Your job in selecting investment counsel has never been more difficult. And it’s not going to get any easier as you can see here. The Wall Street Journal reports that brokers get complaints against them scrubbed from the record in the vast majority of cases where they request it.
Stockbrokers are being routinely allowed to scrub some customer complaints from their public records, leaving investors in the dark about potentially troubled advisers, according to a study of more than 1,600 arbitration cases.
Brokers asked to remove customer disputes from their records in 1,625 arbitration cases filed from 2007 through 2011, according to a report by the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, an association of securities lawyers. Arbitrators approved removal requests in more than 90% of the 629 cases that settled. In the other cases, which went to an arbitration hearing, almost half the requests to clean records were granted. During the period, there were 17,635 arbitration cases overall, the bar association report shows.
