Regulation

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.

Former Major League Baseball player Douglas Mirabelli and his wife, Kristin Mirabelli, hit a home run in an arbitration dispute with Merrill Lynch this week when a FINRA panel ordered the firm to pay the couple more than $1.2 million.

A FINRA arbitration panel has ordered Citigroup to pay $24 million to a team of financial advisors formerly employed by the firm.

Amid record attendance and formidable growth in its membership ranks, the leaders of the Financial Services Institute insisted that ensuring the organization’s potency as lawmakers define a fiduciary standard for the industry is chief among their strategies and challenges for the coming year.

The regulators charged with implementing the Volcker Rule have posed 1,300 questions to the public, but on Wednesday, at a House subcommittee hearing, they fielded one query they seemingly hadn't considered.