Nationally recognized Philadelphia federal criminal defense and white collar crime attorney NiaLena Caravasos is honored to have been invited once again back to her alma mater, The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, to speak as a legal advisor to a class of Wharton students who have held executive positions in the financial industry and other areas of the business world for several years and have returned to academia to pursue an MBA at Wharton. This particular class focused on the securities industry and, most specifically, issues regarding a brokerage house that was allegedly not transparent with its conflict of interest and whose agent allegedly attempted to defraud an investor. The very spirited discussion focused on analyzing the pros and cons of the actions of the brokerage house, the agent, and the investor with a view toward assessing whether a negotiated agreement could possibly be reached in order to avoid the uncertainty of the adversarial process. Other equally important factors that weighed into the analysis included whether the investor had legitimate complaints even though there was no monetary loss, how to best deal with an agent who had misstepped here but had otherwise served the brokerage house as a top earner for years, an assessment of the overarching need for transparency in the securities industry, how remedial steps can be taken to prevent any such recurrence in the future, and the possibility of whether a negotiated agreement can be reached without triggering the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) reporting requirements.
