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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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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On Jan. 9, an arbitrator for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, awarded customers of a brokerage firm compensatory damages of roughly $55,000 for breach of fiduciary duty, negligence and breach of contract in the course of a bond sale.

In addition, the customers were awarded almost $15,000 in prejudgment interest.

The customers, the claimants in the arbitration, were Zane Gubman and Karen Gubman in their capacities as co-trustees of the Gubman Revocable Trust and co-trustees of the Sidney Cohn Life Insurance Tru...

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Wells Fargo Investments LLC has been fined $2 million for failure to supervise the conduct of one of its brokers who sold unsuitable reverse convertible securities to elderly customers, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, announced on Dec. 15. The firm was also censured.

The fine also covered Wells Fargo’s also failure to provide sales charge discounts to eligible customers on unit investment trust transactions, or UITs, FINRA said.

A subsidiary of Wells Fargo Bank, Wells Fargo Investments LLC changed its n...

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