SiliconBeat

STMicroelectronics was awarded $400 million in damages as a resolution of its law suit against Credit Suisse Securities USA that charged the brokerage unit of the Swiss investment bank with misleading Europe’s largest chip maker over its investment in auction-rate securities, according to a Bloomberg News report. The Credit Suisse unit must also pay more than $6.5 million on fees.

Auction-rate securities are typically long-term corporate or municipal bonds whose interest rates reset periodically through auctions held as often as every week. The market for them has been frozen for a year, leaving investors stuck with investments they can’t sell.

STMicroelectronics “requested investments in student loan securities backed by U.S. government guarantees and allege that their funds were instead invested in collateralized debt obligations, some of which were backed by subprime real estate loans,” according to the award statement quoted in the Bloomberg story.