FINRA Fines Wedbush Securities for Margin-Securities and Disclosure Failures
From the desk of Jim Eccleston at Eccleston Law
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) ordered Wedbush Securities to pay $150,000 after identifying significant compliance and supervisory failures involving customer margin securities and required bond-pricing disclosures. According to InvestmentNews, the firm, which operates with roughly 500 registered representatives across 70 branches, has a documented history of supervisory deficiencies and prior regulatory penalties.
According to FINRA, Wedbush violated Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules between June 2018 and December 2022 when it failed to maintain possession or control of customers’ fully paid and excess margin securities. FINRA also found that the firm lacked an adequate supervisory system to monitor those assets during the same period. InvestmentNews reports that Wedbush agreed to the findings without admitting or denying them and received a censure as part of the settlement.
FINRA identified additional issues from August 2022 through August 2023, when Wedbush failed to disclose required mark-ups and mark-downs on retail customer confirmations. According to InvestmentNews, these disclosures influence what retail clients ultimately pay for municipal, government, corporate, and agency bonds.
FINRA stated that Wedbush issued roughly 300 confirmations for municipal securities and about 1,050 confirmations for corporate and agency debt that omitted mark-ups and mark-downs expressed as both total dollar amounts and percentages of the prevailing market price. FINRA attributed these failures to personnel not entering the prevailing market price into the firm’s order-management system in a timely manner.
According to InvestmentNews, the firm’s compliance history includes a $900,000 FINRA fine in 2022 for violations tied to failed-to-deliver positions. In 2023, the SEC imposed a $10 million penalty on Wedbush as part of a broader multi-firm settlement involving the use of unapproved communication channels. A Wedbush spokesperson declined to comment on the latest action.
Eccleston Law LLC represents investors and financial advisors nationwide in securities, employment, transition, regulatory, and disciplinary matters.
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