LPL may be the biggest BD in the country, with 21,500 reps operating out of almost 13,000 branch offices. Heaven knows how much money it brings in every year, but, goodness, it must be a lot. And good thing, too, given how much the firm keeps paying to FINRA in fines for its serial, repeated,
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Another Fine Churning Mess
By Alan Wolper on
I apologize for taking so long between posts, but, to be fair, there’s been a lot going on in the past week or so that has captured my attention! I wish everyone a happy and SAFE new year! – Alan
While undoubtedly FINRA will be issuing its annual “examination priorities” letter any day now, that…
FINRA Zoom Hearing Goes BOOM!
By Alan Wolper on
Attentive readers will recall that a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned in a preface to great post from Chris about expungement becoming an endangered creature due to changes in FINRA rule that I was about to embark on a two-week FINRA Enforcement hearing, all done by Zoom, by consent. I promised to provide some…
FINRA Is About To Make It MUCH Harder To Obtain Expungement – Part Two
By Chris Seps on
Here is the second part of Chris’s blog on FINRA’s effort to make expungement harder and more expensive to obtain. It is remarkable to me just how blatant FINRA has been here in admitting the reasons for the rule amendments. Anyone who thinks that FINRA is a membership organization that actually cares for its members…
PIABA’s Anti-Expungement Tirade Is Predictably Short On Facts
By Alan Wolper on
Here is how PIABA’s one-track mind operates: in a Report it just issued, PIABA laments the frequency with which registered reps are able to get customer complaints expunged from their records. The sole reason for this, PIABA concludes, is that the expungement process is broken, and/or is being gamed by brokers. It does not even…
The Rule 8210 Karma Train Runs FINRA Over
By Alan Wolper on
If you’ve read this blog for even a short while, you know my feelings on Rule 8210, or, more specifically, how FINRA uses that rule, i.e., as a cudgel to keep member firms and their associated persons in line. Endless 8210 requests for documents and information, sometimes asking multiple times for the same stuff, each…
BD Learns It’s Not Enough To Have A Supervisory Procedure For OBAs, You Actually Have To Follow It
By Alan Wolper on
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’s “Massive” Discovery Failure Results In…Absolutely Nothing
By Alan Wolper 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
…
What Else Is New? FINRA Skates Despite “Massive” Failure To Produce Documents
By Alan Wolper on
Let’s play pretend. Can you imagine what FINRA would do to a respondent broker-dealer in an Enforcement action that announced on Day Five of the hearing – i.e., during the “final phase” of the hearing – that – whoops! – it had forgotten to produce certain documents that it should have produced eight months before…
FINRA’s New Rules On Seniors: Let’s Protect Them From Their Own Bad Decisions?
By Alan Wolper on
We have written before about senior investors, but I saw a couple of things in the last couple of weeks that suggests this subject needs to be revisited.
First, back in February, the SEC got around to passing FINRA’s proposed rules to protect senior investors, including both new Rule 2165 and amendments to existing Rule…