Private Placement Services Portal Changes Name to PPM.co

Posted on July 13, 2016 by admin

Industry Platform Adds To Full Suite of Private Placement Product and Service Offerings with Launch of New Website

(PRweb)–New York, NY–July 12 2016- PPM Services, Ltd, the global consulting firm specializing in private placement memorandum document preparation for debt and equities and business plan preparation services for start-ups, announced today that it has introduced a new suite of products and re-branded its website platform under the new domain, PPM.co. Owned and operated by parent company Broker Dealer LLC, PPM.co has also introduced new modules to its platform to support entrepreneurs and fast-growth business enterprises that are in need of documentation for Regulation A+ equity crowdfunding initiatives, Regulation D Exemptions, Eurobond and 144a bond and Regulation S offerings, EB-5, as well as CUSIP and ISIN code application services.

The updated PPM.co platform includes a newly-introduced referral service module for law firms, accounting firms and private investment brokers in need of outsourced securities offering document preparation services, as well as a recently-established investor relations and public relations service for companies in need of expert guidance and implementation of brand awareness and social media campaigns. Concurrent with the brand update, the firm has updated its Twitter account to @PPMexperts. The firm’s FaceBook page is available via this link.

About PPM.co

Established in 1999, PPM.co through its predecessor entities has provided documentation preparation services and investment offering material for hundreds of start-ups, fast-growth and well-established companies in virtually every part of the free world. PPM.co maintains its corporate office in New York’s Trump Building at 40 Wall Street, and regional offices staffed by a professional network of investment banking and legal consultants in Los Angeles, Austin, TX, Chicago, IL and Boston, MA, as well as London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Tel Aviv. Our expertise extends across most offering types, ranging from private placement memorandum (PPM) and business plan writing services to 144A offerings, Regulation A and Regulation A+, Regulation S (Reg S or 144a-Reg S mixtures), securities listing, Euro bond creation, IPO services, and obtaining securities identification numbers including CUSIP and ISIN (International Securities Identification Number). The firm’s website is located at www.ppm.co and social media outlets Twitter via @PPMexperts and FaceBook

Broker-Dealer Bible “Traders Magazine” Acquired by Markets Media

Posted on July 6, 2016August 10, 2016 by admin

If you are an institutional broker-dealer that is focused on sell-side “comings and goings” (or goings and comings), for years Traders Magazine has likely been your source of sell-side news and related topics of interest. John D’Antona, TM’s long-standing senior editor and contributing writer has become a mainstay in your diet of news bytes that traders use to keep an eye on and ears open when it comes to job opportunities and prospective greener pastures, as well as regulatory topics, fintech innovation as well as select scraps of intel from buyside trading desks.

Traders Magazine has been your bible (ok, some might call it a rag, or a nice distraction) and per announcement below, its now under new ownership and will reside under the umbrella of Markets Media LLC, the digital and print publisher and producer of financial industry conferences in leading financial centre cities across the globe. Below news coverage courtesy of media industry publisher “Media Post”

(Media Post) Jul 5 2016 Markets Media has acquired Traders Magazine from SourceMedia. The combined entity will have a total unique audience of 135,000, made up of 120,000 digital readers and 15,000 print readers.

According to a statement, Markets Media “is committed to investing in the Traders brand by providing the resources necessary for digital expansion, both immediately and for the long term.”

Founded in 2007, Markets Media is a digital publisher focusing on institutional trading and investing in North American and European markets.

Mohan Virdee, founder and CEO of Markets Media, told Publishers Daily that the acquisition of Traders was “a very nice fit to our existing business in terms of the depth of the trading community across North America. We’ve established a good brand among that community.”

Virdee said the timing of Traders joining Markets Media couldn’t have been better – Markets Media is in the midst of upgrading their platform this summer.

“We have already started to upgrade all of our systems. We will do that with Traders, as well as we go through the transition,” he said.

