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SEC Cyber Unit Brings First ICO Fraud Charge

admin — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 16:51:33 +0000

ICO Fraud Charge is the First, Certainly Not Last as Initial Coin Offerings No Longer Under Regulators’ Radar

(Courtesy of RTTNews) – The Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday that its new cyber unit has obtained an emergency asset freeze to halt an Initial Coin Offering or ICO fraud.

The SEC noted that the ICO fraud, advanced by “PlexCorps” owned by a mysterious shell company known as DL Innov Inc., which is operated by Canadian resident Dominic Lacroix and Sabrinia Paradis-Royer raised up to $15 million from thousands of investors since August by falsely promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month.

These charges are the first to be filed by SEC’s cyber unit, which was created in September 2017.

The SEC’s complaint was filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. The complaint alleges that Lacroix and PlexCorps marketed and sold securities called PlexCoin on the Internet to investors in the U.S. and elsewhere by claiming that investments in PlexCoin would yield a 1,354 percent profit in less than 29 days.

Based on its filing, the SEC obtained an emergency court order to freeze the assets of PlexCorps, Lacroix, and Paradis-Royer. These charges are the first to be filed by SEC’s cyber unit.

The complaint seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement plus interest and penalties. In addition, the SEC is seeking an officer-and-director bar for Lacroix, and a bar from offering digital securities against Lacroix as well as Paradis-Royer.

Issuers of Initial Coin Offerings: Don’t Get Caught Short By Failing to Follow the Spirit of Securities Regulations. Industry experts at Prospectus.com can provide sage guidance for staying inside the regulatory goal posts and prepare investor offering documents that conform with the spirit of the regulatory regimes governing ICO initiatives.

The SEC’s cyber unit was created in September to focus on misconduct involving distributed ledger technology and initial coin offerings, the spread of false information through electronic and social media, and hacking as well as threats to trading platforms.

“This first Cyber Unit case hits all of the characteristics of a full-fledged cyber scam and is exactly the kind of misconduct the unit will be pursuing. We acted quickly to protect retail investors from this initial coin offering’s false promises,” said Robert Cohen, Chief of the Cyber Unit.

In August, the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy issued an Investor Alert warning investors about scams of companies claiming to be engaging in initial coin offerings.

BrokerDealer.com expresses thanks to RTT News for the coverage content. For the full article from RTTNews.com, please click here

SEC Cyber Unit Brings First ICO Fraud Charge, Initial Coin Offerings No Longer Under Regulators’ Radar

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Three Charged in NYS Retirement Fund Pay-to-Play Scheme

admin — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 16:03:06 +0000

Two former bond brokers for broker-dealer Sterne Agee and an ex-PM overseeing fixed income investing for the NYS Retirement Fund were named as defendants in a pay-to-play scheme that had the brokers plying former fixed income portfolio manager with plenty of partying and prostitutes in exchange for millions of dollars in fixed income commission fees, according to the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara.

The indictment says that there was an agreement among ex PM Kang, and Sterne Agee executives Deborah Kelley and Gregg Schonhorn to pay Kang bribes in the form of “entertainment, travel, lavish meals, prostitutes, nightclub bottle service, narcotics, luxury gifts, and cash payments” among other things, in exchange for fixed-income business.

Prospectus.com team of capital markets experts and securities lawyers specialize in preliminary offering prospectus, secondary offering prospectus and full menu of financial offering memorandum document preparation. More information via this link – See more at: http://brokerdealer.com/blog/finra-trying-transparent-easy-trick/#sthash.rckLtkFf.dpuf

us_v._kang_and_kelley_indictment.pdf by Chris Bragg

The value of the alleged bribe was more than $1 million, Bharara’s office said, including such gifts as trips to New Orleans and Montreal, a ski trip to Park City, Utah, a $17,400 luxury wrist watch, tickets to Broadway shows and the U.S. Open, cocaine and crack cocaine, as well as thousands of dollars for strippers and prostitutes.

