Compliance

FINRA effectively backed up claims that Securities America breached its fiduciary duty and violated industry rules.

A FINRA arbitration panel has ordered UBS to cough up $2.8 million to settle a dispute with a former in-house recruiter.

Only half as many muni advisory firms are registered with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board compared to those registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, even though advisory firms are now required to sign up with both regulators under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has extended by four months the date by which advisors must deliver information about their personnel to their clients to help them make the necessary operational adjustments.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority expelled APS Financial Corp., and barred its former president as well as its former broker from the industry. The move comes in response to an alleged scheme involving an elderly investor and markups on CMOs as well as other types of securities.

While 2010 was an all-out scramble by Democratic leaders to harness outrage over the financial crisis to push reg reform over the finish line, the legislative outlook for next year ...

Retirement plan providers will be able to sue more people and have a legal leg to stand on.

Brokers must keep addresses and other pertinent information updated with the CRD. Doing otherwise can lead to trouble.

The number of delinquent mortgages rose while foreclosures also jumped in the third quarter, according to a report released Wednesday by federal regulators.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council was created to identify systemic risks and act to disarm them. But the first five months of the council's existence have been underwhelming.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said it expelled an Austin brokerage firm from the securities industry and barred the firm's former president and a broker from working in the industry.

Three of the U.S. largest trade groups representing the derivatives industry have said to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that it needs to be a lot more lenient on how it will monitor market manipulation when it implements its greater authority under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation.

UBS Financial Services Inc. is on the hook to pay $2.2 million in the largest settlement to date related to Lehman Brothers-associated investment products it once sold.

2011 will be critical as regulators across the globe start the difficult task of implementing the new Basel III rules even while they tackle issues left unfinished by the agreement.

Just three years ago, the very idea of a consumer protection agency was dismissed by most bankers and industry representatives as a pipe dream. But after a brutal legislative fight this year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may prove to be the most important agency to watch in 2011.

Opposing advocacy groups have unleashed new demands on the Securities and Exchange Commission in recent weeks, urging the agency to pay more attention to potential problems associated with new whistleblower rules.

One of the chief goals of the Dodd-Frank Act was to end the notion of "too big to fail," but months after the law's enactment, a debate persists over whether that goal will be met.

Deciding which financial firms beyond banks are systemically important is one of the biggest decisions still to be made by regulators under the Dodd-Frank Act.

Opposing advocacy groups complain that new whistleblower rules could allow too much internal corporate interference or provide whistleblowers with too much financial incentive.

New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo filed a lawsuit against Ernst & Young LLP charging the accounting firm with helping Lehman Brothers Holdings engage in an accounting fraud masking the true state of its balance sheet.