SEC fines 13 firms over sale of Puerto Rico junk bonds 

Units of 13 major Wall Street firms, including JPMorgan and UBS, improperly sold bonds from Puerto Rico’s landmark March junk deal to retail investors who may not have understood the debt’s riskiness, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Monday.

The firms will pay penalties ranging from $54,000 to $130,000, without admitting or denying the regulator’s charges that they violated a new rule on minimum denominations for municipal bond sales. This is the first time the SEC has brought a case based on the rule, which prohibits dealers from selling bonds to individual buyers below a certain threshold amount.

“These firms violated a straightforward investor protection rule that prohibits the sale of muni bonds in increments below a specified minimum,” said LeeAnn Gaunt, chief of the SEC’s municipal securities and public pensions unit, in a statement. “We conduct frequent surveillance of trading in the municipal bond market and will penalize abuses that threaten retail investors.”

The $3.5 billion deal in March, the largest municipal junk bond sale in U.S. history, included limits meant to ensure smaller investors were not caught holding the risky debt unawares.

Specifically, there was a high minimum denomination of $100,000 for a purchase, which carried over when the bonds were traded in the secondary market. The SEC said it found 66 occasions when dealers sold the bonds to investors below that threshold.

Units of Charles Schwab, Interactive Brokers, Investment Professionals, Lebenthal & Co, National Securities Corporation, Oppenheimer & Co, Riedl First Securities Co of Kansas, Stifel Nicolaus & Co, TD Ameritrade, and Wedbush Securities were also charged.

 

Source: reuters-SEC fines 13 firms over sale of Puerto Rico junk bonds

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