
The $1.45 billion judgment against Morgan Stanley for deceiving billionaire Ronald Perelman over a business deal has <A HREF="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050520/bs_nm/financial_morganstanley_perelman_emails_dc">a lesson all companies should learn</A>--keeping emails is now a must, experts say. Banks and broker-dealers are obliged to retain email and instant messaging documents for three years under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules. But similar requirements will apply to all public companies from July 2006 under the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform measures. At the same time, U.S. courts are imposing increasingly harsh punishments on corporations that fail to comply with orders to produce email documents.