Regulation

The SEC sanctioned Florida-based 1st Discount Brokerage and a former executive vice president for failing to supervise an advisor who was operating a Ponzi scheme.

The firm joins several others, including Ladenburg Thalmann, Cetera and LPL Financial, to offer subsidized FSI memberships to advisors.

Will the recent SEC alert chill the use of social media by asset management firms? Or simply put it on ice?

The former UBS trader accused of unauthorized deals that cost the Swiss bank $2.3 billion pleaded not guilty to four fraud and false accounting charges in a London court.

FINRA issues an alert warning investors to guard against a two-step process where “fraudsters” gain access to their email accounts and then instruct the firms involved to transfer money out of their brokerage accounts.

The SEC said a trader based in Latvia broke into online brokerage accounts of customers at large U.S. broker-dealers and manipulated prices in more than 100 New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market securities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission just took action against a trader in Latvia that hacked online brokerage accounts in the United States, costing customers $2 million.

The head of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations called for an end to private letter rulings from the Internal Revenue Service which have “essentially opened the floodgates” for mutual funds to speculate in commodities from offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands.

The head of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations called Thursday for an end to private letter rulings from the Internal Revenue Service which have “essentially opened the floodgates” for mutual funds to speculate in commodities, from off-share tax havens.

Merrill Lynch agreed to pay a $1 million fine for failing to arbitrate disputes with employees about retention bonuses related to its 2009 merger with Bank of America Corp., the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said.