This perhaps goes without saying, but when the SEC’s enforcement staff call to ask about potential securities law violations, they aren’t just gathering facts, as they like to say. And it can be very hard to know what to do in response. Kenneth Wrangell got such a call recently, and it appears that he made… Continue Reading
Monthly Archives: September 2012
SEC’s Secret Payments Brigade Marches On
Posted in Accounting Fraud, WhistleblowersOn Monday the SEC’s Miami Regional Office brought a settled enforcement action against Gilbert Fiorentino, a former director and officer of Systemax, Inc., a Long Island-based company that sells personal computers and other consumer electronics through its websites, retail stores, and direct mail catalogs. The SEC’s complaint alleges that over the five years from 2006… Continue Reading
NASAA Identifies Top Broker-Dealer Compliance Violations and Best Practices
Posted in Broker-Dealers, FINRAOn Sunday, the North American Securities Administrators Association released its list of broker-dealer compliance violations and best practices to avoid those violations. The list is based on a compilation of 236 examinations by state securities examiners from 24 jurisdictions around the United States. The exams were conducted in the first half of 2012 under the… Continue Reading
FINRA Reminds World about Global Research Settlement
Posted in Broker-Dealers, FINRARemember the Global Research Settlement? It has been somewhat in the news recently. You might recall that it involved ten huge banks and the, uh, symbiotic relationship between those banks’ research and investment banking arms. The pattern that had developed worked like this: equity analysts published favorable coverage of a publicly traded company’s stock, and… Continue Reading