Financial Firms

Ameriprise Financial Advises Clients to Sell OppenheimerFunds Muni Bond Funds with Puerto Rico Debt

Published on: July 20, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

According to Bloomberg.com, in the wake of Puerto Rico’s default on July 1 of $911 million of bond payments it owes creditors—including $779 million of general obligation bonds—Ameriprise Financial Inc. (AMP) is recommending that clients sell their OppenheimerFunds (OPY) municipal bond funds that are holding any of the island’s debt. In a report this week, Ameriprise senior research analyst Jeffrey Lindell said that with the acceleration of Puerto Rico bond defaults—as the island tries to lower its $70 billion debt via bondholder losses—mutual funds holding these bonds could end up having to “cut dividend rates.” He also wrote that as Puerto Rico bonds respond to “speculation and news,” the mutual funds’ net asset value could turn “volatile.”

In its recent article, Bloomberg provided data from Morningstar Inc., which reports that as of the end of March, Oppenheimer held $3.5 billion of Puerto Rico securities in 19 funds, which is more than anyone else. Now, Ameriprise wants clients to look at investment options that are not as risky as the funds holding Puerto Rico municipal bonds. The firm is suggesting that clients sell investments involving 16 Oppenheimer muni funds. Included in the recommendation to sell are a number of state specific municipal bond funds, including the:

· Oppenheimer Rochester Virginia Municipal (ORVAX)
· Oppenheimer Rochester Pennsylvania Municipal (OVPAX)
· Oppenheimer Rochester Maryland Municipal (ORMDX)
· Oppenheimer Rochester North Carolina Municipal (OPNCX) and
· Oppenheimer Rochester Arizona Municipal (ORAZX)

Several days after the July 1 default, credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s (SP) reduced the U.S. territory’s credit rating to “default” status. The default was not the first time Puerto Rico was unable to cover debt payments that were due—although it was the first default involving Puerto Rico’s general obligation debt, which was supposed to have a constitutional guarantee.

It was in May that NY City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito asked the SEC to investigate whether OppenheimerFunds played a part in causing Puerto Rico’s financial crisis to worsen. Mark-Viverito believes that banks, hedge funds, and other investors who bought into Puerto Rico utility debt and general obligation bonds contributed to the territory’s debt woes.

HSBC Executives Are Charged with FX Rigging

Published on: July 20, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

US prosecutors have arrested HBSC (HSBC) executive Mark Johnson for his alleged involvement in a front-running scam. Johnson is the global head of foreign exchange cash trading at HSBC Bank, which is a HSBC Holdings subsidiary. Also facing criminal charges is Stuart Scott, who is the former head of HSBC foreign exchange cash trading for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He was let go in 2014. Johnson and Scott are the first individuals to face criminal charges in the forex rigging probe.

According to the criminal complaint, which charges the two men with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, in 2011 Scott and Johnson inappropriately used information that the bank’s client gave them about a planned sale of one of the client’s subsidiaries. The client had retained HSBC to execute the foreign exchange transaction, which necessitated changing about $3.5B in sale proceeds into British Pound Sterling.

HSBC was supposed to keep the details of this pending transaction confidential. However, Scott and Johnson allegedly misused this information, buying Pound Sterling for the bank’s proprietary accounts, which they held until the transaction went through. This caused the transaction to take place in a way intended to compel the Pound Sterling’s price to jump up.

Ex-Prudential Financial and MetLife Broker is Barred over Deceptive MetLife Variable Anuuity Sales

Published on: July 13, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

FINRA has banned Winston Wade Turner from the securities industry. The former Prudential (PRU) and MetLife (MET) broker is accused of engaging in deceptive variable annuities sales. Turner was fired from Pruco Securities, a Prudential subsidiary, in 2015. The cause of his firing was deceptive sales practices.

Now, FINRA has barred him for a number of causes, including giving false information to clients about variable annuity sales, the fraudulent misrepresentation and omission of key facts to customers about the sales, providing false information in VA-related documents, and not giving testimony to the self-regulatory organization during its probe into this matter.

According to the SRO, Turner fraudulently misrepresented and omitted material facts about VA sales and concealed that he had persuaded a lot of customers to give up existing variable annuities or other investments so that they would buy the newer VAs that he was selling. He is accused of persuading at least 12 clients to trade their existing investments for this purpose, costing them over $150K in surrender charges.

