The SEC's requirement that mutual fund boards be stocked with more independent executives met with jeers when it was passed last year. Now, the raspberry blowers have some research to back up their disdain. Missouri University's School of...
Brokers tempted to leap at a lucrative job at another firm are often held back by inertia, but in increasing numbers they are finding the powerful force they need to get moving: hungry branch managers. Managers, of course, have always been some of...
Keep it simple, stupid: That's the idea behind Wachovia Securities new grid one that offers a round 50 percent payout to brokers, once they pass a $9,000 production threshold. The simplified grid is meant to be easier for advisors to understand...
Aclient of mine recently received the securities industry's equivalent of the black spot that pirate death summons made famous in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. The client reacted to the arrival of the NASD's Rule 8210 letter the same...
Unraveling the IRS's stance on family limited partnerships (FLPs) is harder than tracking the marital status of Britney Spears. In 2003, the tax court disallowed an FLP created by one Albert Strangi only a couple of months before his own death a...
You take the blue pill and the story ends you wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. The Matrix It's probably overstating...
Assets in separately managed accounts are growing steadily again after hitting a rough patch between 2001 and 2003, but many investors still don't understand what it is they do. Interviews with more than two dozen investors who own SMAs found that...
In grammatical terms, a word with the letters ING at the end is a gerund a verb masquerading as a noun. Fitting, then, that the Dutch financial services firm that goes by those letters would have a mysterious side. It's not as though ING is...
Morgan Stanley was hit recently with a suit involving investors from Idaho and New Hampshire, who called into question a Morgan requirement that all arbitration disputes be settled under New York law. Though no other major firm specifically...
Is the worst of the arbitration onslaught over? Through October, there were 7,008 complaints filed with the NASD, down 9 percent from 2003. Assuming filings maintained that pace for the rest of the year, 2004 would be the first year with a drop in...
