While I feel I have enjoyed as much success defending respondents in FINRA Enforcement matters as anyone, I am still careful to caution clients who are unwilling to consider any settlement that going toe-to-toe with FINRA at a hearing is always a difficult proposition, even though they are presumed innocent and FINRA bears the burden
Enforcement
Do Customers Actually Use BrokerCheck? This FINRA Complaint Suggests They Don’t
By Chris Seps on
I heartily endorse this post from my colleague, Chris, who’s been quiet of late. It says a lot about FINRA, in terms of how it deigns to spend your assessment money, how fairness in the Enforcement process can be completely illusory, and how it is consistently unable to convince much of the investing public that…
FINRA Proposes To Dispense With Due Process, All Because It’s Failed To Do Its Job Of Policing The Markets
By UB Greensfelder on
Reading Reg Notice 19-17 makes me think of the legal arguments that I’ve recently read regarding whether a president can be found guilty of obstructing justice if the actions in question were taken out in the open, for everyone to see. Here, FINRA’s proposed power grab is simply outrageous, but, you got to give them…
FINRA AWC Includes Waiver Of A Fine: Is This A Sign Of Good Things To Come?
By UB Greensfelder on
Way back in 2006, NASD issued Notice to Members 06-55, which tweaked the Sanction Guidelines to allow not just the size of the firm to be taken into consideration when determining the appropriate sanctions to be meted out, but, more importantly, how well, or how poorly, the firm is doing on its income statement.…
FINRA Says, Proof? We Don’t Need Your Stinkin’ Proof
By UB Greensfelder on
If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know that over my last few posts, I have been talking about an increasingly visible effort by FINRA to turn its regulatory eye from rogue brokers – who have been an irritant to FINRA and NASD for decades – to rogue firms (my term,…
Contrary To What FINRA Believes, Rule 8210 Is Not A Search Warrant
By UB Greensfelder on
I have been waiting for a while to write about this issue, since it arose in an Enforcement case I handled for a client, and I wanted the matter to run its full course at FINRA before I started throwing stones. Sadly, there are so many things I could complain about here. The fact that…
The Real Lesson From FINRA’s 2018 Exam Findings Report
By UB Greensfelder on
On Friday last week, FINRA released a report discussing the findings from its 2018 exams, providing what it described as “selected observations” that were deemed to have “potential significance.” Even with that tepid introduction, in theory, this is still a great idea, since anyone in the industry, even so-called “good” or “clean” firms, should welcome…
Money Talks, And FINRA Is Listening
By UB Greensfelder on
Last year I wrote about FINRA’s effort to encourage firms to self-report their problems, pausing to wonder at the suggestion attributed to Jessica Hopper, a Senior Vice President with Enforcement, that cooperating with FINRA by self-reporting “not only fulfills a firm’s regulatory responsibilities, but it can also mean the difference between a slap on the…
BD Learns It’s Not Enough To Have A Supervisory Procedure For OBAs, You Actually Have To Follow It
By UB Greensfelder 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 UB Greensfelder 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
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