Enforcement

FINRA announced today that it entered into a settlement with MetLife Securities, Inc. in which MetLife agreed to pay FINRA a $20 million fine and its customers up to $5 million in compensation for, basically, making misrepresentations over a five-year period to customers who replaced one variable annuity with another regarding the costs of making…

There have been some developments this week in a few matters on which I have previously offered my views. To help you stay on the cutting edge of financial world current events as you mingle at your upcoming Cinco de Mayo fiestas, here are three updates.  Two, not surprisingly, represent wins for the regulators.  The…

Last week, word spread about a legal challenge that has been mounted in federal court against FINRA’s ability to enforce violations of the Securities Act of 1933, and, perhaps not surprisingly, it has generated a lot of talk, not to mention enthusiasm (at least among those who chafe at FINRA’s aggressive Enforcement mentality). The specifics…

For some reason, a bunch of noteworthy events all happened around the same time this week, so please bear with me as I vent a little about them.  Individually, they are irritating; in the aggregate, they are borderline alarming.

First, the FINRA Wells process. I have blogged about this before, and how, in a…

Years ago, I handled the defense of a FINRA Enforcement case that still galls me.  The client sent a series of emails, over many months, about a particular security to customers who already owned the stock.  The point of the emails was largely to provide updates, and, from time-to-time, to suggest that the customers consider…

In Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, Odysseus and the crew of his ship are faced with the impossible choice of either sailing closer to Charybdis, a whirlpool capable of sinking their entire ship, or, alternatively, to Scylla, a sea monster just as deadly.  Odysseus’ dilemma sprang to mind as I listened to a presentation…

Yesterday, FINRA released its annual Examination Priorities Letter in which it set forth the top issues that would guide its examinations in the coming year. Running 13 pages in length (while complaining about having to be so “brief”), FINRA set forth some of the “many areas of potential concern” it expects to encounter this year.…

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…

Fans of this blog (or, at least, readers of this blog who are fans of Jeopardy) will no doubt remember Alan’s prior post, published a few weeks ago, and discussing a recent case that FINRA’s Department of Enforcement brought against one of our clients. From the very beginning, we, as her counsel, were both…