Mutual life insurance companies fared better than their stockholder-owned counterparts in the recent economic tumult, according to a report from Moody's Investors Service.
Top earners are being given a major reason to look elsewhere
With the economy strengthening but still fragile, Federal Reserve policymakers are expected to hold a key lending rate at a record low this week and will weigh whether to extend some programs that were created to ease the financial crisis.
In a positive sign for the job market, the Conference Board Employment Trends Index remained flat last month for the third month in a row, according to data released today.
Aggressive stimulus spending by governments helped the world avoid a second Great Depression but full economic recovery will take two years or more, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said today.
Total represents a 5% drop from yearend 2008 and is 26% below 2007 peak.
Although improving financial markets have helped lift some life insurance carriers, the firms still have a ways to go before they recover fully, according to a report from Moody's Investors Service.
Foothill Securities Inc., an employee-owned broker-dealer, has merged with Cue Financial Group Inc., a smaller independent firm.
The Securities and Exchange Commission last week charged Bank of America Corp. with misleading investors about billions of dollars in bonuses that were paid to Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. executives just before BofA acquired the New York brokerage house in January.
No wonder investors have lost faith in the stock market.
Massachusetts regulators sent subpoenas to four brokerage firms July 31 seeking information about the way they sold inverse and leveraged exchange traded funds. The subpoenas were issued weeks after the firms restricted the sale of the products or stopped selling them altogether.
A proposal by the Securities and Exchange Commission that would require advisory firms holding custody of client assets to be audited by accountants inspected by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board would cost each firm an average of $200,000, according to one new estimate.
Aggressive hiring by regional broker-dealers is likely to continue for the rest of the year, coming mostly at the expense of the wirehouses, according to industry executives and analysts.
Efforts in Congress to toughen restrictions on executive compensation likely would upend pay practices all across the financial services industry.
Attorneys and executives at broker-dealer firms are questioning the extent of National Financial Partners Corp.'s potential liability in a civil suit involving a failed life settlement transaction at an NFP affiliate.
New, higher assessments by the Securities Investor Protection Corp. are causing ”sticker shock” at several broker-dealers, particularly independent-contractor firms.
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 former financial adviser and registered representative who reportedly hid his criminal past by using a dead infant's identity pleaded guilty last Thursday to several fraud charges.
Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America Corp.'s embattled chief executive, gave a trenchant analysis of the state of banking — and the brokerage business, in particular— last week when he announced that former Smith Barney boss Sallie Krawcheck will run the bank's global wealth and investment management sector.
