Compliance

The adviser had been employed with the firm for seven years prior to her dismissal, and had no disclosures on her BrokerCheck record.

The regulator said "significant deficiencies" affected hundreds of millions of records.

Millions in clients' funds was steered into a sports ticketing business.

The reductions cover six of the firm's 17 multifactor offerings.

Her proposal to expand a probe into possible sales abuses was met by resistance from an executive who didn’t want to alienate the bank.

Since 2014, the bank has culled 17,000 clients as tougher capital rules make dealing with many smaller firms less profitable.

"I lose years of my life. They can settle, write a check and move on," says an adviser whose book of business dropped by $40 million after he alleges he was wrongfully terminated.

The allegations come a year after the firm paid over $300 million to resolve regulators' claims that it failed to tell wealthy clients it was steering them into its own funds.

The bank may be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in tax penalties, lawyers say.

The fund's manager, who was 11 years old when Vanguard began offering the fund in 1986, tracks the performance of more than 10,000 securities.