Gross revenues fell by 25 percent for NYSE member broker/dealers in the last year and a half, dropping to a five-year low of $36.3 billion in the third quarter. Pre-tax profits are still dropping, too: Profits were estimated to be $1.1 billion in...
Every broker has heard a story like this one. Recently, Tom Mingone, a financial planner in New City, N.Y., got a call from a new prospect. The man, a successful entrepreneur in his late 40s, had sold his sanitation business for $1 million and...
Is it time to check out small cap and micro cap stocks and managers? Merrill Lynch recently announced that it would no longer make a market in anything but the 2,400 biggest, most actively traded Nasdaq issues. It's the perfect contrarian...
When a business partnership is new and everybody is toasting the new team, nobody thinks much about the legal agreements the partners just signed. In the subsequent months, even years, these documents tend to gather dust in a drawer. However, once...
You know him: The Trust-Fund Brat the party-hearty, layabout rich kid who never made a dime in his life and scoffs at the word The type of guy that might be inclined to ditch his dorm room and blow the endowment on Porsche, Prada and Paris. The...
National Financial Partners, the independent financial services company headed by Jessica Bibliowicz, wants to raise capital so it can add to its list of 100 small firms targeting high-net-worth clients. The company says it intends to go public...
Iam intimately familiar with the concept of consultative selling. Back when I was peddling a large-cap core manager as a wholesaler, I tried to fashion myself into just such a person, a consultant, a real go-to guy. Alas, the world is a much...
Looking for a job, but afraid you'll be found out? A new Web site, privateclientpro.net, provides a fast, anonymous and comprehensive listing of opportunities. So far, only Boston area jobs are listed, but the site's creator, Consultants Period, a...
The last couple of years have been hell on anyone who owns stock. And someone must pay. Rightly or wrongly, that person typically is you. Case in point: the rate of NASD arbitration cases is expected to increase nearly 35 percent in 2002 compared...
Cases of brokers stealing from their clients are not unheard of. After all, former Lehman Brothers broker Frank Gruttadauria faces six to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to charges that he stole $125 million from his clients over six...