In June, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will hear oral argument in Asadi v. G.E. Energy (USA) LLC, a novel appeal over whether the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act’s whistleblower statute give protections to informants who report that there have been possible Foreign…
According to a number of state and federal regulators, they are continuing to keep their eyes on LPL Financial (LPLA), the fourth biggest brokerage firm in the US after Wells Fargo (WFC), Morgan Stanley (MS)and Merrill Lynch (MER). With 13,300 brokers, 4.3 million customers, and 6,500 offices, it is the…
U.S. District Judge David Carter has turned down Wells Fargo & Co.’s (WFC) bid to throw out a securities lawsuit filed by investors accusing the investment bank of not fulfilling its role as trustee for debt issued by Medical Capital Holdings, which failed in an approximately billion dollar fraud in…
According to MTS Research Advisors, non-traded business-development companies, which are junk-rated debt funds, doubled their sales to a $2.8 billion high in 2012, making $134 million in revenue. Among these was Franklin Square’s FS Investment Corp., an initial $2.5 billion fund to which investors have already paid $323.5 million in…
The dismissal of an Apple REIT class action lawsuit against David Lerner Associates Inc. in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York should have little effect on the Apple REIT arbitration cases that are being resolved through Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration. In fact, most investors are…
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida is holding that an arbitration award granted to investors cannot be vacated under the Federal Arbitration Act just because an arbitrator exhibited obvious partiality when failing to reveal that he wrote a dissent in an unrelated arbitration that allegedly showed…
In Senior Executives Association v. United States, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland Judge Alexander Williams said that the privacy rights of thousands of senior federal workers could be violated if a Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act provision, which mandates that these employees’ financial information is disclosed…
On March 22, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) introduced S. 652, which would mandate that plaintiffs’ lawyers in private securities actions reveal via sworn certification any fees or other conflicts of interest that might have impacted their retention of clients. Dubbed the “Securities Litigation Attorney Accountability and Transparency Act,” the bill…
The Securities and Exchange Commission has put out its request for information to help it decide whether to impose a uniform standard of care on both investment advisers and broker-dealers that give advice to retail customers. The comment period ends 120 days after the data request, which was issued on…
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York is refusing to throw out the shareholder securities fraud lawsuit filed against Deutsche Bank (DB) and three individuals over their alleged role in marketing residential mortgage-backed securities and mortgage-backed securities before the economic crisis. The court found that the…