The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is proposing to raise fees on the brokerages it oversees to offset a “significant loss” of revenue during fiscal 2011. The changes would include a 25 percent increase in trading fees, higher levies for FINRA’s advertising compliance reviews, and new fees for first-time members and membership applications. The new assessments were described in a letter posted on the regulator’s website from Richard Ketchum, FINRA’s chairman and chief executive. Read Bloomberg report [...]
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How many All-Star free agents could $162 million have bought the New York Mets? Unfortunately, Mets fans will never know because the money will be used to settle a lawsuit between Irving Picard and Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz. Picard, the trustee for victims of Bernard Madoff’s multibillion scheme, alleged that Mets owners profited from Madoff’s scam despite the very obvious signs Madoff’s investment returns were false. More in Advisor One [...] MF Global Inc. was the second most actively traded bankruptcy case by dollar amount in March with $325.8 million worth of claims changing hands, according to a report. Investors made 104 trades of customer claims in the defunct brokerage, with an average value of $3.13 million per claim, SecondMarket Holdings Inc. said in a report today. The most actively traded claims were those in Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The claims trading market encompassed $6.2 billion worth of claims in March, an 88 percent increase from February, due in part from heavy demand from MF Global, the report said. Read more on Bloomberg [...] The trustee tasked with returning more than $1.6 billion in missing customer money after the demise of MF Global has suggested establishing an insurance fund for commodities customers to safeguard assets in the event of a future collapse, according to a statement he read at a Congressional hearing on Tuesday. “With such a fund in existence, three-quarters of MF Global’s commodities customers would not have been subject to any loss and could have been made whole within days of the bankruptcy filing,” James W. Giddens told members of the Senate Banking Committee. “A protective fund of this nature could be modestly funded and maintained at a minimal cost until such time as necessary to advance funds to customers, thereby allowing them to resume trading with little or no delay.” Read New York Times report [...] CME Group Inc. (CME) aims to work closer with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, to supervise firms that do business in both the stock and derivatives markets, according to CME’s executive chairman. Improved communication between the largest self-regulatory organizations overseeing the U.S. securities and futures markets seeks to head off some of the fallout from the collapse of MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MFGLQ), CME’s Terry Duffy will tell lawmakers in prepared testimony Tuesday. More on NasDaq [...] The one thing that might have allowed convicted felon Bernie Madoff to run his phony hedge-fund business even longer in the face of an eroding stock market is successful advertising. With his reputation — which was sterling right up to the moment it was tarnished — the public would have beaten a path to his door if Madoff had been allowed to roll out the general welcome mat as his crisis was coming to a head. You could also argue that public advertising would have led to scrutiny which might have uncovered the whole scam sooner. Read Smart Money report [...] The one thing that might have allowed convicted felon Bernie Madoff to run his phony hedge-fund business even longer in the face of an eroding stock market is successful advertising. With his reputation — which was sterling right up to the moment it was tarnished — the public would have beaten a path to his door if Madoff had been allowed to roll out the general welcome mat as his crisis was coming to a head. You could also argue that public advertising would have led to scrutiny which might have uncovered the whole scam sooner. More on MarketWatch here. [...] Customers of MF Global Holdings Ltd. are pushing regulators to get tougher on J.P. Morgan Chase Co. about money that went missing from accounts just before the firm’s collapse. The move comes as a bankruptcy trustee representing brokerage customers of MF Global has said he is conducting an investigation of J.P. Morgan and had entered “substantive discussions regarding the resolution of claims” against the Wall Street firm. In a letter set to be sent to regulators and lawmakers on Monday, an MF Global customer group calls for J.P. Morgan to “return hundreds of millions of dollars in MF Global customer funds transferred” to J.P. Morgan in late October. Read Wall Street Journal report [...] Broker-dealers and their independent representatives are feeling the pinch of tougher oversight. Regulators have issued several warnings in recent months about the need to pay close attention to independent representatives who work in remote offices. In November, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. issued a joint reminder about branch office inspections. In addition, several recent enforcement cases have highlighted the risk to broker-dealers if they are found to have weak branch office oversight. More in Investment News [...] Richard Alderman, the director of the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office, steps down today after a four- year term in which ambitious reforms to combat bribery were hampered by a dwindling budget and a depleted staff. Alderman has championed a system of negotiating corruption settlements with companies rather than prosecutions since joining the SFO as director in 2008. He was criticized for taking on several high-profile investigations, including American International Group Inc.’s Financial Products unit and convicted swindler Bernard Madoff’s London operations, only to close them later citing a lack of evidence. More on Bloomberg [...] |
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