E*TRADE Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:ETFC) has successfully completed a debt exchange offer.  E*TRADE received a commitment from creditors to swap $1.8 billion in debt for convertible bonds.

The conversion was accepted for the following reasons:

- The new bonds do not bear interest as zero coupons.  Class A debentures can be converted into E*Trade’s stock at a rate of $1.034 per share.
- E*Trade’s largest shareholder Citadel had already commited to the deal which encouraged other investors.
- Creditors realized that because there are greater capital requirements on the horizon, this would be a good way to keep E*TRADE from buckling down their services.

E*TRADE is struggling to keep up the competition with Ameritrade and Charles Schwab.  E*TRADE will be posting another loss this year. E*TRADE has applications built on the iTunes App Store and BlackBerry App World.

[via Fool.com]

E TRADE Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:ETFC) was fined about $1 million for having inadequate procedures in handling trades that might be used for money laundering. Between January 2003 and May 2007, two of E*Trade’s units E*Trade Securities and E*Trade Clearing were the ones involved.

E*Trade analysts and employees manually checked for suspicious trades, but the company did not give them automated tools. This was the second fine against E*Trade within the last 6 months.  Last July, E*Trade agreed to pay $1 million to settle claims made by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for violating the Patriot Act’s money-laundering clauses.  The identities of 65,000 customers were not properly identified.

“E*Trade upgraded its systems to provide an automated method to monitor for this particular activity, and those systems have been in place for over a year,” stated E*Trade spokeswoman Pamela Erickson.

[via Bloomberg]