Financial Firms

Police Retirement System of St. Louis Also Suing JPMorgan Chase Executives Over “London Whale” Scandal

Published on: April 25, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The Police Retirement System of St. Louis is suing JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon and several other senior bank officers over the “London Whale” scandal. The pension fund, which owns 39,000 of the investment bank, is one of numerous investors seeking compensation. Dimon and the other JPMorgan executives are accused of disregarding the red flags indicating that the London-based operation was engaged in taking large scale risks that ultimately resulted in close to $6 billion in losses last year.

In its derivatives lawsuit, the Police Retirement System of St. Louis contends that the defendants “eviscerated” the risk controls of JPMorgan’s London unit to up profits. Even after the media reported that one of the bank’s traders in London was making big bets (that trader was eventually dubbed the “London Whale”), Dimon downplayed the news to investors. The pension fund contends that the executives and others breached their duties to shareholders by not stopping the risky trades.

In March, US lawmakers sought to understand the multimillion-dollar trading loss. At a hearing before Congress, they questioned past and current JPMorgan executives about the financial scandal. Their interrogation came a day after the release of a damning 300-page Congressional report that blamed the bank’s lax culture while also criticizing the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for also failing to follow up on warning signs.

The executives tried to defend themselves, saying their attempts to lower risks were countered by traders that purposely undervalued bets to conceal an increase in losses. Among the executives that gave testimony was ex-JPMorgan chief investment office head Ina Drew, whose group was in the middle of the debacle. She too blamed lower-level traders and others, while contending that she had been given inaccurate information. Drew said she didn’t know that traders were upping their bets.

Withering Questions at Senate Hearing on JPMorgan Loss, New York Times, March 15, 2013

JPMorgan hit with new investor lawsuit over “Whale” losses, Reuters, April 15, 2013

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New Hampshire Regulators Accuse Edward Jones of “Questionable Marketing” to Recruit Customers

Published on: April 23, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation says Edward Jones & Co. employed “questionable marketing” to bring in customers. Seeking up to $3 million, the brokerage firm is accused of making 20,000 calls to residents that were on NH’s National Do Not Call Registry.

According to regulators, no other broker-dealer has been named in as many complaints about unsolicited phone calls. A spokesperson for Edward Jones, however, disputes this contention.

With over 12,000 financial advisers and approximately 11,400 offices throughout the US-mostly there is just one broker per locale-the brokerage firm tries to work around telemarketing rules by getting brokers to go door-to-door. Training materials talk about how when a potential customer asks to be added to the do-not call list, the broker is supposed to respond by saying he/she respects the former’s decision but that another visit may be likely if something that could be of possible interest to the prospective client arises.

Lehman Brothers Australia Wants Federal Court to Approve $248M Settlement Payment Plan to Creditors

Published on: April 23, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The liquidators of Lehman Brothers Australia want the Federal Court there to approve their plan that would allow the bank to pay $248M in securities losses that were sustained by 72 local charities, councils, private investors, and churches. Although the court held Lehman liable, no compensation has been issued because the financial firm went bankrupt.

Per that ruling, the Federal Court found that Lehman’s Australian arm misled customers during the sale of synthetic collateralized debt obligations. The court also said that Lehman Brothers subsidiary Grange Securities was in breach of its fiduciary duty and took part in deceptive and misleading behavior when it put the very complex CDOs in the councils’ portfolio. (Lehman had acquired Grange Securities and Grange Asset Management in early 2007, thereby also taking charge of managing current and past relationships, including the asset management and transactional services for the councils.) The court determined that the council clients’ “commercial naivety” in getting into these complex transactions were to Grange’s advantage.

Via the liquidators’ plan, creditors would get a portion of a $211 million payout. This is much more than the $43 million that Lehman had offered to pay. The payout would include $45 million from American professional indemnity insurers to Lehman, which would then disburse the funds to those it owes.

