In most Enforcement cases involving outside business activities, it is the registered rep who is named as the respondent, and the allegation is that the RR failed to provide notice (or timely notice) to his or her broker-dealer about the OBA. On occasion, however, it is the BD that gets tripped up, typically for not
FINRA
FINRA’s “Massive” Discovery Failure Results In…Absolutely Nothing
By UB Greensfelder on
You are not going to believe this one. Here are the unadulterated facts, taken directly from the Order entered by the FINRA Hearing Officer (an Order, by the way, which FINRA elected not to publish on its website):
- Five days into an Enforcement hearing against Respondent Steven Larson, “Enforcement disclosed that it just realized it
…
PIABA’s Efforts To Get A Law Passed To Ensure Payment Of Legal Fees Off To Rough Start
By UB Greensfelder on
About a month ago, I posted a blog about the apparent success that PIABA had achieved in getting two US senators — a Democrat and a Republican — to sponsor a bill to require FINRA to create a fund from which unpaid arbitration awards — and, of course, unpaid claimants’ counsel fees — would be…
PIABA Lawyers Convince Congress Of The Importance Of Them Collecting Their Attorneys’ Fees
By UB Greensfelder on
I have written before of the ferocious effort by PIABA lawyers to fight for their ability to collect attorneys’ fees on contingency matters – FINRA arbitrations – that they manage to win but which never get satisfied because the respondent broker-dealer has the temerity to go out of business rather than paying the award. PIABA…
The Demise Of FINRA’s District Committees…And Self Regulation, Too?
By UB Greensfelder on
Posted in District Committees, FINRA
Many people, myself included, are of the view that FINRA today remains a self-regulatory organization in name only. For years now, FINRA has taken a series of actions decried by its member firms – new rules, new interpretations of old rules, zealous enforcement of rules, the imposition of punitive sanctions – who correctly complain that…
FINRA’s Attempt To Change Well-Established Federal Law On Churning
By UB Greensfelder on
When Michael called me to tell me about the subject of this post, I frankly thought he was making it up. The notion that FINRA was seriously suggesting deleting one of the historically recognized essential elements of a churning claim — principally because otherwise it was too difficult for FINRA to prove churning — seemed…
FINRA Knows Best – At Least According To FINRA – When It Comes To Hiring Decisions
By UB Greensfelder on
I don’t know how many times I’ve written about FINRA’s efforts over the years to address “rogue brokers,” or what it refers to nowadays more politically correctly as “high-risk brokers.” It doesn’t really matter what blog post you read, or when I wrote it, as they all tell essentially the same story: FINRA is just…
FINRA’s Revolving Door: Much Ado About Nothing
By UB Greensfelder on
Posted in Board of Governors, FINRA
As loyal readers are undoubtedly already aware, I used to work for NASD, and Michael more recently came to Ulmer from FINRA. That hardly means we win every FINRA Enforcement case we are engaged to defend. To suggest that because we came through the “revolving door,” FINRA does whatever we suggest is, frankly, absurd. I…
Reverse-Churning: BDs Are Damned If They Do, And Damned If They Don’t
By UB Greensfelder on
A couple of years ago, I blogged about the concept of “reverse churning,” i.e., putting a customer who trades only infrequently into a fee-based account, thus costing the customer a lot more than it would have cost that customer to be in a commission-based account. The reason this became a topic was, at the time,…
FINRA’s Stated Paradigm Shift On Enforcement Actions
By UB Greensfelder on
I have spoken about FINRA possibly putting an end to the policy of pursuing cases where formal disciplinary action serves little to no regulatory purpose. That welcome paradigm shift may be upon us.
This year, FINRA, in essence, pronounced that its “broken windows” strategy of pursuing Enforcement cases over the smallest and most technical violations…