Charles Schwab & Co. violated regulatory rules by requiring customers to sign a contract with a provision waiving their rights to bring class actions against the firm, according to a complaint filed by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) on Feb. 1

Schwab is one of the nation’s largest discount brokerage firms, with more than 340 offices nationwide that together employ about 7,000 brokers. It has been a member of FINRA since 1970.

The firm amen...

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Back in October 2008, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) launched a pilot program to gauge the interest investors might have in arbitrating their claims before a panel composed solely of public arbitrators, instead of two public arbitrators and one arbitrator from within the financial industry, as was normally the case.

Data from the pilot program show that all-public panels awarded investors damages in 65 percent of the cases that resulted in awards, as opposed to 49 percent of the non-pilot program cases in 2009 and 48 perc...

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Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith has been censured and fined $1 million for its failure to arbitrate disputes with its employees over retention bonuses.

The fine was part of a settlement with Merrill Lynch announced by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) on Jan 25. A full-service broker-dealer with its principal offices located in New York, Merrill Lynch has been a FINRA member firm since 1937. The firm employs over 31,000 registered brokers and maintains over 1,200 branch offices.

FINRA said Merrill Lynch im...

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Doug Mirabelli, a former catcher for the Boston Red Sox, was awarded more than $1.2 million in arbitration against brokerage firm Merrill Lynch after claiming that the firm sank his money in inappropriate investments and made unsuitable recommendations, according to a Jan. 23 report by Reuters.

On Jan. 13, an arbitration panel of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) ruled that Merrill L...

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According to a Jan. 17 piece by former investment banker William D. Cohan, the mandatory arbitration provision buried deep within the documents one must sign to open a brokerage account or get hired by a brokerage firm is a wholesale abdication of legal rights.

Cohan, the author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World,” is also a Bloomberg View columnist whose piece was reprinted by Investment News. He suspects that ...

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