Trident Partners hit with fine over complex steepeners trading.
In July, 2017, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) announced that Trident Partners Ltd. of Woodbury, NY, submitted an acceptance, waiver and consent letter regarding its failure to supervise its reps in their selling of steepeners. The firm was censured and fined $50,000.
Steepeners are complex products that entail significant risk. FINRA has issues several notices to members on steepeners, which are frequently used to “juice” returns on mundane, low risk products like certificates of deposit.
FINRA’s allegations against Trident Partners concerned the firm’s lack of regulations and supervision on their sale of steepeners. The firm offered no instructions for their sales force to advertise the steepeners’ complex interest rate swaps. There were no written supervisory procedures in place, which prevented their brokers from following any guidelines when promoting the products. The AWC found that the firm did not know enough about steepeners or the risks that come with them; handled the selling of the products poorly, and did not sufficiently evaluate the dangers that they could pose to the clients they offered it to, creating misleading and damaging information.
Registration and disciplinary history:
In order to lawfully sell investments to the public, a firm must either be registered or exempt from registration. Trident Partners is a New York corporation formed in 1996 and registered with FINRA and the SEC in 49 states and territories.
According to FINRA’s CRD disclosure report, Trident Partners has been the subject of four regulatory investigations and three arbitrations.
The Law Office of David Liebrader practices exclusively in the field of investment loss recovery. For the past 23 years, we have dedicated our law practice to assisting investors who have been victims of investment fraud via unlawful and unsuitable investment transactions. During that time, we have recovered money for over one thousand individuals, pension plans, trusts and companies. The recoveries we have obtained via judgments, awards and settlements on behalf of our clients exceed $40,000,000.
When investors contact our firm, they can expect prompt attention and a detailed analysis of their issues. Typical claims that we are asked to review involve “unsuitability” (where a financial advisor makes investment recommendations that are inconsistent with a customer’s investment objectives), claims for “churning” (where a broker enters into an excessive number of trades for the purpose of generating commissions), claims involving illiquid investments such as private placements (i.e., real estate investment trusts, limited partnerships, equipment leasing, and oil and gas drilling programs) as well as claims for violations of state securities laws, which often provide investors remedies like attorney’s fees and interest, if they are successful on the claim.
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