Finra’s arbitrator pool has included everyone from a disgraced judge to a person who posed as a lawyer. The latest: a brokerage executive who was just fined and suspended. You can read about it here.
The Street
Consumer Reporting Award from New York Press Club
The New York Press Club said today that I have won its 2016 award for consumer reporting on the Internet for my stories about cybersecurity problems at The Vanguard Group.
A Fake Suicide Note as Evidence? It’s Not Kafka, It’s Finra
In August, eight investors were awarded $1.28 million in an arbitration against FSC Securities. But the firm hasn’t paid up and is mounting an aggressive defense. You can read about it in my latest column for TheStreet.com here.
Society of the Silurians 2016 Excellence in Journalism Award
The Society of the Silurians said today that I have won the 2016 Excellence in Journalism Award for Commentary and Editorials for my columns for TheStreet.com. From the judges:
“Watch what Wall Street does, not what it says,” Antilla enjoins her readers and, heeding her own counsel, she does just that in a string of columns, built on solid reporting and trenchant analysis, that expose the duplicitous practices unscrupulous stockbrokers employ to intentionally mislead and, ultimately, fleece their clients.
Retirement Fallout From a Penny-Stock Scam: “We Don’t Do Hardly Anything”
Twenty investors await a Finra arbitration hearing in September against two clearing firms that handled their trades in a penny-stock fraud. Did COR Clearing and Wilson-Davis ignore obvious red flags? You can read about it in my column today for TheStreet.com.
Excellence in Financial Journalism Award
The New York State Society of CPAs said today that I have won the 2016 Excellence in Financial Journalism Award for my columns for TheStreet.com.
From the judges:
Susan Antilla used her solid reporting and analytical skills in “Wall Street Has a Unique Way of ‘Protecting’ Small Investors,” as she exposed Wall Street for its efforts to avoid change that could possibly improve access to stockbroker records. Throughout her research, she also called out the securities industry for its empty arguments that tougher regulations would force brokers to drop smaller investors as customers.
How Many Bad Brokers Could There Be? Don’t Play the Percentages
When you consider that 73 percent of financial advisers who get caught engaging in misconduct are still doing business with investors a year later, you could just cross your fingers and hope your broker is one of the good ones.
Better yet, you could leaf through the grim results of a study by three finance professors released earlier this month. They looked at records of 1.2 million people registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, to do business with the public. I wrote about the study in my latest column for TheStreet. You can read it here.
Vanguard Says Sending 71 Account E-Mails to Wrong Investor Was ‘Isolated Matter’
On Feb. 11, a puzzled customer of The Vanguard Group noticed that the firm had sent him 72 emails. But only one of them was meant for him.
Vanguard has a history of problems with online security and security of customer information, which I’ve written about here and here.
For its latest glitch, you can read my column today.