Settlements

I read a fascinating piece the other day in BankInvestmentConsultant about FINRA’s Enforcement program, specifically about the notion of broker-dealers self-reporting problems, and whether that was a smart thing to do.  Some of the quotes attributed to FINRA senior Enforcement management are really interesting, so I wanted to share them with you in the event

In OHO Order 16-26, a Hearing Officer confirmed what those uninitiated to FINRA’s disciplinary process likely would not even suspect: an agreement to settle a FINRA regulatory matter on terms proposed by FINRA’s Department of Enforcement is not necessarily an enforceable agreement.

In this case, the respondent argued that FINRA should be estopped from

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

Just a week ago, I ran a post about FINRA’s Sanction Guidelines, suggesting that they appear to have no relevance anymore, given the vast disparity between fines that FINRA is actually imposing in settled cases, on the one hand, and the supposed maximum fines described in the Sanction Guidelines, on the other. In an excellent

I read with interest the press release FINRA issued this week announcing an $11.7 million settlement with LPL, principally over what FINRA characterized as “widespread supervisory failures.” There were two things most noteworthy to me.[1] The first, interestingly, is not the size of the monetary sanctions (a $10 million fine plus $1.7 million in