Practice management

Small-business owners' confidence in the economy rose in May, reaching its highest level in seven months, according to Discover Financial Services.

Sen. Richard Durbin's interchange amendment specifies that the Federal Reserve Board would draw up regulations limiting debit fees, but many observers agree the new consumer protection regulator — not the Fed — could end up with the ultimate authority over the rules.

The two advisor teams represent more than half a billion dollars in client assets.

UBS Wealth Management Americas hired four advisors from Merrill with combined assets of $352 million. The new team will join the firm’s Jacksonville, Fla., office.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority are warning investors to beware of stock scams that promise easy profits from cleanup efforts related to the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Selling covered put and call options can substantially boost your returns in an unstable market.

The battle over the final regulatory reform will just be a prologue to the longer and much more complicated fight over how the legislation will be implemented.

With this next round of volatility will undoubtedly come the fear and panic that your clients have become all too familiar with over the past few years. Clients who feel that their advisor isn’t communicating with them will find another who will. The time to be proactive is now. Here’s how.

The Lansing, Mich., based company said the office in the Nashville suburb would employ 400 people.

The uncertainty and confusion around the fiduciary standard has jolted the financial services industry leading hundreds to pack the rooms at FINRA’s annual conference in Baltimore.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has appointed Brian T. Croteau as its deputy chief accountant for the Professional Practice Group in the SEC’s Office of the Chief Accountant.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to ask issuers of negotiated Build America Bond transactions, in a revised “compliance-check questionnaire,” if any investors who bought their bonds in the primary market paid more than the price the bonds were initially offered at.

The Obama administration continued to push its priorities Thursday on what provisions should be included in the final regulatory reform bill.

New system would allow regulators to better track market trades.

Insurers watch as accounting standard setters prepare to issue new rules that could have profound effects on their business.

The battle over an amendment to establish minimum capital requirements in the regulatory reform bill is the result of a long-standing feud between the FDIC and the Fed.

The SEC alleged in a complaint filed Wednesday that Bonnie Jean Hoxie, an administrative assistant to a “high-level” Disney executive, and her boyfriend, Yonni Sebbag, sent anonymous letters in March to more than 20 hedge funds offering to provide results of Disney’s second quarter earnings.

A new survey challenges the notion that investors should load up on bonds as they age.

New SEC rules that take effect May 28 are also making money funds wary.

Senate Democrats tapped mostly liberal members Tuesday to be conferees on the regulatory reform bill, making it harder for the banking industry to remove provisions it considers too tough.