UB Greensfelder

Yesterday, FINRA released its annual Examination Priorities Letter in which it set forth the top issues that would guide its examinations in the coming year. Running 13 pages in length (while complaining about having to be so “brief”), FINRA set forth some of the “many areas of potential concern” it expects to encounter this year.…

Right around Christmas, NASAA, the North American Securities Administrators Association, which is comprised of the securities regulators from each of the 50 states, released its annual list of the top five threats to investors.  To compile the list, NASAA polled each state’s securities commissioner to learn the “the five most problematic products, practices or…

Based on the definition employed by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in 1964, best execution is the opposite of hard-core pornography: no one seems to know it when they see it. Despite this (at best) fuzzy standard, FINRA and the SEC still require all broker-dealers to obtain best execution for their customers when they place…

I posted several blogs this summer about our victory over the SEC in the Robare case (which, naturally, has been appealed by the SEC’s unhappy Division of Enforcement). One of the key elements in our ability to prevail in that matter was my client’s extensive use of outside securities consultants to assist in the preparation…

It should be abundantly clear to everyone that BDs are required to arbitrate disputes with their registered reps. There are several reasons I can assert this with such a great deal of certainty.  First, and most obvious, there is a rule about it.  Rule 13200(a) of the Code of Arbitration Procedure provides that

[e]xcept as…

With any luck, you can go your entire career in the securities industry without ever participating in the dreaded “Wells process.” And that’s a good thing, as the Wells process occurs only after FINRA has completed an examination and has concluded that whatever it has encountered is so serious that a formal disciplinary action is…

Today, the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association (PIABA) published another hit piece on the expungement process.   For those of you interested, you can find it HERE.   Again and again, PIABA issues press releases and reports contending that the expungement process is broken because expungement is granted at an “alarmingly high rate.”  Let’s start with…

Fans of this blog (or, at least, readers of this blog who are fans of Jeopardy) will no doubt remember Alan’s prior post, published a few weeks ago, and discussing a recent case that FINRA’s Department of Enforcement brought against one of our clients. From the very beginning, we, as her counsel, were both…