Sky News – A US town has edged closer towards clawing back its losses to Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff, securing a court order for £17m in assets.

The town of Fairfield in Connecticut suffered losses of about £28m from its pension fund to what has been called the biggest Ponzi scam in history.

Some 1,500 members who are trying to recover retirement money were granted the order to chase the assets from Madoff’s relatives and business partners.

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Reuters – Suspected insider trading cases reached an all-time high last year, driven less by hedge funds and more by pillow talk between relatives and friends, the head of surveillance at the New York Stock Exchange said on Wednesday.

In a year when bombshell revelations rocked bank stocks, governments outlawed short-selling, and panicked investors brought on the worst market rout since the 1930s, there was much to tempt those with privileged information.

NYSE Regulation, the Big Board’s oversight body, referred 146 cases of suspected insider trading to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2008, five more than in 2007, the previous record year, and more than twice as many as in 2004.

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