Good sense has vanished from many areas of American life including how families manage their money, says economist and television commentator Ben Stein.
How can an Advisor or a Firm "own" someone else's money?
Merrill Lynch is carving out some of its private banking units from the broker recruiting protocol.
In the old days (pre 2004), firms would sue each other when an Advisor went from one firm to the other. “We own the book!” they cried (as if any firm or individual could somehow “own” someone else's money).
Maine securities regulators say Merrill Lynch will pay the state $400,000 to resolve claims that the brokerage allowed some of its associates to sell securities without being properly registered.
If everybody thinks we're picking on them, it probably means we're serving the people we're supposed to be serving: our readers.
HighTower Advisors LLC announced today that it has snapped up another team of advisers, this time from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC.
Bloomberg's Susan Antilla offers her opinion on just how much (or little) progress women have made in the financial services industry over the last two decades
A former broker for Morgan Stanley and Banc of America Securities LLC will plead guilty today to receiving kickbacks for his role in a stock-loan scheme that operated from March 2004 to December 2005, court records show.
Former Merrill Lynch & Co. broker Steven Mandala, who was charged with stealing $780,000 from the firm, partly to buy a Ferrari, pleaded guilty to grand larceny and identity theft, his lawyer said.
As big investment banks prepare to report first-quarter earnings this month, many analysts are lowering their forecasts in light of weaker-than-expected trading by investors in February and March.
Within the individual brokerage firms, there is an ongoing tug of war going on. On one side are Branch Managers who are put under pressure to hire.
Merrill Lynch Wealth Management confirmed today that Jimmy Tighe, who left Morgan Stanley Smith Barney this week, has joined the firm.
A team of four financial advisers has left Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, where they advised on $267M in client assets, to join the private-wealth-management group at Robert W. Baird & Co., according to a company spokesperson.
From this outside perspective, with knowledge gained from talking to dozens of folks on the inside of the firm, MSSB is a joint venture in title only: Morgan Stanley is running the show.
We all know that Merrill Lynch and Bank of America were a shotgun marriage. Bernanke and Paulson were holding the proverbial shotgun to Mr. Lewis and Mr. Thain's heads and, poof, we have a humongous financial institution.
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney made an attempt to use the legal system as a bludgeon against a team departing to HighTower while Goldman Sachs did the same with a team departing to Credit Suisse.
The big wirehouses face major challenges that could thwart their announced plans to recruit brokers aggressively and hire more trainees, recruiters and analysts say.
Although the number of brokers who change jobs in 2010 won't approach the level seen during the financial crisis, expect this to be a good year for broker recruiting.
Nearly every Wall Street worker is getting a bonus this year — despite public outrage over banker compensation.
