A little over a year ago, the SEC announced a stunning settlement with Merrill Lynch regarding its violation of SEC Rule 15c3-3, commonly known as the “Customer Protection Rule.” This is an important rule whose name gives away its purpose: it is designed to ensure that if a broker-dealer ever fails, customer assets can be
Settlements
Does FINRA Give Credit For Self-Reporting Problems? It Says It Does, But….
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…
Puerto Rico Customer Arbitrations: The Untold Story About Why So Many Settle
Here is a piece from Chris Seps, who has a bit of a reputation around here for being angry. Judge for yourself. But, for what it’s worth, I do want to say that I have had the pleasure of being involved in several cases in which the subject of this post, Dr. Craig McCann, appeared…
A Settlement Agreement With FINRA (Or So You Thought)
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…
What In The Wells Is Going On With FINRA’s “Wells” Process?
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…
To Mediate or Not: Arbitration v. Enforcement
I recently had two clients, both respondents in pending matters – ask me the same question in the same day: should I mediate this case? The answers I gave them differed dramatically, not just because the facts of each case were very different, but because one case was a customer arbitration, where we are defending…
Do As I Say And Not As I Do: To What Standard Is FINRA Held?
Look, I get that nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes, it’s just human nature. I told my kids when they were growing up the same thing I tell my associates: it’s ok to make mistakes, it’s just not ok to repeat them. Sadly, my broker-dealer clients live in a heavily regulated environment, so when they…
FINRA’s New Sanction Guidelines: The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
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…
Do The FINRA Sanction Guidelines Continue To Have Any Relevance?
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…
Settling with FINRA Can Be Ugly, But It Sure Beats the Alternative
I used to work for NASD (before it became FINRA). First as an attorney for the Department of Enforcement, and, later, as the Director of the Atlanta District office. Given the scope of my experience, I was able to see Enforcement cases as they were developed in the examination phase, conducted by Member Regulation, through…