Sense on Cents

While the general financial media would seem not to understand nor care that Wall Street to a large extent is a self-regulated industry, many within the industry and around the country very much care. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is the financial industry’s self-regulatory organization.

At FINRA’s 2010 Annual Meeting held a week ago, FINRA’s member firms overwhelmingly voted for seven aggressive non-binding proxy proposals. These proposals were by and large targeted at bringing greater transparency and disclosure to FINRA’s operations. Will FINRA’s board of governors acquiesce and fully address these proposals?

An Investment News story the other day, embedded in my post Is FINRA’s Board Tone Deaf?, would seem to indicate that FINRA’s powers at be are in no rush to address these proposals. So much for transparency and disclosure. These virtues may be nice buzzwords for political meetings and industry forums, but obviously these standards require real courage and true character to put into practice.

On that note, let’s address a question left yesterday in a comment on my aforementioned post here at Sense on Cents,

Texas

August 21, 2010 at 1:40 PM

Well just who exactly is on this FINRA board? How about names and contact info so we can write to them?

FINRA itself provides the following,

FINRA Board of Governors

Richard G. Ketchum, Chairman
Chief Executive Officer
FINRA
Washington, DC

Jed Bandes
(Industry)
Mutual Trust Company of America Securities
Clearwater, FL

Joel R. Blumenschein
(Industry)
Freedom Investors Corp.
Brookfield, WI

Charles A. Bowsher
(Public)
Former Comptroller General of the U.S.
Bethesda, MD

John J. Brennan
(Industry)
The Vanguard Group, Inc.
Malvern, PA

Ellyn L. Brown
(Public)
Brown & Associates
Lutherville, MD

Richard F. Brueckner
(Industry)
Pershing LLC
Jersey City, NJ

James E. Burton
(Public)
California Strategies LLC
Sacramento, CA

Mark S. Casady
(Industry)
LPL Financial
Boston, MA

John F. X. Dolan
(Industry)
Kellogg Specialist Group, LLC
Stowe, VT

W. Dennis Ferguson
(Industry)
Sterne, Agee & Leach, Inc.
Boca Raton, FL

Harvey J. Goldschmid
(Public)
Columbia University Law School
New York, NY

William H. Heyman
(Public)
The Travelers Companies, Inc.
Saint Paul, MN

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson
(Public)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY

Ken Norensberg
(Industry)
Four Points Capital Partners LLC
New York, NY

Richard S. Pechter
(Public)
Retired
New York, NY

John W. Schmidlin
(Public)
Retired
New York, NY

Joel Seligman
(Public)
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY

Gary H. Stern
(Public)
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (retired)
Minneapolis, MN

Kurt P. Stocker
(Public)
Northwestern University
Westcliffe, CO

Seth H. Waugh
(Industry)
Deutsche Bank Americas
New York, NY

James D. Weddle
(Industry)
Edward Jones
St. Louis, MO

Texas, there you go!! Best of luck in reaching out to them. Please let us know what you learn. If others learn anything meaningful in reaching out to these individuals, please share that information as well. While knowledge is power, transparency and disclosure are great disinfectants.

The pursuit of real truth, transparency, and integrity is never easy but it is so worth it!!

Keep punchin’…!!

Larry Doyle

Related Sense on Cents Commentary
FINRA Gets New ‘Sheriffs’; Amerivet Proxy Proposals Approved!! Strongly Recommended; (August 14, 2010)

I have no current affiliation or business interest with any entity referenced in this commentary. As President of Greenwich Investment Management, an SEC regulated privately held registered investment adviser, I am merely a proponent of real transparency within our markets, including our financial regulators, so that badly needed and real investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 at 10:23 AM and is filed under FINRA, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.