Prosecutors Expected To Spare Wall St. Firms

Justice Department officials yesterday vowed to unravel the complex financial deals that helped prompt a market crisis in an effort that will generally seek criminal charges against individual brokers and bankers, rather than companies themselves, according to interviews with lawyers involved in the cases.

Mindful of the fallout from the last wave of business fraud cases six years ago, authorities are leaning against seeking indictments of major banks and insurers that may have inflated the value of their mortgage-related investments. Instead, prosecutors will look for such garden-variety crimes as false statements and insider trading by executives who tried to disguise financial problems or pad their wallets.