Lawyers get requests for powers of attorney all the time, and they're easy to churn out and then forget. But beware. Powers of attorney also are very easily abused. So easily, in fact, that the Illinois docket where we practice is flooded with sad...

The Pension Protection Act (PPA) that Congress passed at the start of the month—and which President Bush is expected to sign into law on Thursday—deals largely with the nation’s ailing pension system. But it also includes a...

In an effort to speed up the arbitration process, NYSE Regulation proposed Wednesday that a single public arbitrator decide cases in which compensatory and punitive damages claimed are under $200,000.

Brooke Astor, the famous New York City socialite and philanthropist, reportedly suffers from Alzheimer’s and no longer can comprehend anything of a financial nature, according to news reports.

The overtime-pay case keeps getting stronger. On July 31, a California court announced that it would not dismiss an overtime-pay case brought against A.G. Edwards under a Depression-era law that was crafted to protect blue-collar workers.

New York Stock Exchange Regulation handed down a $900,000 fine to A.G. Edwards today, marking the regulator’s first fine for abuses in fee-based accounts. The firm was also charged with failure to supervise staff, including one particularly...

The U.S. Senate passed the Pension Protection Act, which lawmakers hope will spur businesses to improve existing employer-sponsored retirement plans, on Thursday. There is also a special gift to financial advisors in the bill, which passed the...

Brokerage firms have long managed assets in employer-sponsored retirement accounts, but offering specific investment advice to individual plan participants has always been off-limits to reps. That could change very soon. According to the rules of...

Today, the SEC announced that it would officially conduct a study to see if allowing the so-called “Merrill exemption” did in fact confuse retail investors or not. So, the exemption is again being investigated.

A look at some of the choicer schemes that have blackened the market