A Towson millionaire pleaded guilty Thursday in a $550 million Ponzi scheme – one of the largest ever charges in Maryland. Federal prosecutors called Kevin Merrill the front man in a fraud to dupe vulnerable investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
A California federal judge turned down E*Trade Financial’s request to block a broker, who moved to Morgan Stanley, from contacting his former clients.
In an effort to become a dominant player in the financial advice business, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has announced that it has agreed to buy United Capital Financial Partners Inc. for $750 million.
Underwriters from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will collect millions of dollars in fees from clients who had invested in Uber’s initial public offering (IPO) last week. Nevertheless, the clients who had invested in Uber’s IPO are now facing large losses.
HighTower Advisors has announced that the $50 billion RIA will exit the Broker Protocol. HighTower’s exit follows the departure of Morgan Stanley and then UBS in late 2017.
A federal judge has sentenced former Boca Raton, Florida, securities attorney Mark Fisher to more than two years in prison for his role in a $1 million pump-and-dump scheme involving shares of a beauty supply company, Valentine Beauty Inc. Fisher also was ordered to forfeit $8.4 million in profits he received from the pump-and-dump scheme.
In the largest M&A deal of this year, Reverence Capital Partners has announced its 75% purchase of Advisor Group from Lightyear Capital, PSP Investments, and other shareholders on May 9th, 2019. The cost of doing business? More than $2 billion was spent to acquire the independent broker dealer.
FINRA has suspended former LPL Financial investment adviser, James E. “Jeb” Bashaw for failing to disclose to LPL that he borrowed $200,000 from a customer in 2013.
The number of financial advisors breaking away from their firms has slowed during the first three months of this year. According to InvestmentNews, only 94 financial advisors have left the wirehouse channel in the first quarter, which is a 36% drop from the 147 breakaways recorded in the fourth quarter of 2018. The stock market correction is cited as one of the main reasons why there has been the lowest breakaway activity since the second quarter of 2017.
After one of the worst first quarters in the recent history of UBS, the wealth management group is now experiencing a significant downsize. How significant? UBS now has to cut nearly $300 million in costs for a chance at recovery.
