Rather lengthy post on clean-up the securities business.
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ÿBusiness NewsUpdated 6:55 AM ET July 13, 1998ÿ
Securities industry pressed to clean up actCurrent quotes
TRV 69 7/16 7/16 (0.63%) By Jack Reerink
NEW YORK (Reuters) - As brokers rack up record profits, regulators are pressing the industry to clean up questionable practices and keep out shadowy operators drawn to the huge sums of money that go around.
"The number of complaints and inquiries we receive has gone up dramatically, said Andrew Kandel, the chief of the New York State Investor Protection and Securities Bureau. "The financial markets (are) where all the scam artists are going, that's where the money is."
Kandel's unit brought 219 cases last year, up from 75 in 1995 and received 4,225 investor inquiries and complaints, almost double the 1995 number. While Kandel mostly deals with scam artists, unauthorized trading and manipulation of penny stocks, Wall Street's biggest houses are not immune to increasing investor and regulatory scrutiny.
Investors' insatiable taste for stocks, record corporate takeovers and an explosion of trading volumes have fattened securities firms' bottom lines --the industry earned a record $12.2 billion before taxes last year -- but also tempt its 116,000 brokers to illegally pocket some extra change.
Abuses come in many forms, including wide spreads -- the difference between the buy and sell price -- fraudulent stock offerings, selling risky financial instruments and trading on insider information.
Violations are not limited to brokers. A former Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. attorney late last year pleaded guilty to charges she sold information about upcoming merger deals obtained at the Wall Street house and her previous employer, Travelers Group Inc.'s Salomon Smith Barney.
In a broader probe, the Securities and Exchange Commission in recent weeks has been calling brokers to settle charges that traders colluded to fix prices on the Nasdaq stock market. The agency is threatening to suspend about 100 traders, sources said, noting the firms would rather pay fines than have traders suspended.
Some 30 brokerages late last year agreed to pay a group of mostly institutional investors $910 million in a class-action settlement of similar charges. The SEC started its investigation in 1994 and has obtained thousands of hours of taped conversations between traders.
"They generated a tremendous amount of evidence in their investigation," said William Christie, a Vanderbilt University professor who co-authored a 1994 study detailing the wide trading spreads on Nasdaq. "I guess they just continued listening to those tapes."
Christie said the investigation was likely to focus on brokers that deal in smaller stocks not honoring their posted quotes on Nasdaq. The spreads on the computer-based market have narrowed and investors usually get a better deal than four years ago, he said.
An SEC spokesman, John Heine, declined to comment on the investigation but did say the agency in general "certainly brought more cases over the years."
In the last 12 years, the SEC has brought more than 4,500 cases, imposing $570 million in penalties and forcing violators to return about $4.4 billion in illegally made profits.
On the other hand, investors are giving the industry higher marks because of education efforts and improved practices, said Securities Industry Association President Marc Lackritz.
"The number of complaints per 1,000 transactions has continued to go down over the last five years to fewer than one-tenth of one percent," Lackritz said. "The auto industry would die for a defect rate like that."
The regulatory actions come as investors, especially large ones, are quick to sue securities firms. For example, Merrill Lynch and Co. last month paid $400 million to Orange County to settle charges it contributed to the county's 1994 bankruptcy by helping it embark on a disastrous investment strategy.
The mutual fund industry, which recently passed the $5 trillion mark in assets under management, also has come under scrutiny. The SEC is reportedly investigating if a portfolio manager at Dreyfus Corp. manipulated and illegally profited from trading in small stocks.
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