Total represents a 5% drop from yearend 2008 and is 26% below 2007 peak.
In a positive sign for the job market, the Conference Board Employment Trends Index remained flat last month for the third month in a row, according to data released today.
Although improving financial markets have helped lift some life insurance carriers, the firms still have a ways to go before they recover fully, according to a report from Moody's Investors Service.
Foothill Securities Inc., an employee-owned broker-dealer, has merged with Cue Financial Group Inc., a smaller independent firm.
No wonder investors have lost faith in the stock market.
A proposal by the Securities and Exchange Commission that would require advisory firms holding custody of client assets to be audited by accountants inspected by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board would cost each firm an average of $200,000, according to one new estimate.
Attorneys and executives at broker-dealer firms are questioning the extent of National Financial Partners Corp.'s potential liability in a civil suit involving a failed life settlement transaction at an NFP affiliate.
Aggressive hiring by regional broker-dealers is likely to continue for the rest of the year, coming mostly at the expense of the wirehouses, according to industry executives and analysts.
With discussions regarding the sale of the AIG Advisor Group dragging on for months, representatives and financial advisers who are affiliated with the beleaguered broker-dealers of the firm are relieved now that two final bidders have emerged.
A former financial adviser and registered representative who reportedly hid his criminal past by using a dead infant's identity pleaded guilty last Thursday to several fraud charges.
New, higher assessments by the Securities Investor Protection Corp. are causing ”sticker shock” at several broker-dealers, particularly independent-contractor firms.
Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America Corp.'s embattled chief executive, gave a trenchant analysis of the state of banking — and the brokerage business, in particular— last week when he announced that former Smith Barney boss Sallie Krawcheck will run the bank's global wealth and investment management sector.
Some broker-dealer executives who are now paying increased fees to the Securities Investor Protection Corp. are wondering why it is paying out on claims of investors victimized by Bernie Madoff.
Investors in the Schwab Charitable Fund national donor-advised offering now have more investment choices.
A downbeat report from the Royal Bank of Scotland PLC today clouded a week of earnings updates that started with suggestions that the country's lenders were over the worst of the financial crisis — almost exactly two years after the credit squeeze took hold.
Consumer confidence for August has turned upward, reversing a slide of the past two months, according to a report from RBC Capital Markets in Toronto.
American International Group Inc. said today director Harvey Golub will become Monday its non-executive chairman, replacing retiring Chairman Edward M. Liddy. Golub, 70, was elected to the AIG board in May 2009.
Aggressive hiring by regional broker-dealers is likely to continue for the rest of the year, coming mostly at the expense of the wirehouses, according to industry executives and analysts.
U.S. employers throttled back on layoffs in July, cutting just 247,000 jobs, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent, its first decline in 15 months.
In afternoon European trading, Britain's FTSE 100 tumbled 1.1 percent to 4,637.22, Germany's DAX slipped 0.6 percent to 5,339.85 and France's CAC dropped 0.9 percent to 3,445.97.
