Ten major brokerage houses agreed to take steps to address conflicts of interest in their securities research work and pay $1.3 billion in penalties to settle multistate litigation. The penalties were also announced later by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after it had approved the settlements; for Bear Stearns at: For more info visit https://web.archive.org/web/20100214063651/http://www.ag.ny.gov/media_center/2002/dec/dec20b_02.html