The U.S. Treasury Secretary announced the second stage of its “capital markets competitiveness plan” devoted to efforts to “modernize the structure” of the regulatory system for all U.S. financial services providers. The announcement was made before the New York Stock Exchange’s conference on deals and deal-making, hosted by the Wall…
NASD levied a fine of $250,000 against Wells Fargo Securities LLC and $40,000 against its former research director, plus other sanctions, for failing to disclose that the lead analyst on reports issued on a company had accepted a position with that company. The research reports concerned Cadence Design Systems, which…
The NASD fined four firms for mutual fund sales violations and for failures to properly supervise such sales. The fine amounts are $473,000 against MML Investors Services, Inc., $354,000 against NYLIFE Securities LLC, $322,000 against Securities America, Inc. and $100,000 against Northwestern Mutual Investment Services. The violations charged include sales…
H&R Block reported a loss of $433.7 million for its fiscal year 2007, compared to a gain of $490.4 million a year ago, and it lost $85.6 million in the fourth quarter vs. a gain of $587.5 in the year earlier period. The losses can mostly be attributed to Option…
The newly formed self-regulatory organization for broker-dealers will be called The Securities Industry Regulatory Authority (SIRA). This “new” organization is actually the same NASD, plus the regulatory functions of the NYSE, which it paid-off NASD members to assume. So a question to the NASD is: Why change your name?) SIRA…
Wachovia Securities LLC of Richmond, Virginia says that it will pay $2 million in restitution to settle charges that it did not properly supervise its fee-based brokerage business from 2001 to 2004. It also says that it will pay some 1,300 customers who were either allowed to continue the inappropriate…
An SEC administrative law judge found that JB Oxford Holdings, Inc. “violated the forwarding pricing rule” when it executed trades after 4pm EST at the same day price, but found the firms former general counsel was not to blame. ALJ Robert Mahoney determined that JB Oxford Holdings was involved in…
First announced on this Blog last week was news of problems at Brookstreet Securities. Midweek, the firm then reported that “disaster” had struck because CMOs owned by the firm and its clients had been marked down in price and margin calls had caused the firm to reach the brink of…
Brookstreet Securities Corp. has liquidated securities following margin calls by National Fidelity Securities (NFS), a division of Fidelity Investments. Earlier in the week, it was reported on this blog that Brookstreet informed its agents in an E-mail that “disaster” had struck the firm. NFS had marked down the value of…
As a former Vice President and registered representative at several major brokerage firms for 20 years, I witnessed Wall Street in action. My assessment of Wall Street is that the majority of the 600,000+ registered representatives at over 5,000 brokerage firms are fairly honest people who seek the best interest…