FINRA Trying to Be More Transparent; No Easy Trick

admin — Sat, 19 Nov 2016 18:19:07 +0000

Brokerdealer regulator FINRA trying to be more transparent is no easy trick considering that its constituency is often conflicted when it comes to the topic of disclosure and visibilty, but industry veteran Tom Gira, EVP of Market Regulation is putting his best foot forward.

(Traders Magazine) –Nov 19–The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is right on top of the evolving financial market structure and to that end, has announced new initiatives designed to increase market transparency.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is right on top of the evolving financial market structure and to that end, has announced new initiatives designed to increase market transparency.

Thomas Gira, Executive Vice President, Market Regulation at FINRA, laid out the regulator’s future plans in remarks made Tuesday, November 15 at the Inaugural Traders Magazine Equity Market Structure Town hall forum at the Upper Story in New York City. In speaking to the audience, he assured that the group is on top of changes in the market and seeks to continue to provide clarity, guidance and transparency into the trading markets.

Tom Gira, FINRA EVP Market Regulation

Gira provided a brief recap of what initiatives have already been put into place, creating a “multi-faceted safety net for the markets and are designed to promote investor confidence.” Among the changes, he told of how regulators adjusted the market-wide circuit breakers, which give market participants an opportunity to assess their positions, valuation models and operational capabilities when extreme periods of volatility occur. On top of that, the marketplace now has a limit up/limit down regime, which addresses the type of sudden individual stock-price movements that the market experienced during the May 2010 flash crash.

Also, he reminded that the Securities and Exchange Commission has also passed the Market Access Rule, which requires firms entering orders into the market, or allowing their customers to enter orders into the market, to have pre-trade controls to avoid erroneous and duplicative orders and to establish pre-trade capital and credit controls on orders entered into the market, among other things. And most recently, the SEC implemented Regulation SCI to strengthen the technology infrastructure of the U.S. securities markets.

“In sum, I think we are rightly focusing on the evolution of the market more than whether there is something seriously wrong with the market,” Gira said. “So in that vein, I would like to focus on how FINRA is working to stay ahead of issues through our focus on transparency and by making use of innovative technology in our surveillance programs.”

Among the new transparency initiatives, FINRA is continuing to look at ways to expand its Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine, or TRACE, which looks at the trading of corporate bonds and their trade data, including the price and size. The system is now looking at expanding TRACE to include transaction and quote data for the $13 trillion Treasury market.

“There is currently no centralized trade reporting system for Treasuries. Regulators, including FINRA, the SEC, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board, have taken steps to implement a transaction-reporting regime for Treasuries,” he said. “Starting next July, firms will have to report certain transactions in Treasury securities to TRACE.”

At this time, he added FINRA will not disseminate information on transactions in Treasuries. This new requirement will significantly enhance the ability of FINRA and other regulators to understand trading activity in Treasury securities.

To continue reading this story by John D’Antona, Jr from Traders Magazine, click here

FINRA Trying to Be More Transparent; No Easy Trick

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SEC Chair White Last Major Speech to BDs: Market Structure

admin — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 12:08:49 +0000

SEC Preparing to Finalize Transparency Rules for “Polluted” Dark Pools, Mary Jo White Says

Agency could alter 2015 proposal, which sought to pull back the curtain on opaque trading venues

In what might be her last major speech to members of the broker-dealer community as the Obama administration winds down and gets ready for the closing bell, SEC Chair Mary Joe White addressed a Washington DC gathering of the Securities Traders Association this week and talked about BDs favorite topic: equities market structure. After taking a few accolades for approving Finra-recommended regulations that require software developers of algorithmic trading tools to be registered and licensed just as securities traders, Ms White summarized her accomplishments and forward looking perspectives regarding SEC efforts to address inequities in the equities market structure.

Courtesy of Mondo Visione, below are the opening extracts from Ms. White’s speech:

Thank you, Jim [Toes], for that kind introduction. I am honored to join you again for your annual market structure conference.

The American equity markets are the strongest in the world, and one of the Commission’s most important responsibilities is to work every day to maintain their fairness, orderliness, and efficiency. Optimizing market structure is a continuous process, one that requires the Commission to act with both care and intensity, strictly guided by what is best for investors and capital formation for public companies.

