It’s crunch time for financial reform, and Wall Street banks are lobbying hard to keep a central pillar of financial reform from becoming law, and, at the same time, are planning ways of getting around whatever financial reform restrictions do become law, according to a recent New York Times article by Eric Dash and Nelson D. Schwart titled “Banking Lobbyists Make a Run at Reform Measures.”
Brokerage firms’ advertising portrays brokers as trusted members of the family, writes Tara Siegel Bernard in her New York Times article, “Trusted Adviser or Stock Pusher? Finance Bill May Not Settle It.” Anyone who has tried to hold a broker to a fiduciary standard of conduct, however, hears a very different response: “We are mere order takers. You never should have trusted us.”
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According to a recent Bloomberg National Poll, more than 50% of Americans despise Wall Street and favor punishment of the bankers who caused the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The majority of poll participants -- 56 percent -- say big financial companies are more interested in enriching themselves at the expense of ordinary people.
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Independent financial advisers are gaining on Wall Street brokers in the competition to manage more than $5 trillion in Americans' savings, according to E. S. Browning in his recent Wall Street Journal article, “More Brokers Flee Big Firms, Taking Investors With Them.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that “hundreds of businesses are fighting to recover billions of dollars tied up in frozen auction-rates securities, a year after Wall Street firms agreed to $60 billion in settlements over the collapsed market for the investments.” See “Firms Fight Banks Over Billions in Frozen Notes,” WSJ 1/2/10. While regulators stepped in to help individual investors after the auctions froze in February 2008, many corporate and institutional investors did not benefit from settlements between banks, broker-dealers and the SEC, FINRA and state attorneys general. According to Atlanta attorney Craig T. Jones, investors were left holding about $330 billion in illiquid securities when the auctions froze, so $60 billion in settlements is only a drop in the bucket.”
Fidelity Investment has joined Charles Schwab and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in warning customers about the complexity and risks of Leveraged Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), reported Daisy Maxey in her article, “Fidelity the Latest to Caution on ETFs,” published in the August 4 Wall Street Journal. Fidelity’s web site now states: “Most [Leveraged ETFs] reset daily and seek to achieve their objectives on a daily basis. Due to compounding, performance over longer periods can differ significantly from the performance of the underlying index.”
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, an important Wall Street lobbying group, has decided to support the Obama administration’s proposal to hold brokers to the same standard as a fiduciary when they provide investment advice, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal. While investors who sue their brokers have long argued, with considerable success, that a fiduciary duty arises whenever there is a relationship of trust and confidence between broker and investor, that determination is presently made on a case by case basis under laws that vary from state to state. A federal standard, which is more likely to pass now that it has been endorsed by the industry, would make it easier for investors to prevail in claims against brokers.
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Target-Date mutual funds are not always what they appear to be, reports Leslie Wayne in her June 25, 2009 article in the New York Times entitled “Target-Date Mutual Funds May Miss Their Mark.” Target-Date mutual funds are supposed increase the allocation of bonds over time in order to reduce volatility as an investor approaches retirement. Stocks are generally more volatile than bonds, and investors generally increase the percentage of bonds to add the stability to a portfolio of investments.
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Evergreen Investment Management Company (“Evergreen”), a unit of Wells Fargo & Co., has agreed to pay more than $40 million to settle an enforcement action by the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the Massachusetts Securities Division, according to articles in the Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Evergreen was a subsidiary of Wachovia at the time of the violation, according to Reuters.
On May 13, 2009, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) approved a rule change that requires brokers to disclose alleged sales practice violations made by a customer against a securities broker in the body of a civil lawsuit or arbitration claim, even if that broker is not named as a defendant or respondent. The SEC received a total of 1,654 comment letters on the proposed rule change. Approximately 1,451 of the letters were “form letters” from financial advisors and insurance agents (who sell insurance products such as variable annuities) opposing the change.
Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC has had trouble retaining some of the most successful brokers in its Private Client Group as a result of questionable sales practices. According to an article in Investment News, dozens of brokers serving Fidelity’s most affluent clients recently left the firm because, even though they were required to obtain certified financial planner certifications (CFP), they were prohibited from disclosing details of their bonus compensation, thereby violating the certification they were required to obtain. In addition, some former brokers claim that Fidelity required them to push proprietary products that were unsuitable for some of their clients.
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Fidelity Investments, the world’s largest mutual fund company, will lay off 1,300 employees, or 3% of its work force this month. It will also conduct a second round of job cuts in the first quarter of 2009 that is anticipated to impact another 1,700 employees.
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Yesterday the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) announced auction-rate securities settlements with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Comerica Securities, First Southwest, and WaMu Investments, Inc.
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A settlement, in principle, has been reached between a state auction-rate securities task force and Credit Suisse which would require the investment bank to buy back approximately $550 million in auction-rate securities. In addition, the firm will pay a $15 million fine. The investigation of Credit Suisse was lead by the North Carolina Secretary of State and Securities Commissioner.
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Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have reported that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office has reached an agreement with Fidelity Investments to resolve problems over Fidelity’s marketing of auction-rate securities. According to sources familiar with the negotiations, Fidelity will apparently repurchase approximately $300 million of auction-rate securities from its customers. It is anticipated that the settlement will be similar to other settlements previously entered into and will be limited to small investors (defined as retail customers, charitable organizations and small businesses holding $10 million or less in investments at the firm).
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While regulators have announced tentative settlements with major Wall Street firms (Merrill Lynch, UBS, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wachovia, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank) that underwrote auction-rate securities, these settlements have not addressed the situation of thousands of investors that purchased auction-rate securities through smaller brokerage firms. Most of these smaller brokerage firms were primarily “distributors” of auction-rate securities as opposed to underwriters of the securities. They have not yet settled with regulators and have taken no apparent action to address their customers’ auction-rate securities complaints. Such firms include Oppenheimer, Fidelity Investments, Northern Trust, H&R Block Financial Advisors, SunTrust, Comerica, Stifel Nicolaus, Raymond James, and Wells Fargo.
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Many bond funds, which are supposed to be the pillars of stability during times of market upheaval, are suffering serious subprime mortgage investment losses. The Lehman Brothers U.S. Aggregate bond index, which tracks taxable bonds, Treasury notes, corporates, and some mortgage securities, is up 2.3% from January 1 through April 4 of this year. Yet, as reported by Shefali Anand of The Wall Street Journal on April 8, 2008, 20 percent of all investment-grade U.S. taxable bond funds are in the red for that same period.
The Regions Morgan Keegan Select Intermediate Bond fund is down 44% since the start of the year and 72% over the past year. Since the start of the year, State Street Global Advisors Yield Plus is down 18% and Schwab YieldPlus has fallen 23%.
Many bond funds have been dragged down by the massive sell off of mortgage securities because of the subprime crisis. Among the casualties are Metropolitan Strategic Fund (down 8% this quarter and 12% for one year), UBS Absolute Return Bond (down 8.5% year to date and nearly 15% over the past year), and Principal Investors Ultra Short Bond Fund (down nearly 7% this quarter and nearly 10% over the past year). Metropolitan West had more than half of its investments in mortgage and other asset-backed securities as of December 31, 2007.
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