As Gail Perry Mason observed her investment club of 11- to 14-year-old boys, she thought to herself, "One day, they will own their own companies or sit on the board of publicly traded companies," she says. And she's probably right.After all, the...

The NYSE has caused a stir in clarifying that it expects oral customer complaints to be reported. In an April Information Memo (98-16), the Big Board states that any oral complaint is a complaint reportable under [NYSE] Rule 351(d).The...

A former Dean Witter rep has filed a prospective class-action suit against the firm claiming that Dean Witter brokers should have been paid out all deferred compensation when the Morgan Stanley deal was finalized.The suit was filed in June in New...

In a Sept. 15 address to the California Association of Independent Broker Dealers (CAIBD) in Marina del Rey, NASD head Frank Zarb said that the SEC is not inclined to let the NASD remove some felony records from brokers CRD records. In response to...

Brokerage firms have been settling a number of wage-and-hour violation charges. Many of the so-called collective action claims have been filed against several big brokerages alleging that the firms made a regular practice of failing to pay...

Investigators at the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) are looking into the flurry of activity in shares of Midland Walwyn stock just prior to the announcement of the acquisition of the firm by Merrill Lynch on June 22. Although exchange officials will...

In a July 31 oversight hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, the industry took some lumps over using its mandatory system of arbitration for employment claims.Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and Rep. Edward Markey...

In what critics call a token gesture designed to make the AMEX marriage more palatable to smaller members, the NASD has proposed giving small broker/dealers--firms with fewer than 150 reps--a first-ever guaranteed seat on the board of governors...

PaineWebber trains 1,200 brokers a year on everything from new products and new regulations to legislation and sales tactics. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter trains 1,800 brokers. And Salomon Smith Barney educates 800 brokers.Those numbers sound...

The latest generation of variable annuities offers more investment options with new wrinkles, such as nursing home waivers, and a formidable array of cost structures that only actuaries could devise.Difficult as the annuity market is, brokers need...