A Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) is an extreme remedy that financial services firms frequently employ to stop advisors from transitioning their clients to a new firm. While the TRO requires the parties in the case to maintain a certain status quo until the court can hear further evidence, the delay overwhelmingly harms the departing advisor. In many respects, the TRO fight is not the battle; instead, it is the very war itself.
UBS Wealth Management has announced that its 6,900 advisors will be able to keep their payout grid and other key components of their compensation plan in 2019. Moreover, according to UBS, the firm is only intending to make minor changes to its 2019 compensation plan.
The SEC has fined UBS Financial Services over $15 million because of its failure from 2011 to 2014 to educate and train retail brokers on the sale of almost $11 billion of complex structured products.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that two UBS advisory firms agreed to settle charges relating to their failing to disclose a change in investment objective of a close-end fund, UBS Willow Fund LLC, which they advised. Both firms agreed to collectively pay $17.5 million, $13 million of which will be returned to harmed investors.
UBS Financial Services of Puerto Rico was hit with a $34 million fine to settle charges brought by the SEC and FINRA. Jose Ramirez. Jr., a former broker in UBS’s Guaynabo branch in Puerto Rico, persuaded investors to use funds from lines of credit with UBS Bank USA to purchase additional shares in UBS closed-end funds profiting at least $2.8 million.
A former UBS broker from New Jersey pled guilty for stealing over $1 million from a retired pediatrician and his wife by fraudulently soliciting them to invest in his purported hedge fund, RKS Capital, LP.
In April 2011, two years before the fund prices sank, UBS brokers were asked by the firm to sell more of the funds’ shares, even though the brokers were reluctant to do so given the funds’ low liquidity, excessive leverage, oversupply and instability.
Many wirehouses have deferred compensations for their advisors. Even though the whole grids were largely left intact, compensation is inarguably more back loaded, and therefore somewhat less valuable.
Last week, the Swiss National Bank abolished the franc’s three year-old cap of 1.20 per euro, which caused the currency to soar as much as 41 percent against the common currency.
A panel of securities industry arbitrators awarded two military personnel $7.6 million for wrongful discharge and for violations of USERRA, the federal law that protects military personnel from workplace harassment and retaliation.
