COMPLIANCE NEWSFLASHES

NASD Orders First-Ever Suspension of Mutual Fund Business

For the first time, NASD has prohibited a regulated firm from opening mutual fund accounts for new clients for 30 days. National Securities Corp., a Seattle securities firm, was charged with facilitating deceptive market timing practices and failing to have an adequate supervisory system to prevent deceptive market timing and late trading. 'This is an example of a firm whose management totally ignored repeated red flags that its brokers were facilitating deceptive and improper market timing in mutual funds by hedge fund clients, said NASD Vice Chairman Mary Schapiro in a news release. The firm was fined $300,000 and ordered to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution to the funds that were affected by the deceptive market timing. It was also ordered to revise its supervisory systems to correct supervisory and e-mail retention deficiencies. The investigation of individual brokers involved in the misconduct is ongoing.

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