Happy Holidays, everyone!  Since you’re all just sitting home with plenty of time on your hands, it is the perfect opportunity to enjoy this post from my colleague Denise Fesdjian, about the SEC’s new marketing rule for RIAs. – Alan “The SEC score(s) one for the digital age.” These are the words of SEC Commissioner Heist, though, not my own. After a nearly year-long comment period, the SEC announced last week that it was replacing…

Not too long ago, I posted a blog complaining that FINRA’s Nominating Committee had basically abdicated its responsibility to identify suitable candidates for certain seats on FINRA’s Board.  Perhaps not surprisingly, I never heard – from anyone, but least of all FINRA itself – why the Nominating Committee had punted.  But, I put my head down and went on with my life, such as it is these days, content merely – as my law school…

There is a little corner of the FINRA world that most people never have the need or desire to visit, and that’s the not-so-quaint village of statutory disqualification.  SD, for short.  I have written about this sad place many times, mostly about those poor souls who manage to end up here through confusion, or, too often, reliance on bad legal advice, and who discover – too late – that it is impossible to leave.  Like…

We have frequently blogged here about the degree of attention that regulators pay to Chief Compliance Officers, and whether it is proper that they sometimes are named individually in Enforcement actions.  And we are hardly the only ones who see this issue.  The New York City Bar back in February – I know, that seems like a lifetime ago, as it was before COVID-19 really impacted us all – published a Report On Chief Compliance …

As everyone is likely well aware, one of the principal changes that happened when FINRA retired the old suitability rule – NASD Rule 2310 – and replaced it with shiny new FINRA Rule 2111 back in 2012 was the broadening of the scope of the rule to encompass not just recommendations to buy or sell specific investments, but, as well, recommendations involving investment strategies (which could include a combination of securities and non-securities).  Despite that…

As should be clear to readers of this Blog, I find that Enforcement actions often provide the best guidance in terms of what regulators deem to be unacceptable conduct, which is very useful when dealing with subjective standards like “reasonableness.”  This past week, FINRA published an AWC submitted by Coastal Equities, Inc. that offers a good lesson in the sort of red flags associated with unsuitable recommendations – particularly quantitatively unsuitable recommendations – to which…

Attentive readers will recall that a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned in a preface to great post from Chris about expungement becoming an endangered creature due to changes in FINRA rule that I was about to embark on a two-week FINRA Enforcement hearing, all done by Zoom, by consent.  I promised to provide some feedback, so here it is. In short, despite the best and sincere efforts and intentions of the parties, their counsel,…