. Well, neither reason is enough to just blindly own a stock which is what happens when one becomes a religion stock.

Many were surprised when they heard that Home Depot was closing all 34 of its Expo Home Design Centers, but if you are a regular reader of its financial reports, you certainly would have seen signs of major financial stress. Home Depot (NYSE: HD) first discussed a "store rationalization plan" in its first quarter of 2008 report. At that point, it closed 15 stores and removed about 50 stores from the future growth pipeline.

In the third quarter report (December 2008), Home Depot said, "We recognized $564 million in total pretax charges for the first nine months of fiscal 2008 related to the store rationalization plan, including $3 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2008." Clearly, the store rationalization plan was not complete and more cuts were to come.

Harry Markopolos, the securities industry executive who almost a decade ago tried to alert the Securities and Exchange Commission about the Ponzi scheme allegedly perpetrated by Bernard Madoff, testified before Congress today. Mr. Markopolos testified how his evidence was repeatedly rejected by senior SEC officials who neither seemed to understand nor to care about the case that he presented. And other parts of his testimony were better than any spy thriller in the movies today.

This post was written by anonymous Minyanville contributor Minyan Peter.

Representative Barney Frank is reported to be recommending that $50 billion of TARP money be used to "alter" loans.

While the route may be circuitous and positioned as great for Joe Q. Public, I think it is important to recognize that the ultimate beneficiary is the banks.

Like the rumored tax carry-back benefit rumored on Monday, Representative Frank's proposal represents yet another potentially "non-dilutive" injection of additional government capital into the banks.

Given the United States' position as the global "capitalist" nation - and its symbolic importance in attracting global "entrepreneurial" capital, I expect that Congress will go through enormous (albeit often convoluted) steps to avoid the overt nationalization of the banking system that we are seeing in Germany and the UK.

This doesn't mean we won't see more marienette shows like yesterday's press conference with Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) and the Senate, but given the public outrage to the government's overt bailout of the banks, going forward (if at all possible) I expect the means used will be far less obvious to the taxpayer.

Yesterday, word came out that Madoff took in a new investor for $10 million just six days before he revealed his fund had failed.

The SEC may have had limited resources to monitor the thousands of hedge funds operating in the U.S. It may not have had the manpower to look at every trade on every set of books to see if it was legal. But, it could have set up a system so that the funds had to show a government examiner the total value of a firm's portfolio.

With portfolio size data, there could have been simple rule. A fund would have to keep 10% or 20% of its capital in liquid financial instruments or cash in the event of large redemptions. If the market moved in a way that cut the fund's total value, it would at least have some "dry powder" to cover customer demands.

It is easy to say this would not have worked. Redemptions at some funds topped 20% of total assets. Funds like Madoff's could have committed fraud by showing the SEC fake books. But most managers would not have risked violating federal law.

Would a simple set of rules on redemptions have stopped the failure of some funds and the inability of other funds to return money? It may not have worked for all funds, but even if it made a few keep a buffer large enough to save some investor fortunes, it would have been worth the effort.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.