TD Ameritrade and The Auction Rate Securities Scandal
On Monday, July 20, 2009, TD Ameritrade agreed to pay $456 million to settle a lawsuit involving the marketing of a debt class that ended up crippling investors. As part of the settlement, TD Ameritrade is set to repurchase all auction-rate securities sold prior to February 13, 2008, from retail investors with accounts of $250,000 or less within the next 75 days.
TD Ameritrade's lawsuit spawned from its involvement in the auction rate security scandal. Ameritrade sales people actively promoted Nuveen's auction rate securities as an alternative to money market funds, resulting in individuals inability to liquidate out of their securities.
An auction rate security is a type of closed-end fund which means the fund has a fixed initial investment and is then traded on a secondary market. The money was to be invested in municipal securities and other instruments at rates that would be determined by weekly auctions. TD Ameritrade salespeople promoted Nuveen funds with names like "Quality Preferred Income II" to corporate and individual investors, claiming they were liquid alternatives to money market funds. In fact they were not, because they had no expiration date and the issuer has no obligation to pay back money it has borrowed from the investor, who can only cash out by selling his investment to someone else.
The market for auction rate securities collapsed in February, 2008 when broker-dealers such as UBS declined to continue to participate in dutch auctions that determined the rate of interest for the securities. Up to this point, brokers and issuers had propped up the auctions by acting as a bidder of last resort; without their participation, the market quickly folded. Investors were left with "frozen" accounts, that essentially were worth nothing, since they could not be redeemed and the investment houses that created them refused to close them out or return the money.
Investor groups are said to be organizing class action suits against Ameritrade, Nuveen, and other organizations such as UBS and Merrill Lynch, that have been involved in the auction rate security scandal.
Read more about this topic: TD Ameritrade, Controversies and Scandals
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