Venecredit Fined $25K for Working with Foreign Finders to Generate Retail Investor Business According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Venecredit Securities must pay a $25,000 fine for allegedly using foreign finders to get new retail investor business. The financial firm has now been censured for two years. The SRO…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has affirmed the dismissal of Lambrecht v. O’Neal and Sollins v. O’Neal, two double derivative actions that were brought under Delaware law for Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and its subsidiary Merrill Lynch & Co. The cases were brought by Merrill…
BP Plc. has consented to settle for $525 million Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that it gave the agency and investors misleading information about the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. If approved, this would be the third biggest penalty in SEC history. According to the Commission, during the crisis the…
A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority panel says that Merrill Lynch (MER) has to pay Michele and Robert Billings $1.34 million for allegedly misrepresenting the risks involved in preferred shares of Fannie Mae. The couple, who used to own a pest control business, placed $2.3 million in the shares in 2008…
A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority panel is ordering Merrill Lynch (MER), a Bank of America Corp. (BAC) unit, to pay $3.6 million to a Brazilian heiress who contends that she lost millions of dollars because of unauthorized trades that her brother made in her account. The securities arbitration case was…
Merrill Lynch (MER) has arrived at an “agreement in principle” to resolve the class action lawsuit filed by John Burnette and Scott Chambers over deferred compensation that they contend that the brokerage firm refused to pay them after it merged with Bank of America (BAC) in 2008 and they left…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has affirmed a lower court’s ruling to dismiss the ARS lawsuit filed against Merrill Lynch (MER), Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith Inc. ( MLPF&S), Moody’s Investor Services (MCO), and the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (MHP). Pursuant to state and federal law,…
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority says that it is fining Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. $2.8M in the wake of certain alleged supervisory failures that the SRO says led to the financial firm billing clients unwarranted fees. The financial firm paid back the $32M in remediation to affected…
With their share of the high-net-worth-market expected to drop down to 42% in 2014 from the 56% peak it reached five years ago, wirehouses are looking to regain their grip. According to Cerulli Associates, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MS), and UBS…
A Financial Industry Arbitration panel has ordered Merrill Lynch (BAC) to pay over $10 million to two brokers who claim the financial firm wrongly denied their deferred compensation plans to vest. Per the FINRA arbitration panel, senior management at Merrill purposely engaged in a scam that was “systematic and systemic”…