Topeka ? Kansas will receive nearly $4 million under a $1.4 billion national settlement between securities regulators and 10 Wall Street investment firms, Securities Commissioner David Brant said Monday.

About $3.75 million of Kansas’ share will go into the state’s general fund, and $250,000 will be spent on investor education through the state Securities Commission, said Nicole Corcoran-Basso, spokeswoman for Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

The settlement, negotiated by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, followed an investigation into whether brokerages issued biased ratings on stocks to grow their investment banking business.

Regulators said the firms and their analysts publicly praised certain stocks while deriding them in private.

Investors in some states could receive some of the settlement funds. In Missouri, which is to get $7 million, the secretary of state’s office said it would work with the SEC to identify individual investors who lost money as a result of the brokerages’ perceived conflicts.

Sebelius and Brant decided that Kansas’ share should go into the general fund because of the state’s budget shortfall, Corcoran-Basso said.

None of the firms admitted or denied wrongdoing. The firms are Bear, Stearns; Credit Suisse First Boston; Goldman Sachs; Leman Brothers; J.P. Morgan Securities; Merrill Lynch; Morgan Stanley; Citigroup/Salomon Smith Barney; UBS Warburg; and U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray.