Four new members were elected to the FINRA Board o Governors today: LPL Chairman and CEO, Mark Casady, took over the Independent Dealer/Insurance Affiliate seat from John Simmers, former Chairman and CEO of ING Advisors Network, who stepped down...
When the auction rate securities market froze up in February 2008, angry clients blamed their financial advisors; financial advisors blamed their firms. Today, the SEC announced finalized settlements with Bank of America, RBC Capital Markets and...
When times are good, it's easy for everyone to work well together. But when money gets tight? During the lengthy recessions of the early 1980s and mid-1970s, tensions sometimes developed between two camps: wealth advisors and fundraisers...
Proposed regulation NPRM REG-119532-08 - The Internal Revenue Service provides a method for determining the portion of a trust that’s includible in a deceased grantor’s gross estate if the grantor held a graduated retained interest in...
Times are tough. Unemployment is at its highest rate in 25 years. Homelessness is on the rise. College and graduate school tuitions continue to rise at a pace that is two to three times the rate of inflation. With the resources of federal and...
Traditionally, charitable lead trusts (CLTs) were the province of the ultra wealthy, people with $25 million or more. That's because, typically, a client had to have sufficient funds to create a significant long-term trust providing along the way...
A charitable lead annuity trust (CLAT) using a low Internal Revenue Code Section 7520 rate can be more transfer-tax effective than a charitable lead unitrust (CLUT) if property passes to children. But the CLUT is likely to be more transfer-tax...
On a cold evening in January of 2009, 74-year-old corporate titan Adolf Merckle drove to a railway embankment near his home in Germany and stepped in front of a moving train. Once, Merckle had been a billionaire. In 2007, Forbes estimated his...
