HealthSouth agrees to $100M settlement

HealthSouth said it will pay a $100 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges stemming from the $2.7 billion accounting fraud uncovered by government investigators in 2003. The Birmingham, Alabama-based chain of rehabilitation hospitals still faces a series of shareholder lawsuits filed after the scandal broke. Wall Street analysts believe the HealthSouth case may be one of the last big corporate fraud cases we'll see for some time. The departure of SEC Chairman William Donaldson is expected to usher in a new era at the SEC. His replacement, US Representative Chris Cox (R-Calif.) says he wants to concentrate the agency's enforcement efforts on individual wrongdoers.

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