Financial Firms

Merrill Lynch to Pay $425M to the SEC and $5M to FINRA for Misusing Customer Funds and Misleading Investors About Structured Notes

Published on: June 23, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Merrill Lynch will pay $415M to resolve civil charges accusing the firm of misusing customer funds and not safeguarding customer securities from creditor claims. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the firm violated the regulator’s Customer Protection Rule by using customer funds inappropriately instead of depositing them in a reserve account.

Instead, said the SEC, Merrill Lynch took part in complex options trades that artificially lowered how much in customer funds needed to be in the reserve account. This liberated billions of dollars a week from ’09 to ’12. The firm used the funds for its own trades. If Merrill had failed with these trades there would have been a substantial shortfall in the reserve account.

Merrill Lynch, which is owned by Bank of America (BAC), has admitted wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

The SEC said that the firm violated the Customer Protection Rule when it didn’t abide by the requirement that customer securities that had been fully paid for be kept in lien-free accounts and protected from third parties claims in the event that Merrill Lynch were to collapse. Such a failure would have exposed customers to great risk and there would have been uncertainty as to whether they’d be able to get their securities back.
Also, contends the Commission, from ’09 to ’15, Merrill held up to $58B of customer securities a day in a clearing account that was subject to a general lien to be handled by its clearing bank.

HSBC Holdings to Pay $1.575B In Mortgage Lending Lawsuit

Published on: June 17, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

HSBC Finance Corp., an HSBC Holdings Plc. (HSBC) unit, will pay $1.575B to settle a shareholder class action securities case that was brought in 2002. The case involves Household International, the consumer finance business that HSBC purchased in 2003. Household International is now HSBC Finance.

Household shareholders accused the company of inflating its share price by hiding its poor mortgage lending practices and bad quality loans. When Household consented to pay U.S. state regulators $484M to resolve predatory lending claims in 2011, its share price dropped by over 50%.

HSBC became the defendant against claims by Household shareholders when it purchased the company for $14.2B. That deal eventually led to write-downs for tens of billions of dollars for bad loans in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Shareholders won a $2.46B judgment against the British Bank in 2013. In May 2015, however, a federal appeals court tossed the award and demanded a new trial to decide whether “nonfraud factors” that were specific to the firm played a part in the Household’s share price dropping.

US Supreme Court Strikes Down Law That Would Have Let Puerto Rico Public Utilities Restructure Their Debt

Published on: June 15, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Puerto Rico law that would have let its public utilities restructure $20 billion of debt. The territory’s officials enacted the Recovery Act in 2014 in an attempt to help it deal with its $70 billion of debt. Puerto Rico’s large public utilities owe about $26 billion to bondholders and banks. It was their creditors that challenged the law in federal court.

Puerto Rico is not allowed to file for bankruptcy protection. The Commonwealth is excluded from Chapter 9, which is the section of the bankruptcy code that usually applies to local governments, including cities, public utilities, counties, and other branches that have become insolvent and need help. (Puerto Rico has tried to convince the U.S. congress to get rid of the 1984 rule that excluded it from Chapter 9. No reason has been provided for why it was deliberately left out.)

Writing for the majority in the Supreme Court ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas reminded us that the federal bankruptcy code does not let lower government units and states enact their own bankruptcy laws. However, U.S. legislators are looking for ways to potentially help Puerto Rico.

A bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives to help the territory deal with its debt crisis has gone to the Senate for consideration. If passed into law, the bill would establish a board to manage the restructuring of Puerto Rico’s debt and oversee the territory’s finances. The Commonwealth sure could use the help.

Ex-NBA and NFL Players Win $819K Arbitration Award in FINRA Arbitration Case Against Morgan Stanley Smith Barney

Published on: June 13, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration panel has awarded former NBA basketball player Keyon Dooling and ex-NFL athlete John St. Clair $819,000 in damages in their securities case against Morgan Stanley (MS). The two men accused the firm of negligent supervision of a former broker whom they blame for their investment losses.

