Broker accepted kickbacks for IPO access: SEC

A broker was charged Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission with illegally accepting more than $1 million in undisclosed kickbacks for giving certain clients preferential access to lucrative IPOs, enabling them to reap major profits on trading in secondary markets. The SEC alleged in its complaint that Brian Hirsch,42, subverted allocation policies and procedures at two brokerage firms where he worked for the wealth syndicate desk, making long-running arrangements with certain customers to give them larger allocations of coveted public offerings being marketed by the firms. In most instances, the customers sold their stock into the market as soon as possible to turn a substantial profit at the expense of the firms' other brokerage customers and the issuers' interests in raising capital from long-term investors, according to the SEC. Mr. Hirsch could not be reached to comment. The SEC's complaint against Mr. Hirsch does not list the specific firms he worked for and instead only listing Firms A and B, at which he worked, respectively, from September 2008 to December 2015 and from then until this month.