Jun 1, 2006
Not when it comes to the interests of an advisor's client. They win out over your firm's dictates every time, though an advisor should be diplomatic in dealing with their supervisors...
May 1, 2006
By Bill Singer
NASD's baffling approach to Written Supervisory Procedures...
May 1, 2006
BY KRISTEN FRENCH AND ANN THERESE PALMER
Arbitration used to be relatively quick and cheap. Not anymore, and no one - not firms nor lawyers, nor brokers, nor customers - seems to like it. What to do?...
May 1, 2006
What's an advisor's obligation when an elderly client wants to liquidate her investment portfolio, which consists entirely of stocks...
May 1, 2006
BY HALAH TOURYALAI
A labor lawyer, armed with depression era law that was originally intended to protect blue-collar workers, is threatening Wall Street's age old compensation structure. Do you deserve to be paid overtime? Sick of paying your assistants salary?...
Apr 1, 2006
When a former co-worker sets out to ruin an advisor's reputation it may be extremely difficult to extract any justice, much less the smudge on his reputation...
Apr 1, 2006
By Bill Singer
How a visit to the doctor resulted in a five year ban....
Apr 1, 2006
John Churchill
Small hedge fund managers positive but wary...
Apr 1, 2006
John Churchill
Merrill Lynch agreed to pay a $5 million NASD fine to settle charges that the firm's brokerage client call centers were poorly supervised. ...
Feb 1, 2006
By Bill Singer
Brokers must take tests. It's a fact of Wall Street life. That some people will go too far in an effort to pass them is sadly a fact of industry life,...
Feb 1, 2006
John Churchill
Penitence Pays Off for Putnam: The SEC filed charges against six former officers of Putnam Fiduciary Trust Company (PFTC) for helping to defraud a defined...
Feb 1, 2006
By John Churchill
The mechanics of regulatory bodies only occasionally attracts the interests of rank-and-file advisors, like back in 1996 when the Nasdaq market was nailed...
Feb 1, 2006
Ann Therese Palmer
What does an advisor do when clients at his firm are routinely charged an undisclosed commission on top of fees and he suffers for not falling in line?...
Jan 1, 2006
Q: I had an oral contract with my partner that I would inherit his $40 million book when he retired in two to three years, but he was laid off in the...
Jan 1, 2006
John Churchill
Congregation Con man: James Upshaw didn't need fancy performance charts in order to convince 144 people to entrust him with a combined total of $3.2 million...
Dec 1, 2005
Terry Kassel, head of Merrill Lynch's human resources department, will be retiring at the end of this year, after 20 years with the firm and four years...
Dec 1, 2005
Q: As a nonproducing registered representative who acts in a purely operational and/or compliance capacity, how much are we expected or allowed to make...
Dec 1, 2005
By Bill Singer
Andrew Davis Mills was a salesperson and assistant manager in the women's shoe department at Nordstrom's in San Diego. Apparently, Mills and his colleagues were having some difficulty meeting their monthly sales quota the old-fashioned way. So, these enterprising employees came up with a foolproof scheme: Use their own credit cards to purchase enough shoes to meet their monthly quota, then return the purchases for full credit....
Dec 1, 2005
John Churchill
Hackers Beating the Market: The SEC is suing Estonian investment bank Lohmus Haavel & Viisemann of Tallinn, Estonia, and two employees, for gaining access...
Nov 1, 2005
John Churchill
Theodore Sihpol III, a former broker at Banc of America Securities (BAS), and poster boy for the market-timing scandals and the first target of Spitzer...
Nov 1, 2005
By Bill Singer
In October 2003, a back-office glitch made Robert Burns the recipient of $12,000 that did not belong to him. Burns was an advisor with Merrill Lynch,...
Nov 1, 2005
Cooked Books: Philip Bennett, former CEO of Refco Inc., the largest independent commodities and futures exchange, was arrested on securities fraud charges...
Nov 1, 2005
Q: Is there any way my employer can find out if I receive W-2 income from other sources, which, by the way, are not from other brokerage firms? When I...
Oct 1, 2005
John Churchill
Citizens Financial Group is punishing its brokerage force for targeting elderly bank customers in the sale of its high-risk variable annuities. How? By...
Oct 1, 2005
Lawyers, Drugs and Money: Consuelo Marquez, an ex-Lehman Brothers broker who worked at the firm from 1995 to 2000, pleaded guilty in federal court in...