Bennett said he didn't meant to hurt anyone. His voice cracked when he apologized to his family for their "unimaginable agony."

U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald imposed the sentence, saying the 20 separate crimes Bennett admitted he had committed and the $1.5 billion in losses he had caused were enough to explain it.

"To sentence you, I don't have to paint you as a monster and I have no intention of doing so," Buchwald said. But she said Bennett and others like him who break the law in their zeal to be among the world's richest people are "staggeringly arrogant."

"You and others like you play a truly high stakes poker game," Buchwald said.

Prosecutors had asked that Bennett be sentenced to between 16.5 and 22 years in prison. The judge told Bennett to remain at his New Jersey home until he reports to prison on Sept. 4. She rejected a request by prosecutors that he be sent to prison immediately.

Refco went public in August 2005. It filed for bankruptcy just weeks later -- after disclosing that a $430 million debt owed to Refco by a firm controlled by Bennett had been concealed. The disclosure caused Refco's stock value to plummet.

The decision by a U.S. court to award a summary judgment in AstraZeneca's favor avoids the need for a full trial and means that generic copies of Seroquel, which raked in $4 billion in sales last year, will not be launched any time soon.

"We are pleased with the court's decision to uphold our valid intellectual property," AstraZeneca chief executive officer David Brennan said in a statement.

Shares rose 6.1 percent to 2,260 pence ($44.88) in London. Shares jumped 3.4 percent to $44.89 in premarket trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., the world's biggest generic drug maker, said it plans to appeal the judgment by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

A summary judgment of "No Inequitable Conduct" is traditionally difficult to win because it requires the company to prove the intent of the patent holder.

Roberts sold all his shares in four companies last year — Becton Dickinson & Co., Cisco Systems Inc., Citigroup Inc. and Merck & Co. Inc. — worth $117,000 to $265,000.

Alito sold all his stock in Intel Corp., worth $15,000 to $50,000, and reduced his holdings in three other companies, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Exxon Mobil Corp. and McDonald's Corp. The information was contained in the justices' annual report on their finances, released Friday.

It was not clear whether the justices took advantage of a recent change in federal law that allows them to defer paying taxes on capital gains by reinvesting the proceeds in mutual funds, government bonds or other assets.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who also has had to step aside from cases at the court because of his investments, sold some stock as well, but retains shares in dozens of companies and did not appear to alter his investment pattern.

The issue of investments arose most recently last month when the court could not muster enough justices to consider whether to intervene in a case.

The former chairman and CEO of PurchasePro.com, a business-to-business software broker that died during the dot-com bust, has been found guilty of securities fraud, witness tampering and other crimes, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

Charles "Junior" Johnson, who resigned as chairman and CEO in May 2001, was found guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia of conspiring to commit securities fraud, securities fraud, witness tampering and obstructing an official proceeding. Judge Walter Kelley released his verdict Thursday after a bench trial that finished in December.

Johnson founded PurchasePro.com in 1996, and the company was one of the dot-com boom's early success stories. PurchasePro, which had a close relationship with AOL, sold computer software through a B-to-B marketing license, allowing businesses to buy and sell products on the Internet, to participate directly in PurchasePro's own Web-based marketplace and to create their own branded marketplace using PurchasePro's software.

The company went public in September 1999, and shares leapt 117 percent the first day to close at US$26.13. In December 1999, the company's adjusted stock price hit a peak of nearly $396 a share.

In March 2000 and April 2001, the company signed deals with AOL, the latter to jointly develop a B-to-B marketplace called Netscape Netbusiness Marketplace. But in late April 2001, the company announced its earnings would be significantly lower than Wall Street expectations, and that same month, investors filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, accusing its executives of improperly recognizing revenue as a way to pump up stock prices.

In August 2002, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating AOL's relationship with PurchasePro, and in September 2002, PurchasePro filed for bankruptcy.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is scrutinizing the secured funding activities of investment banks it supervises and is discussing the firms' longer-term funding plans, an SEC official told Congress on Wednesday.

Funding at the biggest U.S. investment banks has been in the spotlight since March, when Bear Stearns Cos Inc nearly collapsed from a sharp drop in its liquidity. Senior lawmakers such as Democrat Barney Frank, chairman of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, have called for stricter regulation of investment banks now that they have access to the Federal Reserve's discount borrowing window.

"We are discussing with senior management their longer-term funding plans, including plans for raising new capital by accessing the equity and long-term debt markets," Erik Sirri, the SEC's director of trading and markets, said in testimony prepared for delivery at a Senate hearing.

The SEC monitors investment banks Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers Holdings, Merrill Lynch & Co, Goldman Sachs Group and Bear Stearns as part of a supervisory program intended to respond quickly to any financial or operational weakness in the companies.

The SEC is also considering lengthening the firms' average term of secured and unsecured funding arrangements and discussing the amount of excess secured funding capacity for less-liquid positions, Sirri said.

"We are in the process of establishing additional scenarios, focused on shorter duration but more extreme events that entail a substantial loss of secured funding, that will be layered on top of the existing scenarios as a basis for sizing liquidity pool requirements," he said.

"This additional analysis is providing the basis for requiring firms to take steps such as increasing the term of secured funding and diversity of funding sources," he added.

In March, the Federal Reserve took the unprecedented step of opening its discount borrowing window to investment banks so they could shore up their capital levels after the Bear Stearns crisis.

Banc of America Investment Services Inc, a unit of Bank of America Corp, has settled charges it failed to disclose it favored affiliated mutual funds, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday. The SEC said Banc of America Investment Services Inc (BAISI), a broker-dealer, and Columbia Management Advisors have agreed to pay $9.8 million to settle the charges.

The agency said BAISI from July 2002 through December 2004 did not tell clients that, in selecting investments for discretionary mutual fund wrap fee accounts, it favored two mutual funds affiliated with BAISI.

Columbia, a successor to Banc of America Capital Management, was charged with aiding and abetting and causing some of BAISI's violations, the SEC said. An attorney for BAISI declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the company could not immediately be reached for comment.

"BAISI's selection of mutual funds for wrap fee clients was compromised when it favored its own proprietary funds over non- affiliated funds," said SEC enforcement director Linda Thomsen in a statement. "By using a method to select funds that was at odds with information it provided to clients, BAISI violated its duty of loyalty to its clients."

The SEC said the $9.8 million in disgorgement and penalties will be put into a fund to benefit BAISI's affected clients.

The three-member SEC voted unanimously to propose the rule, which targets sellers who intentionally deceive broker-dealers or purchasers about their ability to meet delivery deadlines.

Sellers sometimes deliberately fail to deliver securities as part of a scheme to manipulate the stock price. The SEC is seeking public comment on its proposal.