Morgan Stanley won approval of a $4.8 million accord with the U.S. over claims it helped manipulate electricity prices, in what the Justice Department called its first effort to get disgorgement from a financial firm that used derivatives to aid anticompetitive behavior, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. In accepting the agreement, U.S. District Judge William Pauley turned aside complaints from a not-for-profit organization that Morgan Stanley did not admit wrongdoing. Pauley, citing the Justice Department, said that the case marks the first time the government filed an antitrust suit against a financial firm involving derivative agreements. Judge Pauley rejected objections by AARP, a not-for-profit that advocates for people 50 and older, and from New York's Public Service Commission. Critics of the settlement sought an admission of wrongdoing by Morgan Stanley and said the New York-based firm should have been required to pay the full $21.6 million it earned to settle claims it aided efforts by Brooklyn, N.Y.-based KeySpan Corp. to manipulate electricity prices.
