When you weigh the Securities and Exchange Commission’s manpower, technology and budget against the securities industry’s size and complexity, it’s easy to imagine gaps in the regulatory system. With or without an increased...

Are Wall Street financial advisors ready to be held to a fiduciary standard in all of their dealings with clients? Maybe they should be. In a Tuesday testimony about regulatory reform before the Senate Committee on banking, Housing and Urban...

So, Bernie Madoff might finally plead guilty—but the fallout from his alleged fraud on the financial advisory business might not disappear for a long while. In our February cover story, we detailed how once-highly-regarded retail financial...

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., gave insurance lobbying groups something to argue about yesterday. In a press conference about financial regulatory reform, Frank said he wants lawmakers to create an optional...

We really don’t want to take sides, but we can’t help but notice that our long-time legal columnist Bill Singer is throwing down the gauntlet again. He’s challenging FINRA—for a meeting. You see, Bill Singer has a history...

Is it just us, or are the regulators always one step behind? In its latest effort to prove its effectiveness, the SEC says it wants to reevaluate the rules governing credit-rating agencies. You know, those same agencies that assigned stellar...

The SEC’s civil fraud charges against R. Allen Stanford are having nasty repercussions for Stanford Financial Group financial advisors and clients not implicated in any wrongdoing. The SEC has frozen client accounts of Stanford Financial...

Any advisor who has worked for a wirehouse is familiar with the “penalty box.” The penalty box refers to a painful double whammy: A precipitous drop in production that knocks an FA down the payout grid. It’s a fact of life at...

The ax began to fall at Bank of America/Merrill Tuesday morning, according to Dealbreaker. The layoffs weren’t expected to begin until tomorrow. Some claim that every business group will be hit. If you find yourself, suddenly, office-less...

The market skidded into a ditch this morning, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average opening below 7,000 following a global selloff overnight in Japan and Europe. Mid-morning it continued to slide, down around 3 percent, or 220 points, to 6858. It...