Compliance

The Securities and Exchange Commission has fined BNY Mellon $24 million and has banned a former manager of institutional trading at Mellon Securities from associating with any broker-dealer firm after carrying out what it called an “eight-year best execution fraud.”

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has censured and fined Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. $500,000 for failing to establish and maintain written supervisory procedures to ensure that its representatives considered customers’ state income-tax benefits in their suitability analyses of 529 college saving plans.

Most regulations already cover financial planning activities, but designations need another look.

Eileen Rominger joins the securities regulator after spending the past 11 years working as the global CIO for Goldman Sachs Asset Management (

The Securities and Exchange Commission has selected Eileen Rominger as director of the division of investment management.

The raft of documents released Tuesday by the Financial Stability Oversight Council gave little sense of what the final regulations would look like for implementing the Volcker Rule, identifying systematically important nonbanks or dealing with other issues involved in Wall Street reform.

The SEC has fined BNY Mellon $24 million and has banned a former manager of institutional trading at Mellon Securities from associating with any broker dealer firm after carrying out what it called an “eight-year best execution fraud.”

A coalition of financial planning experts urged lawmakers to keep the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in charge of investment advisor regulation for the sake of cost and efficiency, just days ahead of several federal reports on the industry due next week.

But will a new self-regulator be the new reality?

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board is scheduled to move ahead on new resolution powers and discuss executive compensation structures at a meeting Tuesday.

A group of House Financial Services Democrats are raising questions about whether taxpayers will be fully protected under the terms of a recent settlement over poorly underwritten loans held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Schwab will pay $118 million to settle the charges.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Charles Schwab with making misleading statements about its Schwab YieldPlus Fund. Schwab agreed to pay $118 million to settle the charges.

Four out of five organizations that currently include money market funds in their short-term investment portfolios would drop them if a floating net asset value were to become a reality, according to a survey by the Association for Financial Professionals.

The Independent Directors Council on Tuesday urged regulators to preserve the $1 net asset value of money market funds, saying a floating NAV would not reduce systemic risk in any meaningful way.

According to a survey, four in five corporations could drop money market funds from their portfolios if funds are required to shift to a floating net asset value reporting structure.

Matt Fink, former president of the ICI, comments in the latest edition of his book on how another financial crisis may one day be in the making.

As directors and officers of failed banks brace for FDIC lawsuits, an intense legal battle is developing over accessing files at their former institutions.

In 2008, Oxford University Press published the first history of mutual funds, THE RISE OF MUTUAL FUNDS: AN INSIDER’S VIEW, by Matthew P. Fink, former president of the Investment Company Institute. Oxford has just published a new paperback edition, updated to cover the 2008 financial crisis and its impact on mutual funds. The following is the Preface to the new edition.

From a psychic who couldn’t see the future to the car czar caught up in a pay-to-play hustle, this was the year in deception.