I emphasized this guiding principle when I last joined you in 2013,[1] and in 2014 when I laid out a program for enhancing equity market structure.[2] Fulfilling our responsibility to investors and issuers, of course, demands that the Commission act quickly to address issues that are demonstrably undermining the interests of investors and issuers. But it also requires the Commission to carefully consider changes to market structure where the impact on those interests is far less clear and the data to support competing perspectives is lacking or conflicting.

Where improvements to equity market structure are clearly called for, the Commission has acted. The operational integrity of our markets – my top priority – has been significantly enhanced by a number of measures. The staff is gathering and analyzing more market data than ever before to inform policymaking, and the consolidated audit trail is becoming reality. And we have detailed proposals out for comment that will give investors more transparency into how the off-exchange markets operate and broker-dealers handle their orders.

At the same time, the Commission has undertaken a deliberate, data-driven process to assess – and, as appropriate, begun to implement – more fundamental changes to equity market structure. This process requires great care. The American equity markets today continue to serve well the interests of retail and institutional investors, delivering better executions at lower costs than ever before. Broad changes to this market structure – especially those executed precipitously or without adequate data – can have serious unintended consequences for investors and issuers as their impact is fully realized, sometimes years down the road.

This two-pronged approach recognizes that market structure can never be perfect and, correspondingly, that the Commission’s work is never – and should never – be done.[3] Market structure is continually evolving as technology and competition spur innovation. That fluidity means that the Commission’s review must be both comprehensive and nimble, constantly testing existing assumptions, regulations, and market practices, while remaining poised to act quickly on issues that immediate attention can address.

Today, I want to report on some of our progress on both our targeted enhancements to tackle such issues, and our consideration of more fundamental market structure questions. While the Commission has been active in a number of areas, I will focus today on operational integrity, market transparency, and algorithmic trading.

In assessing these areas and others, we have been fortunate to have the assistance of our relatively new Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee, or EMSAC. Especially in addressing some of the more complex issues in market structure today, the EMSAC, which brings deep expertise and a wide range of perspectives, provides a public forum for valuable and timely discussions, both within the Committee itself and as a result of its efforts to reach out to a wide range of others with expertise on key issues.

Strengthening Operational Integrity and Market Stability

Let me begin where I always do, with operational integrity and market stability. Since I arrived at the Commission, enhancing the reliability and resilience of our markets has been my top priority. Weaknesses or disruptions in operations can destabilize markets and, in some cases, lead to extreme price volatility and the loss of investor confidence. The Commission’s work here continues – we can never be complacent – but I am very pleased with the steps we have taken to strengthen the market systems on which investors depend every day.

Regulation SCI

Central to this effort has been Regulation SCI, which the Commission adopted at the end of 2014.[4] While no measure can eliminate technology disruptions altogether, Regulation SCI is designed to reduce the occurrence of systems issues and to improve resilience and communication when systems problems do occur. It imposes requirements on key market participants – the exchanges, high‑volume alternative trading systems (ATSs), clearing agencies, the securities information processors (SIPs), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB).

These “SCI entities” were required to start complying with most of the requirements of Regulation SCI last November.[5] In the first instance, this means maintaining comprehensive policies and procedures to ensure the capacity, integrity, resiliency, availability, and security of key automated systems. It also means: taking appropriate corrective action when systems issues happen; reporting systems problems and changes directly to the Commission and market participants; and conducting periodic reviews and testing of automated systems.

Approaching the first full year of the regulation’s operation, our examiners have been reviewing compliance with Regulation SCI. It is apparent from these examinations that many market participants have devoted significant resources to compliance, and there has been good progress in implementation. But a few areas for additional attention have emerged. For example, it is clear that processes for patching and updating systems deserve close attention – human errors in these routine tasks can create much more significant issues. Another example is diversifying primary and backup systems – in seeking to fulfill their recovery obligations under Regulation SCI, market participants should focus on not just the geographic locations of those systems, but also consider their reliance on different electrical, telecommunications, and other infrastructure support. Our staff is continuing to work with market participants in these areas and others to help ensure that the goals of Regulation SCI are achieved.

