Raymond James Financial Services Inc. has been fined $2.75 million by securities regulators who accused the big investment firm of lax oversight of about 1,000 of its branch managers under a system in which they essentially supervised themselves.
One of the managers was permanently barred from the securities industry for allegedly misleading and recommending unsuitable mutual-fund and annuities investments to elderly and retirement-age customers, in the actions announced Wednesday by the National Association of Securities Dealers. The brokerage industry’s self-policing organization said that Raymond James failed to detect the abuses “because of deficiencies in its supervisory system.”