The upgrades will affect the design and functionality of the brands’ digital space, as well as introduce a “more aggressive social media campaign,” Virdee said.

Additionally, Markets Media will upgrade their mobile presence and create “innovative advertising solutions for our core customers and existing Traders customers,” he added.

For now, the company says Markets Media will operate MarketsMedia.com and TradersMagazine.com as separate sites, producing original content independently.

Traders is a digital information and news service that has served professionals in North American institutional markets for 30 years. The company is also known for its sponsorship of social, charity and networking events.

SourceMedia owns brands like American Banker, The Bond Buyer, Mergers & Acquisitions, Financial Planning, On Wall Street and Accounting Today.

FINRA Files Fraud Charge Against AZ Muni Broker

Posted on May 25, 2016 by admin

Lawson Financial Corporation, CEO Charged With Fraudulent Municipal Bond Sales, Misuse of Customer’s Charitable Trust Funds

Bonds Related to Charter School in Arizona and Two Assisted Living Facilities in Alabama

WASHINGTON — The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced today that it has filed a complaint against Phoenix-based firm, Lawson Financial Corporation, Inc. (LFC), and Robert Lawson, the firm’s President and Chief Executive Officer, charging them with securities fraud in connection with the sale of millions of dollars of municipal revenue bonds to customers. The complaint further charges Robert Lawson and Pamela Lawson, LFC’s Chief Operating Officer, with self-dealing by abusing their positions as co-trustees of a charitable remainder trust and improperly using the trust funds to indirectly prop up the struggling offerings. Based on the transfers of millions of dollars from the charitable remainder trust account, the complaint also charges Robert Lawson with misuse of customer funds.

The municipal revenue bonds at issue in the complaint include: (1) a $10.5 million bond offering in October 2014 for bonds relating to an Arizona charter school as underwritten by LFC and sold to LFC customers, as well as subsequent sales of these bonds to LFC customers in the secondary market; (2) secondary market bond sales to LFC customers in 2015 of earlier-issued municipal revenue bonds relating to the corporate predecessor of the same Arizona charter school; and (3) secondary market sales to LFC customers between January 2013 and July 2015 of earlier-issued municipal revenue bonds concerning two different assisted living facilities in Alabama.

The complaint alleges that Robert Lawson and LFC were aware of financial difficulties faced by the municipal revenue bond conduit borrowers (the charter school in Arizona and the two assisted living facilities in Alabama) and fraudulently hid from LFC customers who purchased the bonds the material facts that the charter school and the two assisted living facilities were under financial stress. The complaint alleges that Robert Lawson and LFC carried out their fraudulent scheme by transferring millions of dollars from a deceased customer’s charitable trust account to parties associated with the conduit borrowers to hide the financial condition of the bond borrowers and the risks posed to the municipal revenue bonds. In particular, the complaint alleges that LFC and Robert Lawson hid from LFC customers who purchased the bonds the material fact that Robert Lawson – in his role as co-trustee of the charitable trust account, and with the knowledge of his wife Pamela Lawson – was improperly transferring millions of dollars of funds from the charitable remainder trust account to various parties associated with the bond borrowers when the borrowers were not able to pay their operating expenses and, for certain of the bonds, were not able to make the required interest payments on the bonds.

The issuance of a disciplinary complaint represents the initiation of a formal proceeding by FINRA in which findings as to the allegations in the complaint have not been made, and does not represent a decision as to any of the allegations contained in the complaint. Under FINRA rules, a firm or individual named in a complaint can file a response and request a hearing before a FINRA disciplinary panel. Possible remedies include a fine, censure, suspension or bar from the securities industry, disgorgement of gains associated with the violations and payment of restitution.

Investors can obtain more information about, and the disciplinary record of, any FINRA-registered broker or brokerage firm by using FINRA’s BrokerCheck. FINRA makes BrokerCheck available at no charge. In 2015, members of the public used this service to conduct 71 million reviews of broker or firm records.

