Practice

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority issued an alert to investors to look carefully into the potential risks of nonrecourse stock-based loan programs before participating in them.

ING Direct's customers now have one more hoop to jump through to use a personal financial management site. ING isn't apologizing for the inconvenience, and perhaps counterintuitively, PFM providers see no reason ING should.

Workers who participate in 401(k) plans would be greatly served if a bill that has just been reintroduced in the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pension is passed.

Bank of America Corp. will pay $20 million and Morgan Stanley $2.35 million for improperly foreclosing on members of the military — some of whom were on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan — under a settlement with the Justice Department.

The median annual cost of care in a private nursing home rose 3.4% over the past year to $77,745—far surpassing the $49,777 median annual household income for Americans, according to Genworth’s “2011 Cost of Care Survey.” And the cost of an assisted living facility rose 2.4% over the past year to $39,135.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has fined Credit Suisse Securities (USA) $4.5 million, and Bank of America's Merrill Lynch unit $3 million for misrepresenting delinquency data and inadequate supervision in connection with the issuance of residential subprime mortgage securitizations.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted rules that could reward individuals who blow the whistle on illegal activity in securities markets, with bounties on successful prosecutions.To be considered for an award, the SEC’s whistleblower program requires the individual to provide "original information" that leads to the successful enforcement by the SEC of a federal court or administrative action where penalties exceed $1 million.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has ramped up its efforts to detect fraud and better work with investors and firms, its management team said on a panel Wednesday.

The shareholders approved a $5.7 million package for Casady, which included an $800,000 salary, $2.2 million bonus and option awards of $2.6 million.

Like they’ve done with every stage of their lives, the Baby Boomers are changing what it means to be retired. But unlike other stages where leading edge boomers set the path that middle and second-half boomers followed, retirement is likely to be transformed throughout the boomer generation in such a way that second-half boomers and the generations that follow will experience a very different retirement than their leading edge siblings.