The rogue broker, Aaron Parthemer, has since been barred from the securities industry. It was Parthemer who recommended that the former professional athletes put money into two businesses. Dooling invested $700K in apparel company Global Village Concerns and Miami Beach night spot Club Play. St. Clair invested $200,000 in Global Village Concerns. According to the ex-pro athletes’ securities fraud lawyers, the two investments proved worthless.

Now, the FINRA arbitration panel says that Morgan Stanley must pay Dooling and his spouse over $608K while St. Clair and his wife are to get over $200K. Meantime, Morgan Stanley disagrees with the panel’s ruling, contending that that it was Parthemer who failed to let the firm know that he was engaged in external investment activities. This was the alleged reason that FINRA barred him from the industry.

For instance, Parthemer is accused of lending $400K to three clients without getting his firm’s consent, giving former employers Wells Fargo (WFC) and Morgan Stanley, as well as FINRA, false information, presenting private securities transactions that went undisclosed and involved clients that invested over $3M, running a nightclub, operating a marketing firm, and winning a contract to promote a tequila brand.

Libyan Fund Accuses Goldman Sachs of Financial Exploitation

Published on: June 13, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

In the High Court in London, the trial in the lawsuit brought by the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) against Goldman Sachs (GS) is under way. The sovereign wealth fund claims that in 2008 the Wall Street bank misled it about a number of derivatives transactions, causing it to lose $1.2B when the contracts matured five years ago. The transactions are tied to Citigroup (C) stock and other companies’ stmck.

Court filings state that LIA had wanted to buy stakes in global companies that it could potentially partner up with in the future for development. The sovereign wealth fund was set up in 2006 to manage money from the country’s oil fields after Libya was taken off the U.S. government’s list of states that were considered terrorist sponsors.

Goldman made over $200M on the transactions. Meantime, the Libyan fund lost its investment when the economic crisis caused stock prices to drop.

Goldman disputes the allegations made by the Libyan Investment Authority, which claims that it was an unsophisticated investor that the firm took advantage of, persuading it to invest in transactions that it didn’t want or understand. In court, a lawyer for the sovereign wealth fund accused Goldman of using gifts, trips to Morocco, London, and Dubai, training programs, and an internship for the brother of the deputy executive officer of the fund to get the fund to invest.

Oppenheimer to Pay $2.9M for Unsuitable Non-Traditional Exchange-Traded Fund Sales

Published on: June 9, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

FINRA is fining Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. (OPY) $2.2M for the sale of non-traditional exchange-traded funds, including inverse, leveraged, and inverse-leveraged ETFs, to retail customers without proper supervision and for suggesting them to clients even though they were not appropriate investments for them. The self-regulatory organization is also making the firm pay over $716,000 to the customers who were impacted.

FINRA said that even though Oppenheimer put into place policies barring representatives from both selling non-traditional ETFs to retail customers and executing non-traditional ETF purchases that were unsolicited for said customers unless they met certain requirements—including liquid assets greater than $50OK—the firm did not do a reasonable job of making sure that these policies were properly enforced. (The firm had put them into effect after FINRA issued a notice advising brokerage firms of the risks involved in non-traditional ETFs.) Because of this, Oppenheimer continued to market non-traditional ETFs to retail customers and effect transactions that were unsolicited for those who failed to meet the requirements.

Morgan Stanley and E*Trade Securities Face Penalties for Inadequate Customer Information Protection

Published on: June 8, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The Securities and Exchange Commission says that Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC (MS) will pay a $1M penalty to resolve charges involving its purported failure to protect customer data. Some of this information was hacked and violators attempted to sell the data online.

According to the regulator, the firm did not put into place written policies and procedures that were designed in a manner reasonable enough to protect customer information. Because of this, said the SEC, from ’11 to ’14, former Morgan Stanley employee Galen J. Marsh was able to access without permission information regarding approximately 730,000 accounts and move them to his own server. This made it possible for third parties to access and hack the information from there.