Improvements to Critical Market Infrastructure

Regulation SCI has been complemented by a number of initiatives by the exchanges and FINRA to enhance the operational integrity of critical market infrastructure like the SIPs and the open/close process. At my direction, following the Nasdaq SIP outage in 2013 and NYSE’s trading outage in 2015, SEC staff worked with the exchanges and FINRA to correct the defects that caused these incidents, as well as to identify and address other potential single points of failure. These cooperative efforts were expanded after the unusual volatility of August 24, 2015, and there has been significant progress.

First, the resilience of the SIPs is considerably improved. There are now enhanced disaster recovery sites and systems to establish a “hot/warm” backup process, which provides for a failover from the primary site to the backup site in ten minutes or less.[6]
Second, as of June, the equity listing exchanges now have mutual backup arrangements for their closing auctions, which will address situations when a disruption might prevent the execution of a closing auction on the primary listing exchange.[7]
And third, the process for opening auctions, especially in volatile markets, has been and continues to be improved.[8]

Enhancements to Volatility Moderators

Amidst these and other improvements,[9] reminders persist about the continued importance of the volatility moderators implemented after the “Flash Crash,” especially the “limit-up/limit-down” plan designed to reduce extraordinary volatility in individual securities. The exchanges and FINRA have already implemented basic enhancements to limit-up/limit-down in the wake of the events of August 24, 2015,[10] and I have asked them to address additional issues that emerged during that event.

Further Strengthening Market Operations

One such issue is the application of the mechanism to exchange-traded products (ETPs), where we have a broader program underway to help ensure that these increasingly popular products operate robustly in a variety of market conditions. We saw during the Flash Crash and on August 24 that ETPs can be disproportionately affected when markets become disorderly. Orderly trading in an ETP requires a smoothly functioning market for the ETP’s holdings so that market makers and authorized participants can reliably value the ETP’s portfolio. If the underlying market becomes disorderly, or if market makers and authorized participants step away from trading, the arbitrage mechanism can be disrupted and an ETP can trade at prices substantially away from its implied value.

Commission staff, as well as the exchanges and FINRA, are assessing the special characteristics of ETP trading in determining whether particular changes should be made to the limit-up/limit-down mechanism to reflect the sensitivity of ETPs to disorderly market activity.[11] In addition, I have directed the staff’s ETP Working Group to identify and analyze a broad range of issues relating to the structure, trading, and use of ETPs. The Working Group is considering, among other things: what portfolio characteristics and market structures support effective arbitrage; the roles and practices of market makers and authorized participants; and the effects of the ongoing exchange pilot programs to incentivize trading in less‑liquid ETPs.

If you haven’t already fallen asleep and would like to read the entire transcript, please click here

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White House To Nix GOP Securities Bill

admin — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 12:24:02 +0000

(Law360) New York (September 7, 2016, 4:14 PM ET) — The Obama administration on Tuesday said it would likely veto several bills aimed at simplifying the registration process for selling securities and cutting paperwork for private funds, as well as a bill prohibiting the government from reaching settlements that require donations to third parties.

The White House Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday issued three statements of administrative policy, saying that senior advisers would recommend President Barack Obama veto a series of laws currently pending in the U.S. House of Representatives that the administration claims…

To continue reading, please click here (subscription required)

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Broker Check-Who Are You Gonna Call?

admin — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 14:44:29 +0000

(WSJ) by Jason Zweig-

Most people expect the food in a three-star restaurant to be tastier than one-star grub and a two-thumbs-up movie to be better than a flick that got a solitary upward-pointing thumb. Good luck, however, finding a handy way to rank stockbrokers.

That needs to change, because new research shows the most valuable information about brokers emerges only when you can compare them and their firms industry-wide.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees how investments are sold, maintains BrokerCheck, a database and website that provides information on nearly 1.27 million current and former brokers. A study by Finra last fall found that BrokerCheck data could reliably predict which brokers are most likely to harm their clients.

And so you could, if you had open access to all the data Finra collects on BrokerCheck. But, contends a new report, the regulator keeps such a tight hold that the service doesn’t tell investors what they need to know.

The vast majority of brokers are hardworking, honest folks who have no customer complaints on their records.

