With discussions regarding the sale of the AIG Advisor Group dragging on for months, representatives and financial advisers who are affiliated with the beleaguered broker-dealers of the firm are relieved now that two final bidders have emerged.
A broker booted from Next Financial is under investigation by the police in San Antonio for his role in an alleged theft of about $1.5 million from an elderly couple.
Commonwealth Financial Network of Waltham, Mass., picked up three large offices of reps and advisers who manage $1.25 billion in July, and the advisers are coming from two broker-dealer networks that are being shopped by the insurance companies that own them.
Two private-equity firms with strong ties to retail broker-dealers are the final bidders for the AIG Advisor Group — the network of broker-dealers that houses about 6,000 independent registered reps and investment advisers — and a winner could be determined in the next several days, according to sources.
Next Financial Group Inc. of Houston was fined $1 million today by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. for failures to supervise its network of some 130 branch managers, also known as OSJs in the independent-contractor-broker-dealer industry.
In a major retrenchment, LPL Investment Holdings Inc. of Boston is pulling the plug on the Pershing LLC clearing platform used by about 1,700 advisers on three broker-dealers it acquired in 2007, and moving those reps onto LPL's clearing platform.
Senior Finra officials have started to tell broker-dealer executives and representatives that they should think twice when selling Section 529 college savings plans.
Like businesses across the financial services industry, clearing firms are feeling the pressure and the strain from the historic market downturn. It is a difficult and competitive business environment for the firms, which are key partners to broker-dealers, clearing and settling transactions for them and their representatives.
Recent raiding at broker-dealers has sparked ugly and bitter feuds and led to significant damage awards, and financial industry attorneys and experts see more cases in the offing.
Morgan Stanley last month suffered a $1 million loss in an arbitration case charging that the firm had “blindsided” a small regional broker-dealer, Strand Atkinson Williams & York Inc., “by a swift and crippling raid” of senior management and top-producing brokers.
