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The Chair of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s (SIFMA) Small Firms Committee, E. John Moloney, who is president and CEO of Moloney Securities Company today testified before the House Committee on Small Business concerning the impact of financial regulatory restructuring on small businesses and community lenders.
Moloney noted SIFMA and his own firms support financial reform, especially minimizing systemic risk, so that no firm is too big or interconnected to fail, or could pose a risk to the larger financial system. And, he noted another area where smaller firms such as his are supporting major reform that would impact nearly every American investor - the creation of a new, federal fiduciary standard.
“SIFMA has long advocated the modernization and harmonization of the disparate regulatory regimes for brokers, dealers, investment advisers and other financial intermediaries. When broker-dealers and investment advisers engage in the identical service of providing personalized investment advice about securities to individual investors, they should be held to the same standard of care,” said Moloney in prepared testimony. “The hallmark of a new federal standard should be putting investors’ interests first.”
As of August 2009, FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, reported that there are 4,797 registered broker-dealers. Of these, it is estimated that some 4,600 are smaller broker-dealers defined by FINRA as having 150 registered persons, or fewer. Moloney Securities is a general securities broker-dealer with 110 registered brokers and 20 support staff, with three Offices of Supervisory Jurisdiction (OSJ) located in St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver, plus nineteen additional registered branches located in fourteen states. The firm was not a TARP recipient.
For his full testimony please visit: http://www.sifma.org/legislative/testimony/pdf/John-Moloney-testimony-092309.pdf.
