Adviser satisfaction with independent broker-dealers will be ranked separately for the first time by J.D. Power and Associates, the company said today, as it launched its annual survey of adviser satisfaction with their brokerage firms.
Private-equity firm Lightyear Capital LLC last week said that it has completed its acquisition of three ING Groep NV broker-dealers.
With anticipation building about its $600 million IPO, LPL Investment Holdings Inc. last week said that it is acquiring the assets of National Retirement Partners Corp., an advisory and brokerage firm that specializes in defined-contribution retirement plans.
The independent broker-dealer industry took a giant step backward last year, with the largest 25 firms collectively reporting a 10.3% drop in gross revenue.
As the stock market was climbing to its historical peak in late summer 2007, GunnAllen Financial Inc. executives told people that the firm was working to put the worst elements from its brief, intense past of breakneck growth behind it.
The biggest-producing branch of dead-in-the water GunnAllen Financial Inc. is heading to a new independent broker-dealer, Aegis Capital Corp.
Embattled firm said to be in net capital violation after eleventh-hour effort failed to raise fresh funds
Massachusetts widens the net in its ongoing probe of private placements gone bad.
A Boston-based investment firm has agreed to pay $1.3 million in restitution to Montana investors for a Ponzi scheme run by an independent broker in Kalispell.
In the wake of recent disastrous blowups of high-commission private placements, some broker-dealers are anxious about whether their advisers should sell the offerings.
The sudden resignation last week of John Sykes, chairman of GunnAllen Holdings Inc., has raised questions about the future of the company and its broker-dealer, GunnAllen Financial Inc.
The five-person business, with about $520 million in assets, is setting up shop as an independent in Novi, Mich.
In a move to attract and retain registered investment advisers and independent-broker-dealer clients, Fidelity Investments has introduced a program that it says offers financial advisers access to market analysis and industry insights.
At the same time that LPL Holdings Inc. and the three broker-dealers it bought from Pacific Life Insurance Co. were filing suit against the insurer, LPL was reaching out to its advisers to reassure them that the dispute wouldn't affect their businesses.
After months of pursuit, Donald Marron finally has landed a broker-dealer network, and the former chairman and chief executive of PaineWebber Group Inc. can't think more highly of its potential.
One REIT sponsor attracting attention recently from independent broker-dealers is The Inland Real Estate Group of Companies Inc., which sponsors five publicly traded and non-traded REITs.
Managing client expectations about investment performance remains independent advisers' biggest challenge, but they are regaining confidence in the economy and directing more investments to equities and away from cash and bonds, according to The Charles Schwab Corp.'s semiannual Independent Advisor Outlook Study.
The first lawsuit over the sale of allegedly fraudulent notes issued by Medical Capital Holdings Inc. was filed last week, and more look likely to come.
In the wake of a decision last month by LPL to bring in-house the clearing function at three subsidiary broker-dealers, about 200 financial advisers at those firms have moved to other firms or are planning to do so.
History is rife with examples of adverse, unintended consequences resulting from well-intentioned lawmaking acting in the face of a crisis.