The Commission said that Morgan Stanley had two internal portals that made it possible for employees such as Marsh to access confidential customer account information and it was for these internal applications that the firm lacked the needed authorization modules that would have restricted which employees could see this information. This deficiency existed for over a decade.

It was just last week that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said that it was censuring and fining E*Trade Securities LLC for supervisory violations related to customer order information protection and for not performing sufficient review of the quality of customer order executions. As a firm that offers online services for securities investing and trading to retail customers, E*Trade is supposed to evaluate the competing markets that it routes customer orders to, including exchange and non-exchange market centers. Firms such as E*Trade are also supposed to conduct periodic and stringent reviews of the quality of customer order executions to see if there are any differences among the markets, which is why the firm set up a Best Execution Committee to do this job.

Citibank Settles Libor, Euroyen Tibor, and YenLibor Rigging Allegations With $425M Fine

Published on: June 4, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Citibank (C) is the first U.S. bank to settle allegations of benchmark interest rate manipulation. To resolve the Commodities Futures Trading Commission claims that it manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rates (LIBOR), Citibank will pay $250M. It will pay $175M to resolve Euroyen Tibor and Yen Libor rigging claims. Also settling charges within this case are Citibank Japan Ltd (CJL) and Citigroup Global Markets Japan Inc. (CGMJ).

The CFTC claims that between ’07 and ‘12 Citigroup had specific traders input false information so their trading positions would benefit. It also claims that the bank’s affiliates issued false reports related to dollar Libor rates and ISDAFIX benchmark rates during the financial crisis so that its reputation would be protected.

Citigroup Global Markets Japan is charged with trying to rig Euroyen TIBOR and Yen LIBOR. Citibank Japan Ltd. is accused of engaging in false reporting related to the Euroyen TIBOR so that derivatives trading positions priced according to Euroyen TIBOR and Yen LIBOR would purportedly benefit.

Libor, along with the Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate (Tibor), is what banks use to establish the cost of borrowing from one another. Libor is also used to set the rates on mortgages, credit cards, derivatives, and other financial products.

Securities Cases: Stephens Inc. to Pay $900K Fine, FINRA Bans Ex-Wells Fargo Broker, And Former State Street Executive is Accused of Charging Hidden Fees

Published on: June 3, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

SEC Files Fraud Charges Against Former State Street Executive
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is filing fraud charges against ex-State Street Corp. (STT) executive Ross McClellan. According to the regulator, McLellan was one of a number of people who purposely charged hidden markups on certain transactions to customers, making the bank $20M in extra revenue.

Addressing the charges, McLellan’s lawyer claims that his client did not commit any securities law violations and that all banks charge client markups on bond transactions to make money. The attorney also noted that it was State Street and not the bank that profited from the charges.

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged McLellan with securities fraud, conspiracy, and wire fraud.

Ex-Wells Fargo Broker to Be Barred
Christopher John Pierce, a former Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) broker, will be barred from working with any FINRA-registered firm and associating with any member of the self-regulatory organization. Pierce agreed to the bar after he was accused of stealing money from the accounts of banking customers.

Female Executive Accuses Bank of America of Misleading Trading Clients, Including Citigroup and Blackstone

Published on: June 1, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Megan Messina is suing Bank of America (BAC). She is a managing director at the bank’s structured credit products division. In her lawsuit, Messina claims that the bank tried to get rid of her when she questioned the way some clients were treated and complained about the sexism she allegedly experienced. She also contends that clients such as Citigroup (C) and Blackstone Group LP (BX) were misled by her employer.

According to Bloomberg, in her complaint, Messina provides examples of alleged misconduct at the bank, including coworkers front-running trades made by clients, such as Citigroup, while keeping information from other clients, such as Blackstone. Messina claims that Bank of America apologized to client Anchorage Capital Group after the bank purposely provided the firm with false information. Bank of America also purportedly apologized to Pimco for “doctoring” trading records.