A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitration panel has awarded damages to the Marcus family and their affiliated profit sharing and retirement plans as a result of losses sustained in so-called Lehman principal protected structured notes sold to them by UBS Financial Services, Inc. The panel awarded $432,000.00 in compensatory damages, which is 100% of the amount of compensatory damages claimed, plus an additional $53,000.00 in attorney’s fees, plus another $5,610.00 as reimbursement for expert witness fees.
The Claimants were represented by Seth E. Lipner. According to Mr. Lipner, the documents introduced into evidence at the hearing showed that UBS knew that there were huge problems at Lehman in early 2008 when it sold the products to investors, but that UBS representatives failed to disclose how Lehman’s problems could affect the structured product investments sold to those investors. “Senior executives of UBS tried to explain away the failures that took place at UBS,” Mr. Lipner said, “but the arbitrators obviously did not buy it.”
In an earlier case involving Lehman principal protected structured products (Severi vs. UBS, decided in December 2009), another arbitration panel also awarded full rescission to the investors, which means that it ordered UBS to take back the investments and refund the investors’ purchase money with interest.
UBS is facing many similar arbitration claims across the country. UBS sold $1 billion of Lehman structured products to U.S. investors. UBS has reportedly not yet won a single such case.
Page Perry, a law firm based in Atlanta, Georgia, is co-counsel with Mr. Lipner and his Garden City, New York law firm, Deutsch & Lipner, in representing a number of investors in Lehman structured note cases.
“We continue to receive inquiries from investors who acquired Lehman structured notes as a result of UBS’s misrepresentation of it as a ‘principal protected’ investment,” said J. Boyd Page, a senior partner at Page Perry in Atlanta. “Our legal team continues to investigate and pursue arbitrations on behalf of investors who purchased these products,” he added. ??The brokers who sold the Lehman structured notes are not targets of investor claims.
Page Perry is an Atlanta-based law firm with over 125 years collective experience representing institutional and individual investors in securities-related litigation and arbitration all over the country. While past results are not indicative of future success, Page Perry’s attorneys have recovered over $1,000,000 for clients on more than 30 occasions.