Boca Raton Florida Failure to Supervise Attorney - Law Offices of Robert Wayne Pearce

May 17, 2016

Stephens Inc. Slapped with $900,000 Fine for Improper Supervision of Flash Emails

Stephens, Inc. submitted a letter of Acceptance, Waiver, and Consent (AWC) in which it was censured and fined $900,000 by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for failing to adequately supervise the content and dissemination of “flash” emails, along with the securities trading in connection with the content of these emails. According to FINRA, Stephens, Inc., based out of Little Rock Arkansas, created the “flash” emails in order to supplement its published research with frequent communications between research analysts and sales and trading employees. These emails were allegedly meant to provide a means of sharing publicly available information, such as press releases and earnings calls, with the firm’s sales personnel who would then share the publicly available information to interested clients. However, FINRA found that from at least August 2013 through January 2016, Stephens, Inc. failed to properly supervise the content and dissemination of these flash emails, thereby creating the risk that they could potentially contain nonpublic information that could be misused by sales and trading staff.

May 8, 2015

LPL Financial Hit with $11.7 Million Fine for Failure to Supervise Investment Sales

LPL Financial LLC (LPL Financial) was fined $11.7 million by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for failing to maintain a proper supervisory system with respect to the sales of complex investment products, such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), variable annuities, mutual funds, and non-traded real estate investment trusts. Without admitting or denying the findings, LPL Financial consented to FINRA’s sanctions and findings that if failed to enforce its supervisory procedures for the sales of non-traditional ETFs, such as leveraged, inverse, and inverse-leveraged ETFs. Specifically, FINRA found that LPL Financial failed to enforce allocation limits with respect to customers’ investment objectives in its sales of non-traditional ETFs. LPL also failed to ensure that some of its registered representatives were adequately trained to sell the ETFs.

Mar 11, 2015

Dawson James Securities Fined For Failing to Conduct Adequate Due Diligence

Dawson James Securities, Inc. of Boca Raton, Florida submitted a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent in which the firm consented to, but did not admit to or deny, the described sanctions and the entry of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA) findings that it “failed to establish and implement an adequate system to determine whether a former registrant’s disclosed outside business was properly characterized as an outside business activity or whether it should be treated as an outside securities activity subject to the requirements of NASD Rule 3040.”