I just completed my "2009 Year in Review" column which should appear here next week. Basically, I tried to find the most interesting events, and then cap each one off with a Dave Barry-like satirical comment. Of course, I am not Dave Barry, so I could not always pull that off.

In a year like 2009, however, there were so many extraordinary, noteworthy and funny things to discuss in the securities world that not everything could fit into one column (despite the fact that as Banya said in Seinfeld, "That's gold, Jerry! Gold!").

Here are some of the sections that I just couldn't fit, along with my "Director's Cut" explanation on why they had to go:

March: Bank of the Wichitas launched a new subsidiary, Redneck Bank. The bank's logo featured a bucktoothed horse and the slogan "where bankin's funner." The bank almost immediately had to stop taking new accounts because it had too many applications to process. [Cut because I couldn't think of a funny commentary to close it out].

March: Howard Richman, a former executive of Biopure Corp. who had avoided depositions and other pretrial litigation in an SEC case against him by claiming he had Stage III colon-rectal cancer, admitted he had made it all up. Richman said he pretended to be his doctor in a phone call with his lawyer so that the lawyer would tell the judge he was undergoing chemotherapy. From their penthouses, Madoff and Dreier immediately called their oncologists for appointments. [Again, couldn't really think of a funny commentary, as the last sentence above proves].

March: ProCon.org released a new, detailed "History of Insider Trading" that purported to go all the way back to the year 1611, when the Dutch bourses were developed. In Portland, Greg Oden of the NBA's Trail Blazers expressed relief that his stock purchases made in the 1590s would not be subject to scrutiny. [Loved this one but something had to go, and I suspected that only basketball fans would get the "Greg Oden is old" joke]

April: Meanwhile, over in the UK, the FSA brought a case against David Redmond, a former freight and oil trader with Morgan Stanley. The FSA essentially charged Redmond with TUI ("Trading Under the Influence"), alleging that he took a three and a half hour lunch break during which he drank alcohol. The FSA said it appeared that the alcohol "affected his behaviour on his return to the office," when he proceeded to make a huge number of (profitable!) trades. After hearing of the profitable trades, Raj Rajaratnam immediately instituted three and a half hour drinking lunches at Galleon Group, and hired Redmond as a "lunch consultant." [Told you it was gold! But not quite as good as what I kept, I hope]

May: In Australia, AWB Ltd told shareholders suing the company in a $60 million class action that they would have to limit their demands for documents if they wanted a timely trial. With respect to one of the documents sought-AWB's internal code of conduct-the company reportedly stated that "there's one person in AWB who can locate that material readily ... he's away and we don't know when he's going to come back." [I struggled to make up some kind of "Gone Walkabout" joke and finally gave up]

May: A class action was filed on May 12, 2009 against iShares, which on Friday, September 12, 2008 allegedly deviated from its stated "low-risk" investment strategy to purchase $387 million worth of distressed, subordinated debt in failing bank Lehman Brothers. The following Monday, September 15, Lehman filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, vaporizing the entire investment. German state-owned bank KfW, dubbed "Germany's dumbest bank" by the country's largest newspaper after it transferred approximately $426 million to Lehman Brothers on the day it declared bankruptcy, stated that iShares was "way dumber than us." [Liked this one, too, but kind of a complicated lead up]

May: May was also apparently "Throw Projectiles at Board Members" month in Europe, as shareholders and workers reportedly showed their displeasure by hurling items including, but not limited to, cobblestones, steel fencing, eggs, shoes, coins and even ballot boxes at various annual meetings. [Drew a blank trying to come up with a funny line about this]

November: Khuzami delivered the 2009 SEC Quote of the Year, stating "There should be a moment - hopefully before you're holding a bag of cash delivered to you by somebody codenamed ‘the Octopussy' - that causes anyone in a position to tip or trade on inside information to think twice before taking such a misguided step. And if you find yourself chewing the memory card in your cell phone to destroy any record of your misconduct, something has gone terribly wrong with your character." [Wanted to include this, my favorite quote of the year, but couldn't fit it].

November: Stanford's bad year continued to spiral down the drain when the panel that approves candidates for knighthood in the Antigua and Barbuda voted unanimously to rescind the title granted to Stanford in 2006. The vote was unanimous and was based on the "embarrassment Stanford caused the country with the alleged Ponzi scheme he ran from his Antigua-based offshore bank." The country had never before revoked knighthood. [Surely there is a funny line to be written about Stanford losing his "Sir" title, but apparently it won't come from me]

Happy New Year, and please look for the "2009 Year in Review" next week.

Best,Bruce Carton