Practice management

Advisors are essentially small business owners, whose passion for their profession can easily consume everything else in their lives.

For the estimated million-plus folks who turned 70 1/2 years old last year, time is running out to take their first required minimum distribution from their various 401(k) and IRA accounts without incurring stiff tax liabilities.

Ahmass L. Fakahany was awarded $1.2 million by a FINRA arbitration panel after he brought a claim seeking more than $70 million from his former employer.

Here is a rundown of five potential pitfalls in cost-basis reporting which Wolters Kluwer Financial Services says brokerage firms, mutual fund companies, transfer agents and even corporations should watch out for as the tax season for securities reporting peaks.

Eileen Rominger, in her first appearance as the SEC's director of investment management division before a gathering of members of the mutual fund industry’s largest trade group, said that compliance with existing and forthcoming rules as well as robust regulation of these is essential to achieving and maintaining the trust and confidence of investors.

The establishment of a fiduciary standard that applies to how broker-dealers should care for their customers is not likely to come until after the one-year anniversary date of passage of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that required it.

Advisors must be good writers. Here's a blueprint for success.

Investors in externally managed and sub-advised accounts could save about $1 billion a year in commissions paid to brokerage firms by their fund managers. So says UAT, a Denver-based technology firm specializing in the externally managed and subadvised industry. Incumbent commission management firms disagree.

One in six of the 145 million tax returns that the IRS expects to be filed for the 2010 tax year will include a Schedule C for self-employed filers, and many of them will no doubt be subjected to an IRS audit.

The special inspector general for Tarp will wrap up his two-year-plus tour on Wednesday, and he has nothing good to say about Treasury's implementation of the $700 billion bailout.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority won’t force investment advisers to meet the same rules as broker-dealers, according to FINRA’s chairman and chief executive officer Richard Ketchum.

Making the right hires and using a firm-wide team approach to client service has helped Leonetti & Associates, a financial advisory firm in Buffalo Grove, Ill. grow and prosper, according to chief executive officer Michael Leonetti, who founded the firm in 1982.

High net worth investors are returning their money to the market and have put the painful memories of past financial shenanigans in the rearview mirror but they're more fickle than ever when it comes to sticking with their primary financial institution or their individual financial advisor.

A retired American Airlines pilot is set to recoup his retirement savings tied up since 2009 in non-public mortgage funds.

Uncertainty about fluctuating interest rates and rapidly spiraling health care costs were cited as the two largest fears of both retirees and pre-retirees, according to a new survey conducted by the Schaumberg, Ill.-based Society of Actuaries.

“Opinions are continuing to move in a positive direction,” said American Century's Jennifer Sussman. “Social media is being seen as a trend with future potential.”

ING announced Friday it hired Orlando R. Cruz as president of its individual retirement investor channel.

The OCC and Fincen issued a $7 million civil money penalty against Pacific National Bank of Miami for Bank Secrecy Act violations and failing to comply with a previous order.

The U.S. Attorney for southern Florida and the FBI on Thursday charged a one-time entrepreneurial whiz kid who already has spent time behind bars for fraud with manipulating the stock of a public company. Using, among Internet-related communication mechanisms, YouTube.

Jason Schlesinger comes to Baird after three years at Wells Fargo and eight years at Bank of America Investment Securities.