Mar 15, 2010
By Kristen French
Banking reform legislation introduced Monday by Senate banking committee chairman Christopher Dodd would give the SEC greater enforcement muscle over RIAs, and would require it to conduct a study examining the effectiveness of extending the fiduciary standard to brokers. ...
Mar 12, 2010
By Mindy Diamond
The hottest trend over the past 18 months has been the breakaway broker, a wirehouse advisor who leaves his firm to either become an RIA or to affiliate with an independent broker dealer. ...
Mar 11, 2010
By Kristen French
Senator Christopher Dodd plans to introduce his financial regulatory reform bill Monday without Republican support. He’s still hopeful that negotiations with Senator Bob Corker (R.-Tenn.) will succeed, however, he said in a statement Thursday morning. Previous negotiations with Senator Richard Shelby (R.- Ga.) fell apart last month. ...
Mar 10, 2010
By Jerry Gleeson
New rules aimed at preventing registered investment advisors from pulling off ponzi schemes take effect Friday. Among other things, RIAs firms that hold clients assets in custody will be required to undergo annual surprise audits, conducted by independent public accountants. ...
Mar 9, 2010
By Kristen French
You know things are getting hairy when clients starting turning guns on their financial advisors. A disgruntled client opened fire on a financial advisor and his son in Dallas, Texas Monday afternoon. According to a colleague of the financial advisor, the gunman, Robert Mustard, 60, was unhappy about a bad investment he made in some Fannie Mae bonds. ...
Mar 5, 2010
By Kristen French
The mainstream press on the left and the right is lately beating the drum for the fiduciary standard. It’s hard to know whether this kind of media attention will change any minds in Washington, but it could certainly influence brokerage clients, many of whom have already been migrating to investment advisers who act as fiduciaries on the RIA side of the business. ...
Mar 3, 2010
By Kristen French
A new website is trying to cash in on the social networking craze and resolve some of the thorny regulatory questions that social networking sites raise for financial advisors. ...
Mar 2, 2010
By Jerry Gleeson
Registered investment advisors report that their clients are closing their wallets and watching their dimes and quarters. ...
Mar 2, 2010
Want to “socialize” with other financial advisors? Discuss how to sell your book? Have a question about marketing yourself to high-net-worth investors? These and many more topics are being discussed right now on RegisteredRep.com’s Advisor Forums.For more, please go to AdvisorForums
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Mar 2, 2010
By John Aidan Byrne
Lax standards among financial advisers who manage 401(k)s and IRAs are in the crosshairs of the White House, which has proposed rules that require advisors to either use independent computer models that spit out advice, or else avoid steering workers into funds to which they are tied or that pay them a fee based on their recommendation. ...
Mar 2, 2010
By Kristen French
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke may take the reins of consumer protection if the most recent regulatory reform proposal makes it to the Senate floor. ...
Mar 1, 2010
By Halah Touryalai
A court case over the repayment of upfront loans to brokers is turning into a legal battle over forced FINRA arbitration....
Feb 26, 2010
By Christina Mucciolo
Some lawyers and executives anticipate an overhaul to the broker protocol agreement, which has gotten unruly with the growing number of signatory firms, the rising number of exceptions attached to the agreement and the
high rate of advisors switching firms these days.
...
Feb 25, 2010
By Kristen French
LinkedIn has some cool data analysis on Wall Street job trends. Many of the refugees from the collapse of late 2008 ended up at Barclay’s, which grabbed 10 percent of laid off talent, according to a blog entry on LinkedIn. Other big beneficiaries include Credit Suisse, which took 1.5 percent and Citigroup, which took 1.1 percent of individuals who were laid off. Some had speculated that those laid off in the downturn left the financial industry all together, a hypothesis belied by LinkedIn’s data. (via The Big Picture.)...
Feb 25, 2010
By Jerry Gleeson
Wealth managers will find profits more elusive in 2010, and most are reconsidering their game plans accordingly, says a survey from the Corporate Executive Board, a Washington, D.C., management consultancy. High on the board’s list of recommendations: FAs should link what they charge a client to the effort spent on the account. ...
Feb 23, 2010
By Halah Touryalai
First, there was the breakaway broker phenomenon; now, it seems, we have a growing vogue of breakaway clients—former wirehouse investors who ditch their old advisors for new ones at independent RIAs or broker/dealers. ...
Feb 23, 2010
By Jerry Gleeson
High-income households may be as worried about their financial health as less affluent households, a survey of American savings habits suggests....
Feb 22, 2010
By David A. Geracioti, VonAldo.com
Dr. Marc Faber, who predicted the 1987 crash and the recent financial crisis, is predictably gloomy. Buy farmland, gold and head into the country to avoid a "dirty" war, he told a conference. For more, please go to VonAldo.com, the blog of Registered Rep. Editor-in-Chief David A. Geracioti....
Feb 19, 2010
By Jerry Gleeson
A senior executive at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney has jumped ship for Merrill Lynch. Jimmy Tighe, former New York City regional director for Morgan has been hired by Merrill as managing director and business & resource integration executive at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management....
Feb 19, 2010
By Christina Mucciolo
This week the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority announced it is seeking the SEC’s approval to expand the amount of information made public on current and former brokers’ permanent records in its free online CRD database, BrokerCheck. While the disclosures are aimed at making bad brokers’ records more transparent to the public, it could also make some good brokers look bad, and make it harder for them to attract new clients. ...
Feb 19, 2010
By Stan Luxenberg
The best ETFs are cheap to buy, easy to trade and benchmarked to quality indices. ...
Feb 18, 2010
By David A. Geracioti, VonAldo.com
Financial advisors with entrepreneurial clients—first-generation wealth creators—best take heed of Obama’s recently introduced plans to bring back the federal estate tax. Obama’s plan would actually raise taxes on farmers and small businesses despite decreased tax and increased exemptions. (FAs with old money clients, well, you’ve probably already helped them take steps to dampen estate taxes.) For more, please go to VonAldo.com, the blog of Registered Rep. Editor-in-Chief David A. Geracioti.
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Feb 17, 2010
By Kristen French
Senator Tim Johnson (R- S.D.), incoming Senate Banking Committee Chair, began floating an amendment last week that would eliminate from Senate regulatory reform legislation the application of a fiduciary standard to investment advice provided by brokers. Instead, Johnson’s amendment calls for an 18-month SEC study on the fiduciary issue. But some say it may just be a negotiating tactic....
Feb 16, 2010
By Mindy Diamond, RR columnist and president, Diamond Consultants
Multiple publications have reported recently that the massive switching of firms in the advisor population will subside this year, and that 2010 will be about staying put and focusing on growing your books. That may be, but for top producers, wirehouse recruiting deals are even bigger than last year, topping at 330 percent of production. ...
Feb 12, 2010
By Stan Luxenberg, RR mutual fund editor
While some growth managers seek companies that are reporting the most rapid earnings gains, Janus Fund (JDGAX) avoids the highflyers. Instead, the fund favors predictable blue chips. The aim is to find dominate businesses that can grow steadily for years—and avoid outsized losses. ...