Four Former Barclays Traders Get Prison Terms for Libor Rigging

Published on: July 9, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Four ex-Barclays (BCS) bankers who were convicted for conspiring to manipulate global benchmark interest rates have been sentenced to time behind bars for their crimes. The defendants and their prison terms are: Jay Merchant, for six-and-a-half years; Jonathan Mathew for four years; Peter Johnson for four years, and Alex Pabon for two years and nine months.

While Merchant, Mathew, and Pabon were convicted of their crimes, Johnson, a former senior dollar Libor submitter and the ex-head of dollar cash trading, pleaded guilty in the case against him in 2014. They all were charged with conspiracy to defraud involving Libor rigging to benefit their banks and one another as they defrauded others.

The judge who presided over the former Barclays traders’ case accused them of abusing their position, committing the offenses more than once over a significant period of time, and compromising the banking industry. All of the men will serve half their prison terms before being released on license.

The manipulation of Libor, the London interbank offered rate, and other benchmark interest rates led to a global probe that has resulted in hefty fines for the firms whose brokers colluded together to rig rates. In 2012, Barclays admitted that it let its derivatives traders rig Libor rates. The bank paid $450M to authorities in the US and Europe to settle charges. Collectively, the banks accused in the Libor manipulation scandal have paid billions of dollars in penalties. There have been at least 13 convictions.

Goldman Sachs Settles CDO Fraud Lawsuit Brought by Basis Yield Alpha Fund

Published on: July 7, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Basis Capital’s Basis Yield Alpha Fund have reached an agreement to settle the $1B collateralized debt obligation fraud lawsuit brought by the Australian hedge fund against the bank several years ago. The Basis Yield Alpha Fund accused Goldman Sachs of making false statements related to its marketing of the Timberwolf, a mortgage-linked investment, and the Point Pleasant collateralized debt obligation (CDO). (The Timberwolf investment was named in the 2011 U.S. Senate report that found that Goldman misled clients about mortgage-backed securities.)

The Australian hedge fund, in its complaint, claimed that Goldman falsely claimed that the market for CDO investments had become stable even though it knew that was not the case. These particular securities dropped in value within weeks of purchase by the fund.

The Basis Yield Alpha Fund is convinced that Goldman sold the securities to rid itself of the toxic subprime mortgages while making money by shorting the securities. The fund sought repayment of over $67M it claims was lost by investing in the collateralized debt obligations, as well as $1B in punitive damages. Goldman, which argued that the fund’s losses were caused by the demise of the housing market and not because of any alleged misrepresentations, claimed that the Australian hedge fund filed its CDO fraud lawsuit to try to get the bank to pay these losses.

Financial Representative News: Ex-LPL Financial Broker Gets Suspension and Fine & Former Ex-GL Capital Partners CEO is Sentenced to Prison

Published on: June 30, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Ex-LPL Financial Supervisor Settles with FINRA

Peter Neuberg, a former LPL Financial (LPLA) supervisor and broker, will pay a $15K fine and serve a six-month suspension to settle claims accusing him of not reasonably supervising a registered representative. According to an enforcement document signed by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Neuberg stopped looking at paperwork that the representative prepared. This made it possible for the broker to modify documents about customer accounts and reuse signatures from forms that had been completed. Neuberg is settling without admitting or denying FINRA’s findings.

The purported supervisory failures would have taken place from September ’11 to June ’12. The broker, whom Neuberg supervised, falsified documents to expedite transactions to accommodate certain customers. Neuberg is accused of not properly training the broker.

Ex-GL Capital Partners CEO Gets Nine Years in Prison

In other news, Daniel Thibeault, the former CEO of GL Capital Partners, is sentenced to nine years behind bars for misappropriating at least $15M. He must pay $15.3M in restitution for the criminal charges. He also is contending with civil charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Raymond James Sued Over $350M Development Fraud, Settles with Vermont for $5.95M

Published on: June 30, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

A receiver appointed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a lawsuit against Raymond James Financial Inc. (RJF) over its alleged involvement in a $350M development fraud. The case stems from a complaint that the regulator filed earlier this year against William Stenger and Ariel Quiros. Along with their companies, the two of them are accused of making omissions and false statements when raising funds from foreign investors to supposedly build a biomedical research facility and ski resort facilities.

Raymond James and its employees are not defendants in that lawsuit. However, the firm is mentioned in the complaint to have received wire transfers starting in 2008 from a Vermont bank. The money went to brokerage accounts at Raymond James and they were in Quiros’s name. The funds were from investors and intended for the Peak resort in Vermont.

