Regulation and Compliance issues for Wealth Professionals can be challenging to navigate especially when the SEC is involved. Catch the latest news and analysis on compliance updates that impact financial advisors.
Can the folks who market variable annuities and have gotten slammed by regulators for how they line their pockets in the process force the industry that the products to roll back prices and simplify mind-boggling fee schedules? Can they, in fact...
Citizens Financial Group is punishing its brokerage force for targeting elderly bank customers in the sale of its high-risk variable annuities. How? By taking away the things brokers love: Red Sox playoff tickets, limousine trips to Mohegan Sun...
The SEC recently charged a pair of pump-and-dumpers whose worst offense might be their poor impersonation of a stockbroker. The defendants in the case faxed handwritten stock tips, ostensibly from a financial advisor to his client (Dr. Mitchel)...
Q: I received customer letters, written after a nasty falling-out, that my firm said would appear on my internal U4, but not my public statement. The clients had a very bad separation from my team. They all wrote the same letter, over two years...
In the wake of the Wall Street scandals of the past few years, it was inevitable that government regulators would take a look at how the self-regulatory organizations (SROs), such as the NYSE and the NASD, were doing their jobs. If the SROs were...
Big full-service brokerage houses like Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Smith Barney have long tried to have it both ways: hiring brokers as employees in an effort to own the client relationships, while treating brokers like independent...
The SEC has charged four brokers and a daytrader with cheating investors through a fraudulent scheme that used squawk boxes to eavesdrop on confidential order flow information, enabling them to trade ahead of large orders at more favorable prices...
Peter Scannell wants his cut. The former Putnam Investments employee, who blew the whistle on the Boston-based fund giant's market-timing practices, has filed a lawsuit seeking 30 percent of the firm's $50 million fine, according to a report in...
The way things started out, William Scott seemed like a class act. In 2002, when his employer, Prudential Securities, decided to create a complex by merging his Dayton, Ohio, branch with one in Cincinnati, Scott won the competition to manage it...
Discrimination lawsuits against Morgan Stanley could start rolling in from brokers laid off in August, say labor lawyers. The firm got rid of 1,000 low producers according to a strict performance-based system, but women in the retail brokerage...
