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
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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…
FINRA Board Election: A Real Choice For a Change in the Mid-Size Firm Board Seat
By Alan Wolper on
I have told many people over the years that the only way to effect true change at FINRA must come from the inside. I can write blog posts every day pointing out what I perceive to be the occasional error of FINRA’s ways, but apart from the cathartic effect it provides me to vent, the…
David Slays Goliath: Texas Investment Advisor Beats SEC In Administrative Proceeding
By Alan Wolper on
If you have been a regular reader of this Blog, or even if you just browse the Wall Street Journal on occasion, you have undoubtedly noticed the attention being given over the last few weeks to the SEC’s decision increasingly to bring its Enforcement cases before Administrative Law Judges, rather than in federal court.…