单项选择题The California Public Employees" Retirement System (CalPERS) has positioned itself as the premier champion of investor rights, regularly singling out bad managers at some of the nation"s largest companies in its annual corporate-governance focus lists. And with $153 billion under management, Wall Street tends to listen when CalPERS speaks out. But the country"s largest pension fund has never taken on as big a fish as it did Dec. 16, when it filed a class action against the New York Stock Exchange and seven of its member firms. CalPERS" suit charges the NYSE and specialist firms with fraud, alleging that the exchange skirted its regulatory duties and allowed its members to trade stocks at the expense of investors. The move is a major slap in the face for the NYSE"s recently appointed interim Chairman John Reed. The former Citibank chairman and CEO came on board in September after the exchange"s longtime head, Richard Grasso, resigned under pressure over public outrage about his excessive compensation. Reed has been widely criticized by CalPERS and other institutional investors for not including representatives of investors on the exchange"s newly constituted board and not clearly separating the exchange"s regulatory function from its day-to-day operations. The CalPERS lawsuit is evidence that the investment communities" dissatisfaction hasn"t ebbed. "Our hopes were dashed when Mr. Reed didn"t perform", says Harrigan. The suit alleges that seven specialist firms profited by abusing and overusing a series of trading tactics. The tactics, which are not currently illegal, include "penny lumping", where a firm positions itself between two orders to capture a piece of the price differential, "front running", which involves trading in advance of customers based on confidential information obtained by their orders, and "freezing" the firm"s order book so that the firm can make trades on its own account first. Many of the suit"s allegations are based on a previously disclosed investigation of the exchange conducted by the Securities & Exchange Commission. According to the suit, the October SEC report found "serious deficiencies in the NYSE"s surveillance and investigative procedures, including a habit of ignoring repeat violations By specialist firms". The suit highlights the growing frustration that institutional investors have expressed with what they perceive as a system that needs to be revamped—if not eliminated. According to California State Comptroller Steve Westley, a CalPERS board member who participated in the Dec. 16 press conference, he has repeatedly called on the NYSE to end its use of specialist firms to facilitate trades and move to a system of openly matching of buyers and sellers. BLIND EYE "There"s no reason not to move to a fully automated exchange", Westley says. "Every exchange in the world is using such a system. The time is now for the NYSE to move into the 21st century and remove the cloud that there"s self-dealing working against investors".What does the word "a fish" (Para. 1) probably refer toA．CalPERS.
B．Pension fund.
C．Wall Street.
D．NYSE.
你可能感兴趣的试题
1.单项选择题Multifunction superpills aren"t nearly as farfetched as they may sound. And reducing such serious risks to heart health as soaring cholesterol, diabetes, and high blood pressure potentially could save many lives and be highly lucrative for drug companies. A combo pill from Pfizer (PFE) of its hypertension drug Norvasc and cholesterol-lowering agent Lipitor "could have huge potential", says Shaojing Tong, analyst at Mehta Partners. "Offering two functions in one pill itself is a huge convenience". If such pills catch on, they could generate significant revenues for drug companies. In Pfizer"s ease, the goal is to transfer as many qualified patients as possible to the combo pill. Norvasc"s patents expire in 2007, but Pfizer could avoid losing all its revenues from the drug at once if it were part of a superpill. Sena Lund, an analyst at Cathay Financial, sees Pfizer selling $4.2 billion worth of Norvasc-Lipitor by 2007. That would help take up the slack for falling sales of Lipitor, which he projects will drop to $5 billion in 2007, down from $8 billion last year. Pfizer argues that addressing two distinct and serious cardiovascular risk factors in one pill has advantages. People with both hypertension and high LDL cholesterol (the "bad" kind) number around 27 million in the U.S., notes Craig Hopkinson, medical director for dual therapy at Pfizer, and only 2% of that population reaches adequate treatment goals. Taking two treatments in one will increase the number of patients who take the medications properly and "assist in getting patients to goal", be says. Doctors also may be quick to adopt Norvasc-Lipitor, Pfizer figures, because it"s made up of two well-studied drugs, which many physicians are already familiar with. But Dr. Stanley Rockson, chief of consultative cardiology at Stanford University Medical Center, says fixed-dose combination pills represent "an interesting crossroads" for physicians, who are typically trained to "approach each individual problem with care". Combining treatments would challenge doctors to approach heart disease differently. But better patient compliance is important enough, says Rockson, that he expects doctors, to be open to trying the combined pill. Some other physicians are more skeptical. "If you want to change dosage on one of the new pill"s two drugs, you"re stuck", fears Dr. Irene Gavris, professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. She says she would feel most comfortable trying the combination pill on patients who "have been on the drugs for a while" and are thus unlikely to need changes in dosage. As usual, economics could tip the scales. Patients now taking both Lipitor and Norvasc "could cut their insurance co pay in half" by switching to the combo drug, Gavris notes. That"s a key advantage. Controlling hypertension, for instance, can require three or more drugs, and the financial burden on patients mounts quickly. If patients also benefit—as Pfizer and other drug companies contend—making the switch to superpills could be advantageous for everyone.Pfizer could avoid the loss caused by expiration of Norvasc"s patents by ______.A．reducing the various risks to heart health
B．switching the patients to the superpills
C．offering greater convenience to patients
D．increasing the sales of Lipitor
2.单项选择题"We want Singapore to have the X-factor, that buzz that you get in London, Paris, or New York". That is how Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore"s prime minister, (1)_____ his government"s decision to (2)_____ gambling in the country, (3)_____ two large, Vegas-style casinos. Whether the casinos will indeed help to transform Singapore"s staid image remains to be seen. But the decision bas already (4)_____ an uncharacteristic buzz among the country"s normally (5)_____ citizens. The government has contemplated, and rejected (6)_____ casinos several times in the past. One reason was (7)_____ Singapore"s economic growth was so rapid that casinos seemed like an unnecessary evil. Buddhism and Islam, two of the country"s main religions, (8)_____ on gambling. The government itself has traditionally had strong, and often (9)_____, ideas about how its citizens should behave. Until recently, for example, it refused to (10)_____ homosexuals to the civil service. It also used to (11)_____ chewing gum, which it considers a public nuisance. Nowadays, (12)_____, Singapore"s electronics industry, the mainstay of the economy, is struggling to cope with cheap competition from places like China. In the first quarter of this year, output (13)_____ by 5.8% at an annual rate. So the government wants lo promote tourism and other services to (14)_____ for vanishing jobs in manufacturing. Merrill Lynch, an investment bank, (15)_____ the two proposed casinos could (16)_____ in as much as $4 billion in the initial investment alone. (17)_____ its estimates, they would have annual revenues of (18)_____ $3.6 billion, and pay at least $600 million in taxes and fees. The government, for its part, thinks the integrated (19)_____, as it coyly calls the casinos, would (20)_____ as many as 35,000 jobs.A．claimed
B．maintained
C．announced
D．pronounced