But those who have been active since before 2000, and those whose colleagues have a history of misconduct, are much more likely to generate complaints from customers, according to the new analysis.

Those insights emerge only from analyzing oceans of data on brokers and their firms — an absurdly impractical task for ordinary investors looking up BrokerCheck records one at a time.

How much should you worry if a broker settled a complaint for $25,000? Are four arbitrations in 27 years a lot or a few? Have 13 out of 14 of the other employees in your broker’s office had complaints lodged against them? There’s no way outsiders with conventional computing power can tell. Nor can investors readily figure out which firms have the most employees with marks on their records.

And that matters — a lot — because taking advantage of clients seems to be contagious.

Brokers whose colleagues have spotty track records end up harming investors much more often, the new report says.

An unrelated recent study, which looked at some 150,000 brokers at nearly 1,000 firms, found that in the wake of a merger between firms, the average broker becomes over one-third more likely to incur customer complaints if his or her new brokerage colleagues have a history of misconduct.

Yet another analysis, released last month by economists at the University of Minnesota and the University of Chicago, found that brokers with a history of complaints were snapped up by other firms rather than being driven out of the industry.

So, before hiring a broker, you should know the disciplinary record of his or her colleagues. Even a report from Finra itself last fall drew a similar conclusion.

The latest study was conducted by Securities Litigation and Consulting Group, a research firm in Fairfax, Va. Part of its business is providing expert-witness testimony in arbitration proceedings against brokers and their firms. Still, “my incentives don’t change the arithmetic,” says SLCG founder Craig McCann, a former economist at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The study bases its analysis on Finra’s own standards for judging whether investors were harmed; it replicates several of the regulator’s findings from last fall almost exactly. Finra’s chief economist, Jonathan Sokobin, says the SLCG report “essentially validated our results.”

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Morgan Stanley Smacked by NY AG For Mortgages

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2016 17:30:10 +0000

Law360, New York (February 11, 2016, 10:11 AM ET) — 6-Pack Bank and Global BrokerDealer Morgan Stanley agreed today to pay $3.2 billion to resolve claims that it misled investors about mortgage-backed securities before the financial crisis, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said.

The settlement is the latest among big banks related to the financial crisis, and ends government claims that Morgan Stanley misrepresented to investors the mortgages it packaged into securities.

The settlement is the latest among big banks related to the financial crisis, bringing to a close government claims that Morgan Stanley told investors that the mortgages it packaged into securities were of higher quality than was actually the case. The firm’s misstatements cost investors billions of dollars and the problematic mortgages helped cause many homeowners to lose their homes or suffer significant financial losses, Schneiderman said.

“Today’s agreement is another victory in our efforts to help New Yorkers rebuild in the wake of the financial devastation caused by major banks,” Schneiderman said in a statement.

For the full story from Law360, please click here

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Ex-BrokerDealer Earns 3 Yr Jail Sentence for Bribe Plot

admin — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 23:17:14 +0000

Law360, New York (December 15, 2015, 6:16 PM ET) — A former employee of New York broker-dealer Direct Access Partners LLC was sentenced in federal court on Tuesday to three years in prison for his role in a $60 million bribery scheme involving a Venezuelan state-owned bank.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote sentenced Jose Alejandro Hurtado during a hearing in Manhattan court. Hurtado pled guilty in August 2013 to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, money laundering and obstruction of justice, among other criminal charges.

Prosecutors have said Hurtado and others at DAP funneled millions of dollars in bribe payments to a senior official at Banco de Desarrollo Economico y Social de Venezuela, or BANDES, in exchange for bond-trading business. Hurtado personally received about $11.9 million in profits from the scheme, according to prosecutors.

Hurtado, one of six people charged in the case, will receive credit for the nearly 17 months he spent in prison following his arrest. Direct Access Partners ceased operations in May of 2013 after the criminal charges and a related SEC suit. It was forced into bankruptcy by creditors on May 30.

“I’m here to apologize about this terrible situation and the pain I have caused everyone,” he said prior to the sentence, fighting back tears. “My behavior gave a terrible reputation to the financial industry and to future generations.”

