A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Panel is ordering Goldman Sachs & Co. (GS) to pay about $2.5M to Tracy Landow for recommending that she invest in the Goldman Sachs Special Opportunities Fund 2006, which she is now contending was an investment that was not appropriate for her. Landow filed her…
Investment News is reporting that in the wake of pressure from regulators, Berthel Fisher & Co. Financial Services Inc., Cetera Financial Group Inc. and VSR Financial Services Inc., are modifying the way they sell specific alternative investments, including nontraded real estate investment trusts, by revising current policy or including no…
In what is being called the SRO’s largest fine to date over e-mail violations, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority announced that it is fining LPL Financial LLC $7.5 million over 35 key e-mail system failures. The financial firm also has to set up a $1.5 million fund to compensate customers…
Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Galvin announced today that the state has reached a $9.6M securities settlement with five independent brokerage dealers-Ameriprise Financial Services Inc. (AMP), Commonwealth Financial Network, Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp., Royal Alliance Associates Inc., & Securities America Inc.-over the allegedly inappropriate sale of nontraded real…
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority says that LPL Financial LLC must pay a $7.5 million fine for inadequately supervising more than 28 million business emails between 2007 and 2013. This is the largest fine the SRO has ever imposed over an e-mail case. According to FINRA, LPL’s systems for overseeing…
In Australia, two Morgan Stanley (MS) customers are suing the financial firm for $5 million because they say that is much their superannual accounts lost because of alleged misrepresentations made by broker Kate Kearney. Helen Sedman, 74, and Sally Middleton, 61, claim that Kearney deceived them into thinking that an…
According to California Attorney General Kamala Harris, JP Morgan Chase (JPM) filed about 100,000 credit card debt collection lawsuits between 2008 and 2011 without conducting sufficient research to properly assess the cases’ merits. The bank reportedly submitted 200 lawsuits over 15 weeks in 2011, including 32 lawsuits on January 5,…
Ex-Commission Officials, Others Want DC Circuit to Grant Stanford Ponzi Scam Victims SIPC Protection Former SEC Officials, law professors, and trade groups are among those pressing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to reject the regulator’s bid to compel Securities Investor Protection Corporation coverage for…
Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) has consented to pay $105M to investors of the now failed Medical Capital Holdings Inc. The bank had served as trustee for Medical Capital securities. The medical receivables financing company got about $2.2 billion from thousands of investors between 2001 and 2009 via the private…
Class action securities plaintiffs, led by the Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System, have settled their mortgage-backed securities lawsuit against Countrywide for $500 million. This is the largest federal class action MBS securities case in the US that has been resolved to date, even exceeding the $315 million settlement reached with…