The Securities and Exchange Commission says that Virtus Investment Advisers will pay $16.5M to resolve charges accusing the investment management firm of misleading mutual fund investors and others using ads with false historical performance information about exchange-traded fund portfolio strategy AlphaSector. According to the regulator, the firm publicized a performance…
The Securities and Exchange Commission is reminding advisory firms to stay aware of their own compliance functions. After about 20 examinations of advisers that utilized compliance firms, the regulator found that external compliance officers sometimes were not aware of a firm’s business access, did not communicate regularly with firm principals,…
Prosecutors in the United Kingdom have charged 10 former Barclays Plc (BARC) and Deutsche Bank AG (DEB) employees with rigging the Euribor benchmark. The ex-Deutsche Bank traders are Christian Bittar, Achim Kraemer, Joerg Vogt, Andreas Hauschild, Kai-Uwe Kappauf, and Ardalan Gharagozlou. The former Barclays traders are Philippe Moryoussef, Colin Bermingham,…
Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin is charging Realty Capital Securities with fraud involving the purported gathering of proxy votes to support AR Capital-sponsored real estate deals. Realty Capital Securities is part of RCS Capital Corp., also known as RCAP. Galvin wants to take away RCS’s registration as a…
Unpaid debt incurred by oil companies to pay for new drilling equipment and rigs could lead to a number of them defaulting. According to CNN, many of these companies had expected prices for oil to hit the $100 range when they incurred the debt and are now contending with oil…
Spurs Star Tim Duncan Says Ex-Financial Adviser Bilked Him of Millions NBA star Tim Duncan is suing his former financial adviser again. The San Antonio Spurs player says that Charles Banks cost him millions of dollars because he persuaded him to invest $1.1 million in a cosmetics company. Banks purportedly…
A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration panel has awarded First United Bank & Trust and First United Corp. over $11.5M in their securities fraud case against FTN Financial Securities Corp., Hugh James Boone, and Franklin Benjamin Kennedy. The bank is claiming unsuitable investments, misrepresentations, omission, breach of fiduciary duty, failure…
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) is folding its BRIC fund and merging it with a broader emerging market fund. The BRIC fund, which invests in Russia, China, Brazil, and India, has been losing money. In its filing to the SEC, the bank said that it doesn’t see the nine-year-old product…
Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) recently introduced legislation that would let defendants choose the option of having their case tried in federal court instead of by a Securities and Exchange Commission administrative law judge. Garrett believes that the regulator has been overusing its in-house courts, practically turning itself into “judge, jury,…
FINRA Plans to Fine MetLife for Purported Variable Annuities Violations The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is looking to impose a significant fine against MetLife’s broker-dealer unit related to possible violations involving variable annuities. The company is cooperating with the regulator’s probe, which is looking at alleged suitability, misrepresentation, and supervision…