Tutor Perini Corp. v. Banc of America Securities LLC

120 F. Supp. 3d 22, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106291, 2015 WL 4762765
CourtDistrict Court, D. Massachusetts
DecidedAugust 12, 2015
DocketCivil Action No. 11-10895-NMG
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 120 F. Supp. 3d 22 (Tutor Perini Corp. v. Banc of America Securities LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Massachusetts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Tutor Perini Corp. v. Banc of America Securities LLC, 120 F. Supp. 3d 22, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106291, 2015 WL 4762765 (D. Mass. 2015).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM & ORDER

Nathaniel M. Gorton United States District Judge

This case arises out of unsuccessful investments made by defendant Banc of America Securities LLC (“BAS”), allegedly with the knowledge and acquiescence of co-defendant Bank of America, N.A. (“BANA”), on behalf of plaintiff Tutor Per-irii Corporation (“Tutor Perini”) in a kind of security known as auction rate securities (“ARS”).

Pending before the Court are defendants’ motion for summary judgment and plaintiffs motion for partial summary judgment. For the reasons that follow, defendants’ motion will be allowed and plaintiffs motion will be denied.

I. Background

A. The parties

Tutor Perini is a building construction company incorporated in Massachusetts [25]*25and headquartered in California. It opened a non-diseretionary, investment-brokerage account with defendant BAS in 2004. Between May, 2007 and February, 2008, plaintiff was a Qualified Institutional Buyer under the Securities Act of 1933 because it owned or invested at least $100 million on a discretionary basis.

Defendant BANA is a bank registered in Delaware with a principal place of business in North. Carolina. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank of America Corporation, a major global banking institution.

Defendant BAS, now known as Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Incorporated, is also a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank of America Corporation and was, at all relevant'times, an investment banking company registered as a broker-dealer with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

B. Auction rate securities

' ARS are a form of bond that have long-term maturity periods of up to 40 years. They pay interest at rates that are reset at regular intervals of, typically, 7,' 28 or 35 days. That enables issuers to access long-term financing at short-term rates.

Interest rates for ARS are set by a “Dutch auction,” wherein prospective purchasers submit bids through their broker-dealer to an. auction agent, Each bid consists of the par value of the securities that the buyer wishes to purchase and the minimum interest rate that the buyer is wiljing to accept. Successively higher bids are then accepted until all the ARS for sale are covered. The interest rate of the highest bid necessary to. cover all of the - sell orders is known as the clearing rate.

Each ARS is subject to a cap on the' highest possible clearing rate, also known as a maximum rate, which is either a fixed number or determined by a formula based upon indices such as the .London Interbank Offered Rate. (“LIBOR”). The ARS at issue in this case are student loan ARS (“SLARS”) which did not have fixed maximum rates but rather maximum rates determined by a formula.

An auction is considered successful if there are ¡sufficient bids below the maximum rate so as to allow for the sale of all of the outstanding securities. In contrast, a failed auction occurs when the number of bids below the maximum rate cannot guarantee the sale of all of the securities offered for sale. In such an event, holders of ARS who have offered to sell their shares must continue to hold those securities until the, next successful auction.

Authorized broker-dealers have, however, the discretion to place “support bids,” which are bids to purchase ARS for their own accounts to prevent auctions from failing. When auctions fail, holders of ARS continue to collect interest at the maximum rate.

C. Plaintiffs entry into the ARS market and Bi^S’s disclosures

In 2004, Tutor Perini opened a non-discretionary BAS investment-brokerage account. Plaintiffs Treasurer .Susan Mel-lace (“Ms. Mellace”) made daily investment decisions .under the oversight of its President Robert Band and CFO Kenneth Burk.. Lois McGrath (“Ms. McGrath”) was the BAS account representative assigned to plaintiffs account.

. In May, 2006, BAS published general ARS disclosures on its public website which 1) warned that auctions could fail, 2) explained that ¡RAS “routinely” bids in. auctions to,prevent auction failures even though it is not obligated to do so and “[i]nvestors. should not assume , that BAS will place a.bid...or that Failed Auctions... will not occur” and 3) described [26]*26the maximum-rate feature resulting from an auction failure.

Plaintiff purchased its first SLARS in September, 2007 after which Ms. Mellace received 1) an email attaching “Important Auction Rate Securities Disclosures,” 2) a trade confirmation noting that the SLARS have a 2036 maturity date and 3) a spreadsheet reflecting the specific maximum-rate formulas for various SLARS.

In December and January, 2007, after liquidating more than $100 million of ARS, plaintiff purchased the eight SLARS at issue in this case (“the eight SLARS”). The collateral underlying six of them was backed by the federal government while the other two were insured by Ambac, a monoline bond insurer (“Ambac-Wrapped SLARS”). The prospectuses of the eight SLARS warned that auction failures are especially likely

if an issuer’s credit were to deteriorate, a market disruption were to occur or if, for any reason, the broker-dealers were unable or unwilling to bid.

D. Collapse of the ARS market

In the fall of 2007, interest rates for ARS increased due to reduced investor demand. At the same time, major indices upon which the maximum rates were based for the ARS at issue were trending downward. Because auction failure was more likely when maximum rates fell below market rates, many issuers implemented waivers to raise temporarily the maximum rates on their ARS. BAS and other broker-dealers also began placing support bids with increasing frequency.

In early 2008, Ms. McGrath alerted plaintiff to adverse Ambac-related news, such as the downgrade of Ambac’s credit rating from AAA to AA and a report that the company had a likelihood of going bankrupt. Tutor Perini nevertheless placed hold orders for the Ambac-Wrapped SLARS on January 17 and February 5, 2008.

On February 6, 2008, certain executives at BAS prepared a memorandum seeking permission from management to increase ARS inventory levels in order to relieve some balance sheet pressure. BAS management assented to that request.

Between February 7 and February 12, 2008, however, seven prominent broker-dealers decided to withhold supporting bids in all SLARS auctions and allowed them to fail. On February 13, 2008, BAS followed suit and withdrew its support for SLARS as well.

At the time of the market collapse, Tutor Perini held in its account at BAS ARS with a face value of nearly $200 million. During the succeeding four years, plaintiff struggled to liquidate more than one half of its ARS portfolio at par value. It subsequently resorted to selling the eight SLARS on the secondary market for an average of 95% of par value for the six backed by the federal government and 37% of par value for the two Ambac-Wrapped SLARS.

E. Alleged misconduct by BAS

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120 F. Supp. 3d 22, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106291, 2015 WL 4762765, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/tutor-perini-corp-v-banc-of-america-securities-llc-mad-2015.