Displaying items by tag: lawsuits

(New York)

Advisors need to prepare themselves for a nasty eventuality that looks like a near certainty when the market next crashes. According to a top wealth management lawyer, there are likely to be a great deal of lawsuits filed by clients against their advisors whenever the next big crash comes. The lawsuits will be focused on claims of reverse churning, or that advisors put client money in fee-baseds account in order to collect fees without offering significant advice or trading. Since switching clients into fee-based accounts (versus commission-based accounts) has been a very common practice over the last several years, the atmosphere is ripe for a massive wave of lawsuits.

FINSUM: This article is worryingly insightful. The big switch to fee-based accounts, which preceded but also corresponded to the DOL rule, might have set up advisors for some major legal headaches in the next downturn.

(New York)

Any stock investor, especially those who have been investing over the last twenty years, has noticed that there is a dearth publicly traded companies these days. Years of mergers and acquisitions, combined with a lack of IPOs, means there are many less publicly traded companies these days. Now, in what seems a strong move to change that, the SEC is considering making a new rule that would bar shareholders from suing companies, with all claims moving to arbitration instead. Doing so would eliminate one of the headaches of going public for companies, and would move the relationship between shareholders and companies to something more akin to clients and advisors, where arbitration is the norm.

FINSUM: This is an interesting move, but we do not think it is enough to push companies over the edge to IPO. It might also prove poor from a corporate governance perspective.