Quiros went on to borrow against the money in his Raymond James accounts that included high interest margin loans. He purportedly used investor money to pay almost $2.5M in margin interest loans to Raymond James.

Securities Headlines: SEC Announces $17M Whistleblower Lawsuit, Delta Employees File 401(K) Lawsuit Against Fidelity, Blackstone President Says Hedge Funds Could See 25% Asset Loss, and Deutsche Bank is Fined $6M By FINRA

Published on: June 29, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

SEC Issues Its Second Largest Whistleblower Award
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has awarded the ex-employee of a company more than $17M for a whistleblower tip that helped move the regulator’s probe forward, ultimately resulting in a successful enforcement action against that company. This is the second largest award that the regulator has issued since it started its whistleblower program in 2011.

To date, the program has awarded over $85M to 32 whistleblowers. The largest SEC whistleblower award so far has been $30M and it was issued in 2014. In the last five months alone, five whistleblowers have been awarded over $26M.

Under the SEC whistleblower program, whistleblowers may be entitled to receive a monetary award if the information they’ve voluntarily given the regulator is original and helpful, resulting in an enforcement action, and the monetary sanction arrived at is greater than $1M. In such cases the whistleblower may be entitled to 10-30% of the funds collected. The payments come out of an investor protection fund paid for by monetary sanction payments issued to the SEC for securities law violations.

Delta 401(K) Participants File Lawsuit Against Fidelity
Fidelity Investment units are now defendants in a 401(K) lawsuit filed by participants in a Delta Air Lines Inc. retirement plan. The plaintiffs want class action status.

They claim that Financial Engines, which was retained to give investment advice to the Delta Family-Care Savings Plan, is paying Fidelity a substantial chunk of the fees it receives from the 401(k) plan members. This has purportedly inflated the cost of investment advice services that are essential to the plan and is a violation of Fidelity’s fiduciary duty. They also claim that Fidelity’s management of BrokerageLink, a self-directed brokerage account, acquires share classes with high expense ratios that pay the broker dealer significant revenue-sharing payments. The plaintiffs believe Fidelity is “effectively” utilizing the assets of the plan to its benefit.

Fidelity claims the allegations are meritless.

401K Lawsuits: MassMutual Settles with Employees for $31M and TransAmerica Settles for $3.8M

Published on: June 27, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. has arrived at a nearly $31M settlement with plaintiffs of a class action securities case. They are accusing the retirement service provider of charging excessive fees in its retirement plans. The 401k lawsuit involved MassMutual’s $200M Agent Pension Plan and its $2.2B Thrift Plan. The settlement includes a $30.9M payment and non-monetary provisions that would benefit participants of the plan.

The case is Dennis Gordan et al v. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. et al, and plaintiffs include ex-plan participants and current ones. They are accusing defendants of breaching their fiduciary duty under ERISA through the charging of excessive administrative fees and offering a costly and unnecessarily risky fixed-income choice, as well as investments that were expensive despite not performing well.

The non-monetary provisions of the settlement include the hiring an independent consultant to make sure that plan participants are not asked to pay excessive fees for record-keeping services or record-keeping fees based on asset percentages, a review of all investment options, and the consideration of a minimum of at least three finalists when making an investment selection.

The settlement has been submitted to a district court for preliminary approval. MassMutual has not admitted to liability or fault despite settling.

Financial Firm Settlements: HSBC Holdings Settles Yen Libor and Euroyen Tibor Rigging Claims for $30M & BNY Mellon to Pay Investors $35M for FX violations

Published on: June 24, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBC) will pay $35M to resolve an antitrust lawsuit accusing the bank of Euroyen Tibor and Yen Libor rigging. The securities case, brought by Sonterra Capital Master Fund, Hayman Capital Management, California State Teachers’ Retirement System, lead plaintiff Jeffrey Laydon, and other institutional investors, accused HSBC and other banks of manipulating benchmark rates over several years.
According to the investor lawsuit, Laydon sustained losses in the thousands of dollars in 2007 when shorting the Euroyen Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate (Euroyen Tibor).

As part of the settlement, HSBC will provide attorney proffers detailing facts that the bank uncovered during its own probes into Euroyen Tibor and Euroyen Libor manipulation, witness statements made by its employees, specific documents that it has given to the Federal Reserve Board of New York and regulators, and other information.

A judge has to approve the deal.