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John Doe crusader or political manipulator? Whichever side of the fence you sit on, no one can deny that New York's Attorney-General Eliot Spitzer gave Wall Street a much-needed kick up the backside over allegations of stock research abuses and initial public offering allocation practices.
For the one-time Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom lawyer, who as Manhattan Assistant District Attorney famously took on the Gambino brothers - sons of Carlo Gambino, the alleged 'Godfather' of the largest organised crime family in the US - a bunch of self-serving bankers and analysts must have seemed like a breeze. Exposing the links between research analysts and their investment banking colleagues resulted in a $1.4bn (£792m) fine and a lot of red faces for 10 of the US's largest banks. That said, Spitzer has hit out at some rather odd targets: Wal-Mart was singled out after failing to differentiate its toy guns from real guns by marking them with orange stripes.
With mutual funds now on Spitzer's radar after launching an investigation into trading practices, he shows no sign of letting up. While there may be claims that Spitzer's high-profile campaigning is to serve his own political ambitions, at least he has succeeded in allowing the man on the street to be heard.
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