Wine Mogul Accuses Fidelity of Fraud, Seeks up to $500M in FINRA Arbitration

Wine merchant Peter Deutsch has filed a FINRA arbitration claim seeking $400 – $500M from Fidelity. He claims that he might have earned that amount of money if only the financial firm had not stopped him from obtaining a 66% share of a company in which he had already invested $40M. Meantime, Fidelity is contending that it kept Deutsch from trading because of worries that he was attempting to illegally manipulate the company’s shares.

The dispute began when Deutsch sought to purchase at least another 50 million shares of stock in China Medical Technologies in 2012. His investment efforts, however, were barred by Fidelity, which said it was “uncomfortable” with the transaction. It was in 2011 that a sales team from Fidelity Family Office Services (FFOS) had sought Deutsche out to join its group of wealthy clients.

In court papers, Deutsch alleges that while he was trying to gain control of China Medical Technologies, which is a cancer treatment device maker, FFOS was aggressively buying the stock in secret rather than helping him. He also claims that Fidelity used his shares to its benefit even though this was not what he wanted. He believes that the firm blocked him from trading to conceal its wrongdoing.

He is accusing Fidelity of inappropriate share lending. The firm, however, describes its practice of lending out shares belonging to its clients as fully paid lending. According to Bloomberg, sources said that Fidelity, which insists that the arbitration case is without merit, maintains that it didn’t lend out Deutsch’s shares under its lending program but that it used its authority to lend shares out of his margin account. Securities lending is something that Fidelity clients consent to when they set up a margin account.

In 2015, Fidelity went to federal court to prevent Deutsch from gaining access to certain documents, which it said were protected under the Bank Secrecy Act. A judge ordered the firm to give him most of the documents, which he wanted for his FINRA arbitration claim against the broker-dealer. The securities case is ongoing.

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A wine mogul says Fidelity cheated him out of millions, Bloomberg, April 20, 2016