One of Merrill Lynch's 10 regional managing directors, who report directly to senior management at the firm, has announced his retirement. Guy Williams, the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based regional director for southern California and the frontier region...

With scandals continuing to dominate the news and broker/dealers under more fire from the investing public, it come as little surprise that arbitration figures rose again in 2003. According to the NASD, 2003 brought more arbitrations than any year...

The word conjures up all manner of restful images a man napping in a hammock, a woman playing bridge with her friends, a visored couple strolling towards a green on a sun-splashed golf course. But please note: the financial advisor does not figure...

Creating a high-performing wealth management team requires a significant amount of good old subjective judgment, but that doesn't mean objective measures are of no use. In fact, through our ongoing research into what makes for successful advisory...

Say a neighbor pays you to shovel the snow in front of his house. But the neighbor on the other side of your house gives you 10 times as much for the same service, plus a bonus if the sidewalk doesn't have a speck of ice on it. Wouldn't you be...

Andrew Duff, CEO of Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis, likes to tell a little story to his troops about why Piper's 1998 marriage to neighboring U.S. Bancorp ended up an amicable divorce in 2003. An affluent Piper client was seated in a conference room...

Last May, Paul Sikorski earned his degree from the School of Intestinal Fortitude when he and his two partners opened their own broker/dealer for business. The road to graduation was an arduous one, comprising a year of document gathering and...

Hydie Sumner, one of the remaining 50 or so registered reps who sued Merrill Lynch for gender discrimination, is expected to hear a decision from an arbitration panel within the next few weeks. Among remedies to her claims proposed by her lawyers...

It is 9:30, the market is opening and Jim Nasium is talking to his financial advisor, Stan Tahl, about his trading strategy for the day. The pair decides on a course of action, and Stan enters the required orders. Since the account is a commission...