La Comisión de Bolsa de Valores Impone Sanciones a los Agentes de Bolsa por la Venta de Bonos Municipales de Puerto Rico
(Nov 2014)
La Comisión de Bolsa de Valores (SEC por sus siglas en inglés) anunció el día de hoy sanciones contra 13 compañías de corretaje. En marzo del 2014, estas compañías vendieron denominaciones por debajo de los $100,000 en contra del documento de oferta de los riesgosos bonos municipales de Puerto Rico. El comunicado de prensa con los enlaces individuales de cada orden lo pueden encontrar aquí.
Kyle Glazier y Lynn Hume publicaron el primer artículo relacionado a las ventas de denominaciones...
The Securities and Exchange Commission Sanctions Brokers Over Sale of Puerto Rican Municipal Bonds
(Nov 2014)
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced sanctions today against 13 brokerage firms for selling high risk Puerto Rican municipal bonds in March 2014 in denominations well below the $100,000 minimum specified in the offering circular. The SEC press release with links to the individual orders can be found on the SEC website.
Kyle Glazier and Lynn Hume broke the story about small denomination trades in the Puerto Rico bond offering in contravention of the offering document in the Bond...
Impuestos, Bonos Municipales de Puerto Rico y los Fondos UBS
(Oct 2014)
A la fecha hemos escrito extensamente sobre los fondos de bonos municipales UBS Puerto Rico. Pueden encontrar nuestra más reciente entrada al blog aquí. La singularidad del régimen impositivo de Puerto Rico sigue saliendo a colación y pensamos que una entrada al blog aclarando este asunto vale la pena.
Los residentes de Puerto Rico no pagan impuestos sobre el ingreso al gobierno federal pero pagan altos impuestos sobre el ingreso. Los puertorriqueños pagan una tasa impositiva marginal máxima...
FINRA Regulatory Priorities 2014
(Jan 2014)
Early this month, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) released their 2014 regulatory and examination proirities . FINRA is continuing to focus on the suitability of recommendations made to retail investors. FINRA specifically mentions complex structured products (including leveraged ETFs), non-traded REITs, frontier funds, and interest rate sensitive instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and municipal bonds. At a recent conference, a FINRA representative added that...
FINRA Fines Oppenheimer over Huge Municipal Bond Markups
(Dec 2013)
FINRA announced yesterday that it has fined Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. nearly $700,000 for "charging unfair prices in municipal securities transactions and for failing to have an adequate supervisory system." FINRA found that over a 12 month period beginning in July 2008, Oppenheimer's head municipal securities trader, David Sirianni, priced bonds up to nearly 16% above the Oppenheimer's contemporaneous cost.
Oppenheimer put into place a system that would produce exception reports whenever an...
SEC Charges Municipal Issuer with Misleading Investors
(Nov 2013)
Yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the Greater Wenatchee Regional Events Center Public Facilities District, a group of nine cities and counties in Washington state, with misleading investors in connection with a bond offering meant to finance the construction of an event center. According to the press release, this is "the first time that the SEC has assessed a financial penalty against a municipal issuer."
In 2008, the municipal issuer issued nearly $42 million...
Study on Expungements Reveals Gap in Investor Protection
(Oct 2013)
We often encourage investors to visit the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's (FINRA) BrokerCheck system to check the record of their broker. The broker's record contains information about their qualifications, employment and complaint history. The completeness of the information contained within the complaint history has recently been called into question by the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association (PIABA).
Last week, PIABA released a study of over 1,600 arbitration cases filed...
Another Non-Traded REIT Lists Shares, Revealing Losses
(Oct 2013)
Shares of non-traded real estate investment trusts (REITs) were sold in large amounts during the real estate bubble of 2005-2007. Without an observable trading price, sponsors simply fixed the share price of non-traded REITs at $10 per share. As real estate markets have collapsed and now begun to recover, it has been difficult to ascertain just how much those $10 shares have changed in value. Non-traded REIT sponsors are now required to estimate per-share net asset values, which have...
SEC Awards More Than $14 Million to Whistleblower
(Oct 2013)
Earlier this week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that an anonymous whistleblower has been awarded over $14 million for the information provided to the SEC that resulted in an expedited enforcement action. This is the third, and by far the largest, award granted by the SEC's Office of the Whistleblower since it was established by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2011.1
Although the announcement does not specifically mention which enforcement action lead to the award, we can...
SEC Proposes Rule for "Pay Ratio" Disclosure
(Sep 2013)
Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)released a rule proposalthat would require "public companies to disclose the ratio of the compensation of its chief executive officer (CEO) to the median compensation of its employees." The proposed rule gives companies flexibility with respect to the methodology used to calculate the pay ratio. This flexibility allows for a variety of approaches that are appropriate for each company's size and structure.
Although the SEC does not specify...
