Don't Be Too Generous During The Holiday Season
Better stick to cards and fruit baskets this year. The NASD fined Jefferies & Company, Inc. $5.5 million for giving $1.6 million in gifts of private chartered air travel, non-promotional sports-related merchandise, expensive wine, weekend golf outings, and tickets to the Super Bowl to equity traders employed by FMR Co., an investment advisor to the Fidelity family of mutual funds. James S. Shorris, NASD Executive Vice President and Head of Enforcement explained "NASD's gift and gratuity rules were designed to prevent just the sort of conduct at issue here, which threatens the integrity of the relationship between a brokerage firm and its institutional customer. That this customer -- a mutual fund manager -- was itself a fiduciary only aggravates the already egregious circumstances in this case." For more guidance regarding appropriate gifts, go to NASD Notice To Members 06-69
