Law and regulation

A federal judge in Dallas ruled against a $21 million settlement between Securities America and class action plaintiffs.

More investigation as to how a uniform fiduciary standard would affect consumers and the market is needed, a group of House lawmakers said in a letter to the SEC.

Securities and Exchange Commission officials are urging market participants to provide their views about the muni industry and how it can be improved, after the SEC was forced by budget cuts to suspend a series of field hearings that were to be held around the country.

Bankers are divided over the seriousness of a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that would repeal Regulation Q and allow banks to pay rates for demand deposits.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

Four more members of Congress have sent letters to the SEC expressing concerns or raising questions about provisions in its proposed muni advisor registration rules that would treat state and local appointed board members as muni advisers who would be subject to registration and regulation.

The more you hear about the SEC examination process, the more you realize that the examiners can't quickly recognize the honest advisors from the crooks, and are generally more interested in finding fault with the honest advisors than identifying the crooks.

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