Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith Inc. (MER) must now pay Massachusetts securities regulators a fine for allegedly failing to supervise a broker who went on to defraud customers. According to regulators and prosecutors, when she was with Merrill, now ex-broker Jane E. O’Brien borrowed over $2 million of clients’…
After its tentative $13 billion residential mortgage-backed securities settlement with the US Department of Justice, now JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM) looks like it could be getting ready to settle yet another MBS fraud case, this time with bondholders, such as Neuberger Berman Group LLC, Allianz SE’s Pacific Investment Management,…
Reuters is reporting that according to a source in the know, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s (JPM) tentative $13 billion residential mortgage-backed securities settlement with the US Justice Department has hit a couple of stumbling blocks. The firm is reportedly trying to include a provision that would close any criminal…
UBS Financial Services, Inc. and its Puerto Rican divisions (UBS) continue to feel the heat in the Puerto Rico Bond crisis, as labor groups in the US territory call on its government to file a bond fraud claim against the bank. They are claiming that the financial firm “tricked” the…
Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Morgan Stanley (MS), which own the largest brokerage firms in the world, are declaring a cease-fire when it comes to using big bonuses to keep their own brokers and lure each other’s brokers away. Bank of America Corp. owns Merrill Lynch (MER). After payments…
In a FINRA arbitration case filed by claimants Felix Bernard-Diaz, Julian Rodriguez and Luz Rodriguez against BBVA Securities of Puerto Rico, Inc., Jorge Bravo, Rafael Colon Ascar, Julio Cayere, and Sonia Marbarak, a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Panel has awarded $1.2M to the claimants. The Rodriguezes and Felix Bernard-Diaz asserted…
The Securities and Exchange Commission wants comments on a proposed amendment to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s broker-deal supervision rules. The latter wants to change the rules by consolidating some of them, including NASD Rule 3010 and NASD Rule 3012 into its proposed Rules 3110 and 3120 that have to…
The North American Securities Administrators Association has issued its yearly list of the top investor threats. The list is compiled through a poll of its member state securities administrators. With the enactment of Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which takes away the advertising restrictions when it comes to soliciting securities…
The US Supreme Court has just listened to oral argument about how the Fifth Circuit appeals court interprets the breadth of the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act’s (SLUSA), which precludes the majority of state class action cases involving plaintiffs claiming misrepresentations related to the buying or selling of a security…
The Securities and Exchange Commission will review corporate disclosure rules to possibly get rid of disclosure rules that are creating “information overload” for investors. Speaking to the National Association of Corporate Directors, SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White said that as the quantity and types of issues that companies have to…