{"id":2654,"date":"2016-12-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/silverlaw.lawblogger.net\/blog\/merrill-lynch-puerto-rican-bonds-misconduct\/"},"modified":"2017-07-27T14:06:43","modified_gmt":"2017-07-27T18:06:43","slug":"merrill-lynch-puerto-rican-bonds-misconduct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/merrill-lynch-puerto-rican-bonds-misconduct\/","title":{"rendered":"FINRA Sanctions Merrill Lynch $7 Million for Inadequate Supervision of Securities-Backed Leverage in Customers and Suitability Issues for Puerto Rican Bonds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FINRA reported in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.finra.org\/newsroom\/2016\/finra-sanctions-merrill-lynch-7-million-inadequate-supervision-securities-backed\" target=\"_blank\">a news release<\/a> that it fined <a href=\"https:\/\/brokercheck.finra.org\/firm\/7691\" target=\"_blank\">Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner &amp; Smith Inc. (CRD# 7691)<\/a> $6.25 million and the firm will pay approximately $780,000 in restitution for inadequately supervising its customers\u2019 use of leverage and\u00a0 overconcentrating some of its customers in Puerto Rican bonds.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/disciplinaryactions.finra.org\/Search\/ViewDocument\/66929\" target=\"_blank\">Acceptance, Waiver &amp; Consent (\u201cAWC\u201d)<\/a> entered into between Merrill Lynch and FINRA, FINRA found that from January 2010 through July 2013, Merrill Lynch did not establish and maintain adequate supervisory systems and did not establish, maintain, and enforce adequate written procedures reasonable designed to ensure the suitability of transactions in certain Puerto Rico securities, namely, municipal bonds and closed-end funds.\u00a0 Certain customers\u2019 holdings were highly concentrated in Puerto Rican bonds and highly leveraged through margin.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the first time a firm has been sanctioned for supervisory, concentration and margin issues related to Puerto Rican securities, municipal bonds and\/or closed-end funds.\u00a0 In September 2015, FINRA fined <a href=\"https:\/\/brokercheck.finra.org\/Firm\/8174\" target=\"_blank\">UBS Financial Services Inc. (CRD# 8174)<\/a> of Puerto Rico a total of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.finra.org\/newsroom\/2015\/finra-sanctions-ubs-puerto-rico-185-million-supervisory-failures\" target=\"_blank\">$18.5 million in fines and restitution<\/a> for similar allegations.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/merrill-lynch-puerto-rican-bonds-misconduct\/\"  title=\"Continue Reading FINRA Sanctions Merrill Lynch $7 Million for Inadequate Supervision of Securities-Backed Leverage in Customers and Suitability Issues for Puerto Rican Bonds\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FINRA reported in a news release that it fined Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner &amp; Smith Inc. (CRD# 7691) $6.25 million and the firm will pay approximately $780,000 in restitution for inadequately supervising its customers\u2019 use of leverage and\u00a0 overconcentrating some of its customers in Puerto Rican bonds. According to the Acceptance, Waiver &amp; Consent (\u201cAWC\u201d) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[578],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-releases"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Merrill Lynch Sanctioned for Puerto Rican Bonds Supervision Shortfalls<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you have lost money investing in Puerto Rican bonds with Merrill Lynch, contact us to learn how you can recover your losses. The consultation is free.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/merrill-lynch-puerto-rican-bonds-misconduct\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Merrill Lynch Sanctioned for Puerto Rican Bonds Supervision Shortfalls\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"If you have lost money investing in Puerto Rican bonds with Merrill Lynch, contact us to learn how you can recover your losses. The consultation is free.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Silver Law Group\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Merrill Lynch Sanctioned for Puerto Rican Bonds Supervision Shortfalls","description":"If you have lost money investing in Puerto Rican bonds with Merrill Lynch, contact us to learn how you can recover your losses. The consultation is free.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/merrill-lynch-puerto-rican-bonds-misconduct\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"Merrill Lynch Sanctioned for Puerto Rican Bonds Supervision Shortfalls","twitter_description":"If you have lost money investing in Puerto Rican bonds with Merrill Lynch, contact us to learn how you can recover your losses. The consultation is free.","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Silver Law Group","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/merrill-lynch-puerto-rican-bonds-misconduct\/","url":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/merrill-lynch-puerto-rican-bonds-misconduct\/","name":"Merrill Lynch Sanctioned for Puerto Rican Bonds Supervision Shortfalls","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-12-19T05:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2017-07-27T18:06:43+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/de64d999508b1ad10d608a99f0d2e752"},"description":"If you have lost money investing in Puerto Rican bonds with Merrill Lynch, contact us to learn how you can recover your losses. The consultation is free.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/merrill-lynch-puerto-rican-bonds-misconduct\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/merrill-lynch-puerto-rican-bonds-misconduct\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/merrill-lynch-puerto-rican-bonds-misconduct\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"FINRA Sanctions Merrill Lynch $7 Million for Inadequate Supervision of Securities-Backed Leverage in Customers and Suitability Issues for Puerto Rican Bonds"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/","name":"Securities Arbitration Lawyers Blog","description":"Published by Securities Arbitration Lawyers \u2014 Silver Law Group","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/de64d999508b1ad10d608a99f0d2e752","name":"Silver Law Group","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9eb0a691642ae95c68ee1c45b5f50f35bae76a41f3d9f861c7bfd40c87661746?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9eb0a691642ae95c68ee1c45b5f50f35bae76a41f3d9f861c7bfd40c87661746?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Silver Law Group"}}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4360,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2654\/revisions\/4360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverlaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}