Compliance

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is developing a system that will tell its examiners and firms’ compliance officials whether firms that sold munis with material-event disclosures passed that information on to customers.

Although Sheila Bair and the ABA have often been at loggerheads over regulatory reform, the distance between them was never more apparent than during her last address to the group.

Two top Obama administration officials said Tuesday that the government-sponsored enterprises would not be exempted from a pending proposal to help standardize mortgages sold into the secondary market.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has fined Dallas-based financial services company Southwest Securities Inc. $500,000 for soliciting violations related to its municipal securities business.

House Ways and Means Committee Democrats introduced a bill on Thursday that would reinstate Build America Bonds, the higher small-issuer limit for bank-qualified bonds, and six other bond, tax credit and loan guarantee programs.

Empowering the SEC to adequately monitor markets would help restore some faith in the U.S. capital markets, according to the industry group.

The MICG Investment Management of Newport News, Va., and barred its chief executive and majority owner, Jeffrey A. Martinovich, from the securities industry.The move, signaled in February and announced Thursday, follows what the independent regulator of brokers said was misuse of a hedge fund, for personal enrichment of Martinovich and general enrichment of the company.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority expelled MICG Investment Management of Newport News, Va., and barred its chief executive and majority owner, Jeffrey A. Martinovich, from the securities industry.

About nine months after it floated the idea, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has just asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to approve a rule change to establish a new registration category and qualification exam for certain operations personnel to be called operations professionals.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has not found any major abuses from its targeted examinations of broker-dealers that were either placement agents or worked with such agents to obtain business from municipalities and public pension funds, market sources said Tuesday.

While the financial services community waits for some movement from the SEC on new rules and policies governing advisors, the Labor Department has taken it upon itself to get the ball rolling in the name of better protecting investors and pensioners.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has fined Dallas-based financial services company Southwest Securities Inc. $500,000 for soliciting violations related to its municipal securities business.

The 27-page term sheet handed to the five largest mortgage servicers last week is a detailed, dense list of requirements that, if implemented as proposed, would fundamentally change the relationship between servicers, investors and borrowers.

Between the SEC's broad and unspecific recommendations to safeguard shareholders from unscrupulous advisors and the Department of Labor's recent attempts to redefine the conditions under which a financial advisor becomes a fiduciary, the financial advisors and broker-dealers providing the guidance and products investors need for retirement are huddling up to decide which regulations and rule changes they should support in the face of looming legislation.

The fine, related to the sale of municipal securities, will require the firm to ensure it is complying with Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board rules.

As they say: The more things change, the more they stay the same. That goes for the American Bankers Association Wealth Management Conference in Miami.

Trust, but verify.

SunGard has launched a Wealth Management Regulatory and Risk Consulting Practice, part of its Wealth Management Global Services.

Federal agencies are set to establish sweeping new servicing standards not by legislation or regulatory process, but by a major action against the top five mortgage servicers.

Criminal charges were filed Thursday against a former financial adviser at UBS Financial Services who the Securities and Exchange Commission charged with siphoning $3.3 million from investors to pay for luxury cars, prostitutes and gambling debts.