Series on Prudential Securities Earns Award for Times Reporter

Los Angeles Times staff writer Scot J. Paltrow was named a winner of the 27th annual John Hancock Awards for Excellence in Business and Financial Journalism. This is the second consecutive year Paltrow has won the award and the ninth such award for The Times.

Paltrow won in the category for newspapers with circulation of more than 300,000 for his investigative series on the sale of limited partnerships by Prudential Securities Inc.

The series, published last June, described how Prudential Insurance Co. of America and its Prudential Securities unit sold $8 billion worth of risky limited partnerships to hundreds of thousands of small investors, contending the partnerships were as safe as bank deposits.

Other Hancock winners include Tony Horwitz of the Wall Street Journal; David Everett, Greg Gardner, Marc Gunther and Hiawatha Bray of the Detroit Free Press; Eric Bates, Mike Hudson, Barry Yeoman and Adam Feuerstein of Southern Exposure magazine; David Heath and David McGinty of the (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal; David Migoya of the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, and Robert J. Samuelson of Newsweek.