The other DAP officers and employees who were charged in the case are Benito Chinea, Joseph Demeneses, Ernesto Lujan and Tomas Alberto Clarke Bethancourt.

All of the defendants have pled guilty. Chinea and Demeneses were each sentenced to four years in prison, Lujan and Bethancourt were each sentenced to two years in prison, and Gonzalez is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 15.

For the full story from 360Law, please click here

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Did JPMorgan Commit Fraud To Silence Whistle-Blower?

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 17:37:06 +0000

Behemoth brokerdealer and six pack bank JPMorgan has had its share of blow backs consequent to pushing envelopes, but recent story via NY Times profiling former broker Johnny Burris comes straight out of the “Tell-Me-This-Really-Isn’t-True Dept”–and causing at least several former federal prosecutors to ponder whether JPMorgan could be charged with various counts of wire fraud, aside from libel charges, in an obvious attempt by mid-level bank executives to silence a whistle-blower.

Here’s the simple summary-according to NYT reporting, JPMorgan knowingly submitted phony customer complaints to industry regulator Finra in an effort to malign the integrity and reputation of broker Johnny Burris in an effort to discredit his whistle-blowing charges that JPMorgan pressured brokers to sell house products that were either not suited for certain clients, or were products that were considerably more expensive than those clients could have purchased from other providers.

Courtesy of extract from 4 December front page business section of NYT and reporting by Nathaniel Popper….

Johnny Burris, a former broker at JPMorgan Chase, might have known he was walking into a minefield when he decided to go public with his concerns about his former employer.

Mr. Burris complained in 2013 that JPMorgan was pressuring brokers like him to sell the bank’s own mutual funds even when the offerings from competitors were more suitable. A few weeks after an article in The New York Times about Mr. Burris’s concerns appeared, complaints from some of his former clients in Arizona began showing up on his disciplinary records that are maintained by a regulatory agency and publicly available.

The client complaints made it hard for Mr. Burris to get another job and helped scuttle his case against JPMorgan for wrongful termination. But when Mr. Burris recently reached two of the clients whose names had been on the complaints, they told him they had not, in fact, written the complaints — a JPMorgan employee had.

Carolyn Scott, the ostensible author of one of the letters complaining about Mr. Burris, said in a recent interview with The Times that she had not written the document, but had signed it without knowing the contents after a JPMorgan employee had told her it was something that could help her “get some money back.”

“I was stupid enough I didn’t read it myself,” Ms. Scott said. “I had no problems with Johnny. No problems whatsoever.”

Another man who supposedly wrote a letter of complaint was, it turned out, essentially unable to read or write, and said in an interview that he had never had an issue with Mr. Burris.

BrokerDealer.com investigators located Mr. Burris’s record of phony complaints via Finra BrokerCheck

“I would never have known how to draft a complaint letter, nor could I have drafted the letter in question,” the man said in a declaration that he recently signed in front of a notary public to support Mr. Burris — after the declaration was read back to him aloud.

For Mr. Burris, the explanation behind these complaints was clear: This was retaliation for his criticism of JPMorgan, though retaliation carried out poorly.

“How do you believe I feel knowing that the bank solicited, drafted false, erroneous complaints about me?” he wrote to JPMorgan in late October, after speaking with his old clients.

During the arbitration in 2014, Mr. Burris’s lawyer asked his former supervisors if anyone at JPMorgan had helped draft the complaints and was told: “Absolutely not.”

This week, though, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan, Patricia Wexler, said that one of Mr. Burris’s former colleagues, Laya Gavin, had, in fact, assisted the clients as a courtesy “by typing up what they told her verbally, reading it back to them for accuracy, and submitting them for review.”

Both clients involved disputed that description of the events and said that the complaints Ms. Gavin wrote up did not reflect their sentiments and added that Ms. Gavin had not read the complaints to them before having them sign the documents.

A spokeswoman for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Michelle Ong, said that her organization was “aware of these allegations” about the complaints and was looking into them. Finra is the agency that maintains broker disciplinary records.

