On April 19, Citigroup quietly let it be known--with a one-liner in its first quarter earnings report--that "Salomon Smith Barney plans to roll out online trading capabilities later this year." That was the first indication that SSB would join...
Do you find yourself daydreaming about spending the day golfing, walking along the ocean or traveling to Europe on a whim? Such mental wanderings are an indication that it may be time for you to ride off into the sunset after years of hard work...
Following Merrill Lynch's lead, Salomon Smith Barney has become the second major retail firm to offer free research to nonclients as a prospecting tool via a new Web site called www.smithbarneyresearch.com, announced in late March.Brad Rubin, an...
Merrill Lynch's June announcement that it would be slashing pricing on fee accounts, starting a discount business and offering unlimited online trading to fee and discount customers has the industry buzzing about the future of full service. But...
Operational complaints now lead the list of complaints the SEC gets from investors about broker/dealers--surpassing sales practice-related problems for the first time ever."This is not surprising in a bull market," says Nancy Smith, director of...
Two years ago, 40-year veteran broker Alan Lertzman was approached by Bob Harden, principal of Silicon Valley Capital Management in Palo Alto, Calif., to join the money management firm. The timing was right since Lertzman, a rep with D.E. Frey in...
In early April, brokers at Salomon Smith Barney got a wire telling them that a new "employee handbook" was available on the firm's intranet, replacing the interim handbook that went out a little more than a year earlier. This time, "we didn't get...
Just as Salomon Smith Barney was in the final stages of paying out claims on a wage-and-hour suit settled last August, the firm got hit again.The new lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Tampa, Fla., on May 5 by sales assistant Arleen...
"Set up a 401(k) for me." That's the first thing most small-business owners say to Jim Rafoth when he talks to them about establishing a pension plan. Yet a 401(k) is not what most of them get. Rafoth, a broker with Beard Pension Services in...
Four years ago, when Brian Orton left banking to become a broker with D.A. Davidson & Co. in Redmond, Wash., he worked with an attorney who was a guardian for people with disabilities. "He had a need for investments beyond CDs for his clients,"...
