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Our experts frequently write blog posts about the findings of the research we are conducting.

Displaying 10 out of 41 results for "Excessive Markups".

Aegis Capital is Farm-to-Table Securities Fraud Purveyor, Harming Investors at Least $5 Billion!

(Mar 2024)

By Craig McCann and Mike Yan

You can download a PDF copy of this post to print or email here.

You can download an Excel file containing some of our analysis of Aegis' sole underwritten offerings here.

Introduction

Aegis Capital is one of the worst few retail brokerage firms based on complaints and investors should avoid it at all costs. You can see our recent post on bad brokerage firms here 2024 Brokerage Firm Risk Rankings

In addition to its retail brokerage business,...

Walton Land Fund 3, LP: Laundering Fees and Fleecing Investors

(Jan 2024)

By Craig McCann and Regina Meng

You can download a pdf of this article to print or email here.

Introduction

We recently published an extensive study of the unregistered Reg D securities markets:

"Regulation D Offerings: Issuers, Investors and Intermediaries", Craig McCann, Chuan Qin and Mike Yan, 2023 working paper, available at www.slcg.com/files/research-papers/Reg_D_Offering.pdf.

It is hard to assess investor returns in the Reg D marketplace because there are no publicly available...

UBS Puerto Rico's Bond Fund Debacle: What We Know so Far

(Feb 2015)

Over the past year, we've posted a dozen short commentaries to our blog post here. We thought it would be helpful to summarize what we know so far. This summary and our prior UBS Puerto Rico blog posts are available in Spanish. You can find all the Spanish-language blog posts by clicking here.

We discussed the national exposure of the UBS Puerto Rico losses in October 2013 in Trouble in Paradise: UBS Puerto Rico Bond Fund Investors Hit Hard. The losses only got worse thereafter. In calendar...

The MSRB Re-Writes History

(Mar 2014)

Kyle Glazier and Lynn Hume's story in the Bond Buyer last week, "Brokers Violate Puerto Rico OS, MSRB Rules with Retail Trades", about small denomination trades in the recent Puerto Rico bond offering in contravention of the offering document set off a firestorm. The Wall Street Journal's "Finra Examining Trading in Puerto Rico Bonds" and Bloomberg's "Finra Says It's Examining Trading in New Puerto Rico Bonds" both reported on Friday that FINRA was looking into the suspect trades.

What did...

Municipal Bond Markups are Still Excessive

(Mar 2014)

Monday's Wall Street Journal article, Muni Bond Costs Hit Investors in Wallet: Investors Pay Twice as Much for Municipal Debt as for Corporate Bonds, points out yet again that investors pay far more to buy and sell municipal bonds than they pay to buy and sell similar quantities of corporate bonds or common stocks. The article cites a recent S&P study that finds investors buying a $100,000 municipal bond pays an average spread of 1.73% or $1,730 - twice as much as the 0.87% average spread...

SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - January 31st, 2014

(Jan 2014)

Court Enters Final Judgment Against Broker in Settlement of Claims Arising from Fraudulent Misrepresentations and the Misappropriation of Funds
January 30, 2014, (Litigation Release No. 22914)
A final judgment was entered this week against David L. Rothman based on charges that "Rothman,...who was the Vice President and minority owner of Rothman Securities, Inc....creat[ed] and issu[ed] false account statements to certain elderly and unsophisticated investor/clients that materially overstated...

Did UBS Charge its Proprietary Puerto Rico Bond Funds Excessive Markups? Part II

(Jan 2014)

We have previously posted several blog posts about UBS Puerto Rico's collapsing closed-end municipal bond funds including: Trouble in Paradise: UBS Puerto Rico Bond Fund Investors Hit Hard, Diversification and UBS Puerto Rico Bond Fund Losses, Did UBS Charge its Proprietary Puerto Rico Bond Funds Excessive Markups? and Merry Christmas from UBS Asset Managers of Puerto Rico.

UBS has argued that since we couldn't identify which trades in the EMMA data were the UBS bond fund trades and UBS...

Diversification and UBS Puerto Rico Bond Fund Losses

(Dec 2013)

The 19 closed-end bond funds managed by UBS Puerto Rico listed in Table 1 lost $1.66 billion in the first 9 months of 2013. These funds were sold almost exclusively to citizens of Puerto Rico and approximately 70% of the portfolios of these funds were invested in Puerto Rican securities. The percentage losses over the past year range from 38% to 48% for the worst-performing UBS PR funds. These losses are substantially greater than Puerto Rican municipal bonds generally. The Standard and...

Feliz Navidad de parte de UBS Asset Managers de Puerto Rico

(Dec 2013)

Anteriormente SLCG había publicado dos entradas sobre el colapso de los fondos UBS de bonos municipales de Puerto Rico incluyendo los fondos Puerto Rico Fixed Income Funds I y VI y Puerto Rico Investors Tax-Free Funds I y VI. Nuestra entrada del 7 de Octubre de 2013 titulada Peligro en la Isla del Encanto: Inversionistas de UBS Puerto Rico Sufren Cuantiosas Pérdidas, reportamos sobre las pérdidas en los fondos cerrados de bonos municipales administrados por UBS Asset Managers de Puerto Rico...

Merry Christmas from UBS Asset Managers of Puerto Rico

(Dec 2013)

SLCG previously posted two blog entries on the collapse of UBS's Puerto Rico municipal bond funds including the Puerto Rico Fixed Income Funds I to VI and Puerto Rico Investors Tax-Free Funds I to VI. Our October 7, 2013 post, Trouble in Paradise: UBS Puerto Rico Bond Fund Investors Hit Hard, reported on losses in closed end municipal bond funds managed by UBS Asset Managers of Puerto Rico and sold by UBS brokers in Puerto Rico. Then on December 18, 2013 in our Did UBS Charge its Proprietary...

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