Keep reading the NYT story by Nate Popper via this link

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TD Ameritrade is Moving-From NYSE to NASDAQ

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 13:53:29 +0000

(Bloomberg) – TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. will move its share listing to the Nasdaq Stock Market from the New York Stock Exchange.

The online brokerdealer expects to begin trading on Nasdaq Inc.’s stock exchange on Dec. 14 under its ticker symbol, AMTD, the company said in a release Tuesday.

“We regularly review our many business relationships, and moving our shares to Nasdaq is the right thing for our business at this point in time,” Fred Tomczyk, outgoing chief executive officer of TD Ameritrade, said in a statement. Kim Hillyer, a spokeswoman for TD Ameritrade, declined to elaborate on what led to the decision to move the shares from Intercontinental Exchange Inc.-owned NYSE to Nasdaq.

BrokerDealer.com maintains the global financial industry’s most comprehensive database of broker-dealers operating in more than 30 countries worldwide

The listing change comes as Tomczyk announced he will retire on Sept. 30. He will be succeeded by Tim Hockey, head of Canadian banking and wealth management at Toronto-Dominion Bank, which owns about 40 percent of TD Ameritrade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Before taking over Tomczyk’s role, Hockey will become President of TD Ameritrade on Jan. 2, the company said.

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BrokerDealer Blog » brokerdealer

SEC Cyber Unit Brings First ICO Fraud Charge

SEC Cyber Unit Brings First ICO Fraud Charge, Initial Coin Offerings No Longer Under Regulators’ Radar

Three Charged in NYS Retirement Fund Pay-to-Play Scheme

BREAKING: Ex-Blackrock Exec Jailed In UK For Insider Trading

Texas Man Charged With Bilking Investors In Ponzi Scheme

Chancery Mulls Largest Incentive Award Ever In Occam Case

RPM International Can’t Move SEC Suit Over $61M Deal

SEC, MSRB Fight GOP’s Challenge To New Pay-To-Play Rule

Neustar Settles SEC Investigation Over Severance Clause

Energy Co. To Pay SEC $1.4M Over Whistleblower Firing

SIFMA, ABA Air Worries Over CFTC Cross-Border Swaps Rule

Schulte Roth Withdraws As Patriarch’s Counsel In Zohar Suit

Chancery Won’t Revive Suit Over OM Group’s $1B Apollo Sale

Tokai Hopes To Move $97M Suit Over IPO To Mass. Fed. Court

4th Circ. Says FINRA Challenge Must Go To SEC First

Citibank Renews Bid To Dodge $2.3B RMBS Class Action

Bondholders Dismissed From Bank Libor Conspiracy MDL

Bankrupt Oil Co. Gives Preferred-Share Action The Slip

Morgan Stanley Pays $7.5M For Customer Protection Offenses

Del. Supreme Court Upholds Chancery On TC Pipeline Case

$2.5M CFTC Spoofing Settlement Gets Green Light

FINRA Trying to Be More Transparent; No Easy Trick

FINRA Trying to Be More Transparent; No Easy Trick

SEC Chair White Last Major Speech to BDs: Market Structure

SEC Preparing to Finalize Transparency Rules for “Polluted” Dark Pools, Mary Jo White Says

Agency could alter 2015 proposal, which sought to pull back the curtain on opaque trading venues

Strengthening Operational Integrity and Market Stability

Regulation SCI

Improvements to Critical Market Infrastructure

Enhancements to Volatility Moderators

Further Strengthening Market Operations

White House To Nix GOP Securities Bill

Broker Check-Who Are You Gonna Call?

Morgan Stanley Smacked by NY AG For Mortgages

Ex-BrokerDealer Earns 3 Yr Jail Sentence for Bribe Plot

Law360, New York (December 15, 2015, 6:16 PM ET) — A former employee of New York broker-dealer Direct Access Partners LLC was sentenced in federal court on Tuesday to three years in prison for his role in a $60 million bribery scheme involving a Venezuelan state-owned bank.

Did JPMorgan Commit Fraud To Silence Whistle-Blower?

TD Ameritrade is Moving-From NYSE to NASDAQ

(Bloomberg) – TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. will move its share listing to the Nasdaq Stock Market from the New York Stock Exchange.