If you’ve been watching any commercial television lately, you are well aware that the financial services industry is very busy running expensive ads imploring us to worry about our retirement futures. Open a new account today, they say.

They are not wrong that we should be doing something: America is facing a retirement crisis. One in three Americans has no retirement savings at all. One in two reports that they can’t save enough. On top of that, we are living longer, and health care costs, as we all know, are increasing.

But, as I found when investigati...

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Since at least 1987, if you want to sue your stockbroker for investment fraud, the sale of unsuitable or other risky investments, breach of fiduciary duty, or for the sale otherwise defective financial products, including everything from reverse convertible notes to structured products, Real Estate Investment Trusts or even Ponzi schemes, investors are required to bring these claims in arbitration before Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ("FINRA")(formerly the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. and the New York Stock Exchange).

The...

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The Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association PIABA issued a statement finding FINRA's proposed new rule which would allow for stockbrokers, who are not named as parties in customers' arbitration complaints, but whose conduct is the subject of investors' complaints, to seek removal of the investor's complaint from the stockbroker's regulatory record.

PIABA is a voluntary bar association of Attorneys who represent investors in claims aga...

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The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has expelled a Texas-based broker dealer from membership for selling $23 million in private placement offerings without having a reasonable basis to believe that the offerings were suitable for its customers.

Cambridge Legacy Securities LLC consented to the expulsion as part of a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent (AWC) the firm submitted to settle a disciplinary action against it. Cambridge Legacy also consented to the entry of f...

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Brokerage firm Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. has agreed to pay $2.8 million to settle charges by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) that the firm’s failure to supervise led to overbilling.

From April 2003 to December 2011, Merrill Lynch charged a total of about $32 million in unwarranted fees to roughly 95,000 customer accounts as a result of supervisory failures. The firm has since returned the fees with interest, according to an announcement from FINRA.

Merrill Lynch also consented to be censured as part of a Read Full Article