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…
I am pleased to welcome a new author to Broker-Dealer Law Corner, my partner in Ulmer’s Boca Raton office, Michael Gross. Like myself, Michael returned to private practice after a stint at FINRA, specifically, with the Department of Enforcement, where he handled big, litigated cases all over the US. There is no substitute for the…
It is a simple fact that a broker-dealer has no obligation to supervise a disclosed outside business activity. How do I know? FINRA has said so. This, for instance, comes straight from Reg Notice 05-50: “Rule 3030 does not require that the firm supervise or even approve an outside business activity, although a…
Defending a FINRA Enforcement action is not easy. This stems principally from the fact that FINRA simply won’t file a complaint in the first place if they believe that there’s any realistic chance they will not win the case. Thus, they expect to win every time they do file a complaint, and perhaps not unreasonably…
Yesterday, FINRA released its 2015 Annual Report, and it contained maybe one surprising figure: a decrease in the amount of fines it levied. Beyond that, however, it was more of the same that we have seen over the last few years; just read my blog from a year ago about the 2014 report and…
The entire securities world is anxiously awaiting the implementation of the fiduciary standard over retirement accounts, and, by most accounts, the eventual spread of that standard to ordinary investment accounts. I am not prepared to argue that this is not a big deal, and will cost the industry a ton of time and money to…
If you’re reading this, then you undoubtedly already know that FINRA and SEC are, simply, AML crazy. Rightly or wrongly, they are both focusing more than ever on broker-dealers’ fulfillment of their supervisory obligation to be sensitive to the laundry list of red flags first articulated in a Notice to Members back in 2002 that…
So, you’re a registered rep, working for a broker-dealer. Necessarily, you are registered with and subject to the oversight of FINRA, not a particularly happy proposition. But at least you can take comfort in the fact that while FINRA may have the right to stick its nose into your securities business, what you do away…
The FINRA investigative process and the arbitration process exist side-by-side; at times, the misconduct that is alleged by a claimant in a Statement of Claim may simultaneously be the subject of an examination by Member Regulation, or even an Enforcement Complaint. Ordinarily, Enforcement doesn’t pay much attention to what happens in a parallel arbitration, except…
Earlier this year, as part of its 2016 Examination Priorities, FINRA spent a lot time discussing the “culture of compliance” at broker-dealers, the notion that firms need to create an atmosphere where compliance with rules and regulations is more than just lip service, but, rather, where it is a priority established by firm management –…
