PIABA

Almost three years ago, in Reg Notice 18-08, FINRA wisely (but, nevertheless, still a bit late to the party) proposed to revise its own prior guidance regarding the troublesome intersection between outside business activities and investment advisor business, guidance that FINRA itself acknowledged had “caused significant confusion and practical challenges.”  Specifically, in crusty old

As the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals made clear a week or so ago, serving as a FINRA arbitrator seems rather apropos in a world where the score is not kept in kids’ baseball games (to avoid there being any “losers”), and where adults receive medallions celebrating the fact that they are “participants” in

In December, Ulmer & Berne is hosting four financial services webcasts, the first of which I will be presenting along with my partner, Michael Gross:  FINRA 2019: A Look Back, and Thoughts About What Lies Ahead (Wednesday, December 04, 2019, 2:00 PM EST).  The others are The Anatomy of a Whistleblower Action: Procedure, Practice Pointers

I read an article this week in Investment News with the following headline: “Brokerage Customers Winning More FINRA Arbitration Cases.” As a guy who defends customer cases, I was naturally intriguied by this. According to the article, “brokerage customers who do file claims against their registered representative or firm are faring better in the process this year. So far in 2019, 176 cases have been decided, and 44%, or 78 cases, resulted in the customer being awarded damages. That’s an uptick compared to recent history.” Wow, I thought, this could be a troubling trend.

But, then I looked at the statistics that FINRA Dispute Resolution publishes, and quickly realized that this headline, and this story, oversells the point in a big way.

The story correctly reports that customers have been awarded money in 44% of cases that went to hearing this year, and that this reflects an upwards trend. But, really, it’s hardly a significant increase. The percent of cases that result in something being awarded to customers look like this since 2014:
Continue Reading All-Public Arbitration Panels Are Paying Out Money At An Unprecedented Rate…Just As PIABA Intended

If you read this blog even semi-regularly, you know that I have taken a few shots at PIABA. I think they’re well earned, but some people – particularly PIABA lawyers, not surprisingly – have suggested that I’m overdoing it. Well, if you ever had any doubt that the motivation behind pretty much everything that PIABA does is simply doing whatever it can to ensure that its attorneys get paid, just take a look at PIABA’s comment to FINRA’s recent proposal to address rogue broker-dealers.

I have already written about that proposal, which is flawed in a number of fundamental ways, in my view. As expected, it elicited a bunch of comments. PIABA submitted its own comment, naturally, and, in a development that surprised exactly no one, it stated that its principal concern with the proposed rules is that they “will not cure the long-standing unpaid arbitration award issue.” Well, there you go. Leave it to PIABA to take a proposal designed by FINRA to address misconduct by rogue brokers and rogue firms – or as FINRA expressly phrased it, “to address the risks that can be posed to investors and the broader market by individual brokers and member firms that have a history of misconduct” – and focus instead on another issue, i.e., the one component of that proposal that impacts PIABA members’ pocketbooks. That is, rather than acknowledging that the proposal’s primary goal is to eliminate (or at least deter) misconduct, PIABA has chosen instead to complain that perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of the rule proposal – the creation of a fund, sourced by the BD itself, with money that would not constitute an allowable asset in the firm’s net capital computation, and which cannot be used for any purpose other than the satisfaction of a customer claim – somehow doesn’t go far enough to ensure that arbitration claimants – and their lawyers, of course – get paid.
Continue Reading Make No Mistake, PIABA Cares About One Thing: Getting Paid

What exists at the point where PIABA’s transparent self-interest in getting paid and FINRA’s historical lack of transparency about who is actually driving its agenda regarding arbitrations? This: a late December decision by FINRA to propose a rule that prohibits non-lawyers from representing – for a fee – customers in arbitrations, and an even more

I just read an article about a research study conducted of FINRA arbitrations by three people associated with Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Texas, respectively, and their overarching conclusion is a doozy.  Now, admittedly, I have not read the study itself (as it costs $5 to get a copy), so I only know what