“Frank P. Quattrone, the banker whose deal making helped fuel the 1990’s technology boom, was found guilty yesterday of trying to impede government investigations into how hot stock offerings were doled out to investors,” writes Andrew Sorkin in today’s New York Times.

“The verdict makes him the most prominent Wall Street figure to face prison since Michael R. Milken.”

“Yesterday’s verdict came in a retrial of Mr. Quattrone after his first trial ended in a hung jury last fall. This time, however, jurors quickly concluded that Mr. Quattrone had tried to hamper criminal and regulatory investigations when he endorsed a colleague’s e-mail message in December 2000 urging his staff of bankers at Credit Suisse First Boston to ” ‘clean up those files.’ “

“Mr. Quattrone, who visibly gulped as the judge read the verdict aloud, was perhaps the most prominent banker in Silicon Valley during the 1990’s, leading the initial stock offerings of technology giants like Cisco Systems and Amazon.com that often soared to unheard-of heights in their first days of trading.”

“After that success and the bursting of the technology bubble, Mr. Quattrone and First Boston came under the microscope of regulators and prosecutors, who began investigating whether the bank was soliciting kickbacks from investors in exchange for access to hot stock offerings. Such a case was never brought.”

“Yesterday’s verdict, together with the unorthodox egalitarian public offering announced last week by the Internet search giant Google, may represent the beginning of a significant change in the way Wall Street conducts business as it seeks to distance itself from some of the more controversial practices of the 1990’s.”

“The verdict is also vindication for the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, which failed to win the same case against Mr. Quattrone last fall. Questions had been raised about the prosecution’s decision to bring an obstruction case based on a one-line e-mail message that was viewed in some quarters as weak.”

” ‘You have to view this as something of a come-from-behind victory for the prosecution,’ said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at McCarter & English. ‘The government has successfully convinced the public that obstructing an investigation into bank fraud is just as serious as committing the bank fraud itself. With this verdict and the Martha Stewart conviction we have now seen for the second time the prosecution successfully employing the tactic of sidestepping a complex financial fraud prosecution in favor of a far more simplistic obstruction case.’ “