The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Jonathan Star Bristol, attorney for former financial advisor Kenneth Ira Starr, with aiding and abetting Starr’s multi-million dollar fraud by allowing Starr to use Bristol’s attorney trust accounts to mask the misappropriation scheme. Beginning in November 2008 through Starr’s arrest in May 2010, more than $25 million of […]
There is speculation this week that Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), will introduce new financial reform legislation that fails to create single fiduciary duty for Registered Independent Advisors (RIAs) and Broker-Dealers. This represents an expected 180˚on the subject of fiduciary duty reform in light of intense lobbying efforts by the financial industry. The provision, rather than […]
There is an ongoing debate regarding the role of state regulators in financial product oversight as Congress mulls over a proposal to expand the range of state oversight. Currently, financial advisors with under $25 million in assets are regulated by state regulators, with anything over that amount being regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission […]
Black Diamond Mining Company LLC, which produces coal in Central Appalachia, said it filed a plan with a U.S. bankruptcy court to emerge from Chapter 11 and an earlier motion to convert its case to a Chapter 7 liquidation had been withdrawn. The company also said it plans to conduct a bankruptcy-court-supervised auction for substantially […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged California-based Brookstreet Securities Corporation and its President/CEO, Stanley Brooks, with fraud. The charges stem from Brookstreet’s habitual selling of risky mortgage-backed securities to clients with conservative investment objectives. This risky and unsuccessful strategy was part of an internal Brookstreet program aimed at selling collateralized mortgage obligations (CMO) […]