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Effective July 30, 2007, FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) began operations through the consolidation of NASD and the member regulation, enforcement, and arbitration operations of the New York Stock Exchange.
FINRA is the largest non-governmental regulatory organization for securities brokers and dealers doing business in the United States.
FINRA will oversee more than 5,000 securities firms and 666,000 registered representatives. It will be responsible for rule writing, firm examination, enforcement and arbitration and mediation functions, along with all functions that were previously overseen solely by NASD.
What does FINRA mean to you – the investor?: It means that you now have a compounded source to be educated and complain about unsuitable investments, variable annuities, churning, brokerage firm misconduct such as excessive fees and other misconduct, and unauthorized trading.
An example of broker misconduct would be the rogue trader at Morgan Stanley who marked up the prices on sales of bonds to investors by a whopping 17 percent which is an astronomical charge as normal mark ups/commissions are up to 5 percent. This unethical charade resulted from properly supervising this broker.
"Broker misconduct unfortunately occurs quite often," says Joel Feldman, managing partner of the Pennsylvania law firm, Anapol, Schwartz, Weiss, Cohan, Feldman & Smalley based in Philadelphia. "Normally those responsible for supervising brokers detect the misconduct and stop it. In the case of Morgan Stanley, the broker was ripping off investors and his supervisors were asleep and did nothing to prevent it. It took a full scale investigation by FINRA, formerly the NASD and the regulatory arm of the NYSE to stop the conduct and order fines and restitution to the investors hurt by this scheme."
However, since investment fraud is complex, a Pennsylvania law firm experienced in investment and securities arbitration and litigation should be consulted to smooth the intricate landmine that lies ahead. You might only have one chance to state your case: The best advice is to retain a Pennsylvania lawyer who has reviewed thousands of similar documents and has a detailed understanding of investment fraud.
Please contact Anapol Schwartz, a Pennsylvania law firm, so we can evaluate your case and determine what your legal options are. Investors think about the future; let us help you in the present.
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