Former Merrill Lynch, Oppenheimer, Deutsche Bank Broker is Ordered by FINRA To Pay Investor $11M Over Alleged Securities Fraud

Published on: April 19, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

A FINRA arbitration panel is ordering ex-broker Karl Hahn, who previously worked with Bank of America Corp’s (BAC) Merrill Lynch (MER), Oppenheimer & Co. (OPY), and Deutsche Bank AG’s (DB) Deutsche Bank Securities, to pay investor Chase Bailey $11 million because he sustained about $6 million in losses allegedly caused by securities fraud. Bailey contends that Hahn made excessive trades and misrepresented securities related to transactions involving a number of investments, including a variable annuity, approximately $2.3 million in fraudulent real estate financing involving East Coast properties, and covered calls.

In the filmmaker/Internet entrepreneur’s securities arbitration claim, Bailey named the three financial firms where Hahn previously worked. It is during this period that Bailey was allegedly defrauded. (He had moved his funds from one brokerage firm to the other each time Hahn was hired by that employer.) Bailey settled his case with Merrill for $700,000, while claims against Deutsche Bank and Oppenheimer were tossed out.

Per the FINRA arbitration ruling, Bailey is awarded $6.4 million in punitive damages and $4.1 million in compensatory damage. Ordering brokers to pay punitive damages is uncommon.

UBS Loses Appeal to Have FHFA’s $6.4 Billion MBS Fraud Lawsuit Dismissed

Published on: April 18, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is denying UBS AG’s (UBSN) bid to dismiss the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s mortgage-backed securities lawsuit accusing the financial firm of misrepresenting the quality of the loans underlying the residential MBS that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bought. FHFA is the mortgage financiers’ appointed conservator.

In its appeal, UBS contended that the MBS lawsuit was filed too late under federal law. However, the 2nd circuit, affirming U.S. District Judge Denise Cote’s ruling, determined that the filing period for type of securities case was extended by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.

The RMBS lawsuit is one of 17 FHFA cases against large financial institutions over alleged misrepresentations involving over $200 million in mortgage-backed securities. Judge Cote is presiding over 15 of these MBS lawsuits.

CtW Investment Group Wants JPMorgan Chase Shareholders To Vote Against Re-Electing Four Board of Directors

Published on: April 15, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

CtW Investment Group has announced plans to file a document with the Securities and Exchange Commission that would press shareholders to vote against reelecting four JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) board of directors: James Crown, Ellen Futter, Laban Jackson, and David Cote. The group, which represents pension funds that together hold approximately 6 million of the financial firm’s shares and is labor organization Change to Win’s advisory arm, also intends to make its request in writing to the shareholders.

CtW believes that these directors can no longer be depended on to deal with oversight failures and blames most of them for poor risk management oversight that they say allowed the trading fiasco to happen. Meantime, JPMorgan is seeking support among its biggest shareholders. It claims that the board isn’t to be blamed for the “London Whale,” which involved its operation in England making risky bets and losing nearly $6 billion in losses.

Meantime, in a report on the global investment banking industry, JPMorgan’s analysts pointed to Goldman Sachs (GS) and Deutsche Bank (DB) as examples of Tier 1 investment banks to stay away from. It described this tier of banks as “un-investable, with their viability in doubt.

LPL Financial Continues to Stay On Regulators’ Radar

Published on: April 10, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

According to a number of state and federal regulators, they are continuing to keep their eyes on LPL Financial (LPLA), the fourth biggest brokerage firm in the US after Wells Fargo (WFC), Morgan Stanley (MS)and Merrill Lynch (MER). With 13,300 brokers, 4.3 million customers, and 6,500 offices, it is the biggest broker-dealer in rural America.

Yet even as LPL has grown, so has the number of censures it, and its brokers have been faced with numerous allegations, including securities fraud, selling unsuitable investments to unsophisticated investors, and speculative trading in client accounts. Just in the last 18 months, regulators in Massachusetts, Illinois, Oregon, Montana, and Pennsylvania have imposed penalties on LPL for inadequate broker supervision.

