[JURIST] Financial firm Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc [corporate website] on Tuesday agreed to pay a $10 million settlement [SEC press release] to the US Securities and Exchange Commission [official website] without admitting or denying allegations made by the SEC that Morgan Stanley failed to protect against potential misuse of insider trading information as required by law. The SEC instituted and immediately settled an enforcement action [opinion text] against Morgan Stanley alleging that the company violated Section 13(f) [text] of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 [text] and Section 204A [text] of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 [text].

Specifically, the enforcement action charged Morgan Stanley with five failures, including not monitoring any employees on a so-called "Watch List" established to identify possible uses of nonpublic material information, and failing to establish clear guidelines on how Watch List surveillance was to be handled. Reuters has more.