Articles Posted in UBS Puerto Rico

An all-public arbitration panel of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. has awarded five clients of UBS Financial Services more than $521,000 in compensatory damages in a case related to the clients’ investments in Puerto Rican bonds and closed-end bond funds.

The clients, all residents of Puerto Rico, claimed UBS violated the Puerto Rico Uniform Securities Act and engaged in securities fraud, common law fraud and constructive fraud, in addition to breaching its fiduciary duty and negligently supervising its personnel.

 

 

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A FINRA arbitration panel issued an award of damages to Greco & Greco clients against UBS of Puerto Rico on February 23, 2018. The arbitration involved multiple Puerto Rico customers of UBS who had been invested primarily in UBS Puerto Rico Closed-End Mutual Funds and Puerto Rico Bonds.

The award, totaling $521,075.00 in damages, was significant because most of the damages were incurred in investments that UBS claimed were conservative (the Puerto Rico AAA Portfolio Bond Fund and COFINA bonds), and UBS further unsuccessfully claimed that the customers had not lost any money because of the interest/dividends they had earned over the years in the investments.

As set out in more detail at Greco & Greco’s website (http://www.securities-lawyers.net/ubs-puerto-rico) the UBS Puerto Rico Closed-End Funds (CEFs) were high risk investments which used leverage (a speculative investment technique) and which did not have a market (they were traded by UBS’s trading desk but UBS had the ability to stop trading of the funds at any time). 

Greco & Greco is pleased to report the first FINRA Arbitration Award against UBS Financial Services of Puerto Rico relating to the crash of UBS closed end bond funds in 2013 which were sold to Puerto Rico residents. W. Scott Greco represented the Claimant customer in the case of Bauza v. UBS Financial Services of Puerto Rico, et al. The arbitration panel awarded $200,000 in damages to the Claimant, despite claims by UBS that Claimant’s net out of pocket losses were less than $10,000.

The case involved a heavy over-concentration of the Claimant’s UBS account in proprietary UBS closed end bond funds pursuant to UBS’s recommendations. The funds invested heavily in Puerto Rico bonds using leverage (a speculative investment technique), and had significant geographic concentration risk.

Read about the arbitration award in this Reuters article.

To date, FINRA Arbitration Panels have issued five awards relating to claims filed by investors against UBS and UBS of Puerto Rico regarding their Puerto Rico Closed End Bond Funds (CEFs).

The Awards (for cases filed after the 2013 crash of the CEF market) are summarized below:

1.  Bauza v. UBS Financial Services of Puerto Rico, et al..  Greco & Greco represented the Claimant in this case which resulted in the first award against UBS regarding the Puerto Rico CEFs.  UBS claimed that the Claimant only had $8,000 in net losses from the funds, but the panel awarded $200,000.00.  The case was tried in Washington, DC.

The SEC and FINRA have brought charges and fined UBS relating to sales practices and supervision of their UBS Puerto Rico Bond Funds.

The SEC press release and Orders can be found here: SEC Press Release 2015-217. The SEC alleged that UBS Financial Services of Puerto Rico (UBSPR) failed to supervise its broker in relation to solicited loans used to purchase additional UBSPR closed end funds, while failing to disclose the risks of this strategy and misrepresenting the safety of the strategy. The SEC further alleged that UBSPR did not implement reasonable supervisory procedures and had inadequate systems in place to prevent and detect this wrongful conduct.

UBS was censured and fined over fourteen million dollars.

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