“Frank P. Quattrone, the highflying investment banker who handled hot stock offerings like Cisco Systems and Amazon.com during the technology boom, resigned from Credit Suisse First Boston yesterday after refusing to cooperate with an investigation into his banking practices,” writes Landon Thomas in today’s New York Times.

“Mr. Quattrone is the subject of an NASD investigation, and on the advice of his lawyers, he has declined to provide additional testimony to regulators in that office. According to Credit Suisse officials, Mr. Quattrone violated bank policy by choosing not to cooperate with the investigation.”

“Mr. Quattrone, who earned as much as $100 million annually in his peak years, and the firm have agreed to work out such issues as his severance pay and his accumulation of company stock later, pending a resolution of the civil and criminal inquiries. Credit Suisse will continue to pay his considerable legal expenses under terms of his contract.”

“Mr. Quattrone, who had been on administrative leave, is also the subject of two criminal investigations: one being conducted by New York state prosecutors and the other by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.”

“Prosecutors and regulators now describe Mr. Quattrone’s suspected infractions as symbolic of the excesses that inflated and then burst the Nasdaq bubble in the late 1990’s.”

“From his base in Credit Suisse’s offices in Palo Alto, Calif., Mr. Quattrone blurred the barriers between the disparate businesses of a Wall Street bank.”

“Nominally an investment banker in charge of bringing hot technology companies public, he also held sway over a research department, ensuring that companies he took public received positive coverage, the prosecutors now suggest, pointing to various e-mail messages. Regulators say that Mr. Quattrone guided the distribution of public offerings of new stocks to favored clients, a practice known as spinning. Investigators are also trying to determine whether he impeded a federal inquiry in December 2000, when he endorsed a colleague’s suggestion that bankers clean up their files.”