Articles Tagged with compensatory damages

A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Panel has ruled that UBS must pay claimant Antonio Gnocchi Franco $204,000 in compensatory damages and $66,000 in costs for his Puerto Rico bond fraud case. Franco, a Puerto Rico resident who was also the trustee of his law firm’s pension plan, accused the brokerage firm of negligence, misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, unauthorized trading, unsuitability, overconcentration, failure to supervise, unauthorized use of loan facilities, and unjust enrichment. According to the complaint, UBS had recommended that Franco invest in UBS bond funds and Puerto Rico bonds.

This customer win is yet another in a long line of customer wins against UBS for its investment and brokerage services provided in Puerto Rico. To date, FINRA arbitrators have ordered UBS to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to investors and UBS has paid many hundreds of millions more in settlements. Recently, UBS Puerto Rico and UBS Financial Services lost another Puerto Rico bond fraud case and were ordered to pay five former customers $521,000 in compensatory damages.

In total, UBS has been named in FINRA arbitration claims brought by thousands of investors that lost money from investing in UBS-packaged bond funds and Puerto Rico bonds. UBS Puerto Rico brokers, especially, have come under fire for allegedly recommending customers concentrate their investments in UBS Puerto Rico products, even when they were not suitable for customers in almost any amount. Moreover, many of these investors have alleged that UBS encouraged them to borrow against their own accounts so that customers could invest more. For example, the firm’s financial representatives are accused of advising clients to leverage their accounts and use them as collateral, sometimes for the purposes of purchasing even more UBS investments. This is a practice that should have never happened.

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A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority panel has awarded five people $521,000 in compensatory damages in their Puerto Rico bond fraud case against UBS Financial Services (UBS) and UBS Financial Services Inc. of Puerto Rico (UBS-PR). The claimants had accused the financial firm of securities fraud, constructive fraud, common law fraud, negligent supervision, breach of fiduciary duty, and violating the Puerto Rico Uniform Securities Act.

UBS has been the subject of hundreds of FINRA arbitration claims brought by thousands of investors who sustained losses from Puerto Rico bonds and closed-end bonds, with many UBS-PR customers contending that they sustained massive losses because these investments were inappropriately recommended to them. To date, the financial firm has been ordered to pay or agreed to pay in settlements hundreds of millions of dollars to investors, with more claims still pending.

For over four years, our Puerto Rico bond fraud law firm has worked with investors on the island and the U.S. to help those investors recover their losses from losses in Puerto Rico securities. Contact Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas today to request your free, no obligation consultation.

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