National Association Of Securities Dealers

Brokerage units of Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs were among 10 firms settling regulators' charges they violated a market rule that's supposed to provide an orderly start to trading of initial public offering shares. The firms agreed to pay a total of $473,000 to settle charges by the regulatory branch of the National Association of Securities Dealers. Deutsche Bank's NDB Capital Markets was fined $250,000, NASD Regulation said.

A name chosen to represent the merger of two major U.S. brokerage watchdogs will be changed because the acronym may be considered offensive because of its similarity to an Arabic term. The Securities Industry Regulatory Authority, or SIRA, was the name that had been announced to represent the combined self-regulation of the NASD and NYSE Group.

H.J. Meyers & Co., a securities firm, and 22 of its current and former brokers were ordered to pay fines and investor refunds totaling $1.5 million for overcharging 3,000 customers, the National Assn. of Securities Dealers announced Thursday. The owner and chief executive of the Rochester, N.Y.-based firm, James A. Villa, was fined $25,000, censured and suspended for 20 business days. H.J.

A plan for NYSE Group Inc. and NASD to form a single regulator for U.S. brokerages should be blocked by a judge because it unfairly favors Wall Street's biggest firms, Tustin-based Standard Investment Chartered Inc. said in a suit filed Thursday in New York.

The National Assn. of Securities Dealers asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to restrict brokerage firms from offering incentives to their employees to sell certain mutual funds to customers. According to the NASD proposal, any cash or other kinds of prizes given to brokers for selling mutual funds must be based on the brokers' total sales, not just on their sales of certain funds.

The NASD on Tuesday fined brokerages Quick & Reilly and Piper Jaffray Cos. for giving preferred sales treatment to mutual funds in exchange for commission-generating stock trades and other payments. The fines by the NASD, the securities industry's self-regulatory agency, are the latest in a crackdown on long-standing revenue-sharing deals between brokerages and fund companies. Last week, the NASD accused the distributor of Los Angeles-based American Funds, the No. 3 U.S.

Toluca Pacific Securities Corp. in Burbank, its president, Peter Blowitz, and another of the brokerage's employees have been fined a total of nearly $200,000 by the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, which governs the NASDAQ stock market. The fines were imposed for two cases of alleged violations of NASD rules, including excessive markups of stock prices.

Orange County's largest brokerage firm and one of its brokers have been ordered to pay $1.55 million to a Montana millionaire for losses he suffered after the 1987 stock market crash. The award against Cruttenden Roth Inc. and broker Richard Adler was handed down last month by a panel of arbitrators from the National Assn. of Securities Dealers. Cruttenden has filed a petition challenging the award with the U.S. District Court. A hearing is scheduled for Feb. 26.

NASD Expels 1 Firm, Fines Another: Los Angeles brokerage Cartwright & Walker Securities Inc. was expelled, and New York broker Avrum R. Tokayer was fined $364,937.50 and barred from associating with any brokerage firm or dealer for manipulating the price of a common stock, the National Assn. of Securities Dealers said. The sanctions are two of the stiffest imposed by the regulatory body this year.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a bid to limit fallout from a collapse like the one at Drexel Burnham Lambert, is expected to propose rules this week requiring brokerage houses to hand over information on financial dealings of their parent firms. Agency officials hope that the plan would allow them to better detect whether a brokerage could fall victim to troubles at a holding company or affiliates, such as currency and commodity trading units. The SEC regulates brokerage firms.

An effort to consolidate industry self-regulation of U.S. securities brokers and dealers moved a step closer Sunday, the NASD said. Members of the NASD, formerly known as the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, approved bylaw changes needed to combine with NYSE Group Inc. and form one organization to regulate securities brokers and dealers. Consolidating the self-regulatory functions of the NASD and NYSE Group into one entity will help end duplication, reduce costs and make U.S.

A merger of regulatory operations for the New York Stock Exchange and the NASD can proceed only if most members on the combined governing board are independent of the industry, Securities and Exchange Commissioner Annette Nazareth said Thursday. "The commission is keenly interested in having effective board governance and having independent board directors," Nazareth said in an interview.

Wall Street is getting a new top cop. In a big win for the securities industry, the two organizations that police stockbrokers and others in the industry have agreed to form a single self-regulatory body. The change is expected to cut costs for the financial industry, but some consumer advocates fear it could mean that abuses will go undetected. Under the plan announced Tuesday, regulators at NYSE Group Inc. and the NASD (formerly the National Assn.

Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. agreed Wednesday to pay $800,000 to settle NASD accusations that it didn't report thousands of municipal securities transactions, deleted e-mails and failed to turn over information. It is the brokerage's third-largest fine in the last year for reporting or regulatory failings. NASD found that Oppenheimer & Co.

The NASD said Tuesday that it fined Morgan Stanley $2.9 million for widespread violations relating to stock and bond trades from 1999 to 2006. The NASD, formerly the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, said the violations by the investment bank and its brokerage arm included a failure to report or the misreporting of thousands of stock and bond trades and a failure to execute hundreds of customer trades at the best prices.

Securities industry regulators have dropped all charges against former star technology banker Frank Quattrone over how his investment bank allocated shares of hot initial public offerings during the late-1990s Internet boom. The NASD, formerly the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, withdrew the charges for procedural reasons. The ruling Wednesday by an NASD hearing officer was the third in a series of legal victories for Quattrone.

A San Diego brokerage Thursday was ordered permanently barred from the "penny stock" business and, along with five executives, slapped with fines and restitution that could approach $1 million. The sanctions against La Jolla Capital Corp., which was involved in last year's highly publicized surge and crash of the stock of tiny Comparator Systems, came in an unrelated case in which the firm allegedly dodged federal securities disclosure rules by having customers sign misleading forms.

In the first crackdown in its campaign to prevent abuses in the hedge-fund industry, the NASD on Tuesday said it fined La Jolla-based Altegris Investments $175,000 for failing to disclose hedge-fund risks in sales literature it sent investors. The NASD, formerly known as the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, also slapped Altegris' chief compliance officer, Robert J. Amedeo, with a censure and $20,000 fine for failing to adequately supervise the firm's marketing.

A securities-industry arbitration panel has awarded $22 million to a group of Exxon Mobil Corp. retirees who accused brokerage firm Securities America Inc. of improperly steering them into high-risk investments. The three-member panel of the NASD, formerly the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, handed down the award Monday against Securities America, a unit of Ameriprise Financial Inc.

The NASD fined a unit of American International Group Inc. more than $1.1 million Wednesday for alleged directed brokerage violations. The NASD, formerly the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, said that from January 2002 through September 2003, American General Securities Inc. operated a "shelf space," or revenue sharing, program in which participating mutual fund companies paid a fee in return for preferential treatment.