Posts belonging to Category Disciplinary Actions
Posted by Alan PerryonApril 28, 2014
FINRA’s system for revealing red flags about brokers may not disclose all the information that it is supposed to, according to a Wall Street Journal article by Jean Eaglesham and Rob Barry (March 7, 2014). A report by FINRA’s BrokerCheck should include information about felony charges and convictions, personal bankruptcy petitions filed within 10 years, […]
Categories: Brokerage Firms, Common Securities Broker Abuses, Disciplinary Actions, Employment Issues, Investor Rights, Regulatory Developments, Smart Investing Tools, Stockbroker Standards of Conduct
Posted by J. Boyd PageonFebruary 18, 2013
LPL Financial, the country’s largest independent broker-dealer, is encountering serious problems involving its sales of alternative investments. LPL is also (not coincidentally) one of the country’s largest sellers of alternative investment products. In 2011, LPL sold $758,435,677 of variable annuities (which are considered by most industry observers as being alternative investments) and $110,643,148 of other […]
Categories: Alternative Funds, Alternative Investments, Brokerage Firms, Closed End Funds, Common Securities Broker Abuses, Crowd Funding, Derivatives, Disciplinary Actions, Elder Abuses, Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs), Exchange Traded Products (ETPs), Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), Fairness/Just & Equitable Conduct, Hedge Funds, High Yield (Junk) Bonds, Investigations, Investment Advisers, Investment Malpractice, Investor Alerts, Life Policies/Viatical Settlements, Limited Partnerships, LPL Financial, Misrepresentation/Omission, Nontraded REITs, Oil & Gas, Private Equity Investments, Private Investments/Reg D, Regulatory Developments, Reverse Convertibles, Securities, Securities/Commodities Arbitration, Securities/Commodities Litigation, Structured Notes, Supervisory Failures, Tenant-in-Common Interests, Unsuitable Recommendations, Variable Annuities and Equity-Indexed Annuities
Posted by Page PerryonDecember 12, 2012
Massachusetts has filed fraud charges against two out-of-state companies, Prodigy Oil and Gas LLC and Synergy Oil LLC, in connection with their sale of unregistered securities to Massachusetts investors. Prodigy raised at least $464,000 from one Massachusetts investor and Synergy raised $35,000 from two investors, according to Commonwealth Secretary William Gavin’s complaint.
Categories: Brokerage Firms, Common Securities Broker Abuses, Crowd Funding, Disciplinary Actions, Fairness/Just & Equitable Conduct, Investigations, Investment Advisers, Investment Malpractice, Investor Alerts, Misrepresentation/Omission, Private Investments/Reg D, Regulatory Developments, Securities, Securities/Commodities Arbitration, Securities/Commodities Litigation, Smart Investing Tools, Unsuitable Recommendations
Posted by Page PerryonMay 7, 2012
Susan Antilla’s recent Bloomberg column summarizes the securities regulatory enforcement activity in 2011 as a series of breaks, favors and waivers doled out by the regulators to big Wall Street banks. To be sure, the regulators often lower the boom on the small players, but Wall Street is another matter. (“Wall Street’s Big Swingers Get […]
Categories: Brokerage Firms, Citigroup/Smith Barney, Disciplinary Actions, Investment Advisers, Regulatory Developments, Securities, Securities/Commodities Arbitration, Securities/Commodities Litigation, UBS
Posted by Page PerryonMarch 16, 2012
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) reported that fines for false advertising have more than quadrupled from $4.75 million in 2010 to $21.1 million in 2011. FINRA found that a big part of that problem involved inaccurate or fraudulent internal communications. Firms were misleading their own brokers by telling them that structured products and other […]
Categories: Brokerage Firms, Disciplinary Actions, Investment Malpractice, Misrepresentation/Omission, Private Equity Investments, Private Investments/Reg D, Regulatory Developments, Securities, Structured Notes
Posted by Page PerryonJuly 9, 2011
“That’s the easiest $250,000 you’ll never see,” quipped the judge who had just granted a motion for summary judgment in a recent case. Collectibility of judgments is something that private attorneys usually consider in deciding whether to expend resources to pursue a case. The attorneys who work for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and […]
Categories: Brokerage Firms, Commodities and Futures, Common Securities Broker Abuses, Disciplinary Actions, Regulatory Developments, Securities/Commodities Arbitration, Securities/Commodities Litigation
Posted by Page PerryonJuly 4, 2011
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is lobbying Congress to become the regulator of 12,000 investment advisors and their firms, but critics say that should not happen. These critics claim that FINRA has done a poor job of protecting investors from unlawful sales practices by its member brokerage firms, according to an InvestmentNews article entitled […]
Categories: Brokerage Firms, Disciplinary Actions, Investment Advisers, Investor Alerts, Market Developments, Regulatory Developments, Reverse Convertibles, Securities/Commodities Arbitration, Securities/Commodities Litigation, Structured Notes
Posted by Page PerryonJune 21, 2011
J.P. Morgan Securities LLC has agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle SEC charges that it misled investors in a complex “built to fail” mortgage securities transaction just as the housing market was starting to plummet.
Categories: Asset Backed Securities, Brokerage Firms, CDOs, Citigroup/Smith Barney, Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities, Common Securities Broker Abuses, Credit Default Swaps, Derivatives, Deutsche Bank, Disciplinary Actions, Goldman Sachs, Investigations, Investment Advisers, Investor Alerts, J. P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Mortgage Backed Securities, Mortgage Securities & Collateralized Debt Obligation Problems, Regulatory Developments, Securities, Securities/Commodities Arbitration, Securities/Commodities Litigation, UBS, Wachovia, Wells Fargo
Posted by Page PerryonJune 10, 2011
The securities regulator for Illinois has revoked the licenses of two investment adviser representatives, who are supposed to be fiduciaries, for recommending that elderly clients partially liquidate variable annuities in order to purchase equity index annuities, so that the reps could receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions, according to Darla Mercado’s InvestmentNews article […]
Categories: Brokerage Firms, Common Securities Broker Abuses, Disciplinary Actions, Elder Abuses, Investigations, Investment Advisers, Investor Alerts, Regulatory Developments, Securities, Securities/Commodities Arbitration, Securities/Commodities Litigation, Variable Annuities and Equity-Indexed Annuities
Posted by Page PerryonApril 22, 2011
Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Storey have investigated the question so many people have ? why no prosecutions have been undertaken in the wake of the financial disaster ? and published their findings in a revealing ten page New York Times article entitled, “In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures.”
Categories: Brokerage Firms, Disciplinary Actions, Economy, Investigations, Investment Advisers, Market Developments, Regulatory Developments, Securities/Commodities Arbitration, Securities/Commodities Litigation