Investors can access BrokerCheck at www.finra.org/brokercheck . Investors may find copies of this disciplinary action as well as other disciplinary documents in FINRA’s Disciplinary Actions Online database. Investors can also call FINRA’s Securities Helpline for Seniors at (844) 57-HELPS to speak with a recorded message that will perhaps provide assistance or to raise concerns about issues they have with their brokerage accounts and investments.

FINRA also administers the largest dispute resolution forum for investors and firms. Most of the time, decisions are handed down in favor of broker-dealers as opposed to customers.For more information, please visit www.finra.org.

SEC Aims To Introduce Conflict Rule for Broker-Dealers

Posted on May 20, 2016 by admin

(Washington Examiner) Just weeks after the Department of Labor finalized a sweeping new rule to prevent conflicts of interest in retirement advising, the Securities and Exchange Commission said that it planned to work on its own version of the rule that will apply to all investment brokers.

The SEC included plans to propose the rule by next April in an agenda it submitted to the Office of Management and the Budget this week.

The Labor rule, finalized in early April despite heavy lobbying from the industry and determined opposition from congressional Republicans, is expected to reshape the retirement planning industry. It would apply to tax-privileged retirement savings accounts, such as Individual Retirement Accounts, overseen by the Labor Department, and would require any financial agent in that space to act in their clients’ best interest.

The SEC version, first flagged by the trade publication Investment News, would apply to all broker-dealers, which don’t have to give clients advice that is in their best interests. Under the rule, those brokers would become “fiduciaries” to their clients, meaning they would be legally liable if they provided advice that was not in their clients’ best interests.

If the SEC proposed its rule in April, which is far from guaranteed, it would be released at the same time the Labor rule is scheduled to go into effect. President Obama will have left office by then.

Mary Jo White, the current SEC chair and an Obama appointee, has previously said she supports a uniform fiduciary rule for brokers.

Republicans opposed to the rule, meanwhile, have expressed support for the SEC acting on a fiduciary rule before Labor does, arguing that the SEC has more expertise in the area. The GOP has advanced legislation that would block the Labor rule from going into effect until the SEC issues a ruling, a provision criticized by liberal proponents of the Labor rule who say Republicans are looking to block it.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has vowed to do “everything possible” to stop the Labor Department’s rule from going into effect.

Liberals have also argued that the SEC, being a five-member commission representing both parties, is unlikely to move on an adequate rule. One wrinkle is that the SEC currently only has three of the five positions filled, although the Senate Banking Committee advanced the nominations of two candidates to the full Senate on Thursday.

FINRA Bashes Raymond James Compliance; Record Fine

Posted on May 18, 2016 by admin

IBankInvestmentConsultant) FINRA fined Raymond James $17 million for “widespread failures” in the firm’s anti-money laundering compliance program, making it the largest penalty that the regulator has dished out for that type of infraction, a spokeswoman says.

The failures occurred in Raymond James’ employee and independent channels, which were fined $8 million and $9 million respectively. FINRA also fined former Raymond James & Associates compliance officer Linda Busby $25,000 and suspended her for three months.

Raymond James has been a fast-growing firm through recruiting top wirehouse advisers and making key acquisitions, such as brokerage firm Morgan Keagan. The St. Petersburg, Fla-based firm recently reported that it had roughly 6,700 advisers – making it almost as large as UBS.

However, FINRA says the firm’s growth spurt from 2006 to 2014 wasn’t matched by commensurate growth in the firm’s anti-money laundering compliance systems and processes.

The regulator says Raymond James was relying “upon a patchwork of written procedures and systems across different departments to detect suspicious activity,” and that some red flags went unnoticed.

Brad Bennett, FINRA’s Executive Vice President and Chief of Enforcement says Raymond James’ missteps are particularly “egregious” because the firm’s independent broker-dealer had been fined for similar issues in 2012.

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