FINRA Board To Form Committee To Address Claims Of Schapiro Misconduct
February 19, 2010 by Larry Doyle
By Larry Doyle on February 13, 2010 | More Posts By Larry Doyle | Author’s Website
When in doubt, form a committee and have more meetings. This rope-a-dope style of leadership is all too prevalent in our nation. Why is it that the Wall Street-Washington incest can not be exposed for what it really is? When will somebody in our country display integrity and leadership while acknowledging the existence and stench of this incest?
Recall that the board of FINRA was meeting this past Wednesday to address allegations of misconduct by Mary Schapiro and other FINRA execs. Although the media has presented this meeting as merely addressing questions of excessive compensation for Ms. Schapiro and others, the allegations of misconduct made by attorneys for Amerivet Securities run far deeper than that.
These allegations address the following:
1. FINRA’s liquidation of its own auction-rate securities ($647 million ARS in mid-2007 as the market was failing…how fortuitous).
2. FINRA’s oversight of failed broker-dealers Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, and Merrill Lynch.
3. FINRA’s management, or dare I say mismanagement, of its own internal investment portfolio, including the allegation that it had invested in Bernie Madoff.
4. FINRA’s excessive compensation practices.
How did the FINRA Board respond? Bloomberg reports, FINRA Committee to Review Claim Managers Are Overpaid:
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said a committee will review claims that its managers are overpaid after a California broker complained about the $3.25 million that Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro got in 2008 as Finra’s chief executive officer.
Finra, in a letter sent today to the broker’s attorneys, said it created a panel to “investigate the allegations.” The Washington-based regulator, which oversees more than 5,000 U.S. brokerage firms, said its board of governors made no judgment on the merits of the claims.
Schapiro received a $937,961 salary in 2008, a bonus and incentive compensation worth $1.75 million and other pay totaling $565,995, according Finra’s most recent tax filing. She also got a $7.2 million “defined-benefit plans” payment.
Lawyers representing Elton Johnson Jr., president of Moreno Valley, California-based Amerivet Securities Inc., said the pay was “excessive” given Finra’s regulatory performance and because the value of its investment portfolio declined $568 million that year. The attorneys, Jonathan W. Cuneo and Richard D. Greenfield, urged Finra in a Dec. 4 letter to recoup bonuses paid to Schapiro and other executives.
Finra’s board discussed the claims at a meeting this week and “in accordance with customary practice,” decided to form a panel to review them, the regulator’s General Counsel T. Grant Callery wrote in the letter today to Cuneo and Greenfield. Finra spokesman Herb Perone declined to comment beyond the letter.
Amerivet’s Johnson filed a lawsuit against Finra in August, saying it failed in regulating Bear Stearns Cos., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bernard Madoff’s securities firm. The complaint seeks access to Finra documents to help Johnson determine what triggered the investment losses.
Finra, which is overseen by the SEC, gets its funding from the securities industry.
First things first, who will sit on this committee? Will it be independent? How will it review these allegations? Will it have the power to subpoena? Will it hold open hearings? Over and above these questions, I repeat my questions and points raised in my commentary of February 4th, “FINRA Board to Address Allegations of Schapiro Misconduct”:
Will the Board realize it ultimately needs to be accountable to ALL its member firms and, by extension, to the American public at large? Will the Obama administration compel the Board to provide the transparency America so badly wants?
FINRA MUST OPEN ITS BOOKS and RECORDS and ANSWER to AMERICA!!
Not for nothing, but the fact that the board releases this statement of intentions on a Friday afternoon also speaks volumes. What backbone!!
OPEN the BOOKS!!!
Come on Mary, answer to America!!
Stop hiding and unseal these books and documents. Little nervous about what America may learn? If you have nothing to hide, then why are you fighting so hard to keep documents sealed? America wants transparency. Will you give it to them?
Sense on Cents is very patient yet very determined to keep fighting for the truth, transparency, and integrity America so badly deserves.
The truth will out!
