Frank Quattrone Barred by NASD

Former Silicon Valley technology banker Frank Quattrone, convicted on criminal charges of obstructing justice, has been barred from the securities industry for life by regulators for allegedly failing to cooperate in an investigation of his activities.

The NASD, formerly the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, said Monday that its National Adjudicatory Council had permanently banned Quattrone from the industry, overruling a January decision by a hearing panel to suspend him for only a year.

The NASD panel also had fined Quattrone $30,000.

Quattrone, who took prominent companies like Amazon.com Inc. public, can appeal the ban to the Securities and Exchange Commission. His lawyer could not be reached for comment.

In ordering the permanent ban, which had been sought by the NASD’s top enforcement official, the group’s council called Quattrone’s conduct “egregious” and said it “impeded an NASD investigation and undermined the NASD’s ability to carry out its regulatory mandate.”

Quattrone endorsed an e-mail on Dec. 5, 2000, that encouraged bankers at Credit Suisse First Boston to “clean up those files” before the holidays.

At the time, federal investigators were looking into the bank’s stock-allocation practices for initial public offerings.

Quattrone has always maintained that he did not know the scope of the inquiry and was simply following CSFB policy, which called for routine destruction of some outdated documents.