LPL’s recent fast growth can in part be attributed to the 2008 economic crisis, which caused many investors to flee from more prominent brokerage firms and into the arms of independent broker-dealers. Brokers at firms such as LPL are not employees but contractors that are able to earn a huge percentage of the fees and commissions. The supposed advantage for investors is that independent broker-dealers don’t have their own investment products that they are trying to foist onto customers.

However, some analysts believe that the bigger commissions that LPL has to pay its brokers means that the firm has less cash for compliance and is more prone to draw in brokers wanting to get around the rules. Evidence of possible problems from this independent broker system can be found in Montana, where 31 LPL brokers were named in eight securities complaints in the past five years. According to the state, almost half of the LPL brokers there are registered there as their own supervisors. In Washington State, authorities filed a case against LPL last year because a broker allegedly sold nontraded real estate investment trusts to dozens of older investors.

Fast-Growing Brokerage Firm Often Tangles With Regulators, New York Times, March 21, 2013

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Medical Capital Fraud Lawsuit Against Wells Fargo Must Proceed

Published on: April 10, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

U.S. District Judge David Carter has turned down Wells Fargo & Co.’s (WFC) bid to throw out a securities lawsuit filed by investors accusing the investment bank of not fulfilling its role as trustee for debt issued by Medical Capital Holdings, which failed in an approximately billion dollar fraud in 2009. His ruling removes any obstacles to a possible trial. Claims could hit the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The investors in this securities case are among those that purchased notes put out by three Medical Capital special purpose companies that named the investment bank as their trustee. They are accusing Wells Fargo of 63 breaches. Meantime, the financial firm maintains that it didn’t act in bad faith and it wasn’t negligent in the way it fulfilled its contractual duties.

Per court documents, the holding company had raised $1.7 billion from over 20,000 investors between 2003 and July 2009, which was when the SEC filed a securities fraud lawsuit against it and two of its executives. The company soon shut its doors. Later, a receiver discovered that investors had lost $839 million to $1.08 billion in a Ponzi-like scam that involved the payment of extra fees.

Many Investors Find that Securities Arbitration Can Be Better than Court

Published on: April 9, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The dismissal of an Apple REIT class action lawsuit against David Lerner Associates Inc. in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York should have little effect on the Apple REIT arbitration cases that are being resolved through Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration. In fact, most investors are likely to recoup their losses via this avenue.

Per Bloomberg, Investors are contending that they were defrauded in the underwriting and sale of more than $6.8 billion Apple Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), which were marketed as suitable for conservative investors. Meantime, Lerner Associates earned over $600 million in commissions and fees as five Apple REITs made above $6 billion.

Last year alone, FINRA told David Lerner to pay $12 million in Apple REIT Ten restitution to investors. The financial firm allegedly targeted elderly investors, misleading them while failing to properly disclose the risks involved in the securities.

Previous Dissent by Arbitrator is Not Reason to Vacate Award Morgan Keegan Was Ordered to Pay Investors, Says District Court

Published on: April 8, 2013 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida is holding that an arbitration award granted to investors cannot be vacated under the Federal Arbitration Act just because an arbitrator exhibited obvious partiality when failing to reveal that he wrote a dissent in an unrelated arbitration that allegedly showed he had prejudged issues of law. The securities case is Antietam Industries Inc. v. Morgan Keegan & Co.

Petitioners Antietam Industries Inc., Janice Warfel, and William Warfel contend they sustained financial losses over their RMK fund investments. In 2011, they filed a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration case claiming that their money was lost because Morgan Keegan had made misrepresentations while failing to disclose how risky the funds were.

Last year, the panel awarded the petitioners $100,000 in compensatory damages and $100,000 in punitive damages, plus fees and interest, for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and other claims. When they sought to confirm the award, Morgan Keegan submitted a motion to vacate, pointing to FAA and contending that arbitrator Christopher Mass allegedly showed partiality and “misbehavior” with his failure to disclose his previous dissent. The court, however, rejected Morgan Keegan’s argument, saying it was not convinced that Mass was predisposed or had prejudged.