Tag: Fiduciary duty

Fiduciary Duty and Investment Brokers (via Pilant’s Business Ethics Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

A re-post of one of my essays from last year.

James Pilant

Fiduciary Duty and Investment Brokers “When I was growing up in the shadow of the Edgar Thomson Works of U.S. Steel a half century ago, it was easy to tell the bookies from the bankers — and it wasn’t just by the clothes they were wearing. If you wanted to place a bet, you went to a bookie; if you wanted to invest, you went to a banker or stock broker.” This is the lead paragraph from Tom Michlovic’s opinion piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It’s a dead on call. The Wall Street … Read More

via Pilant’s Business Ethics Blog

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Espresso, WiFi, & Confidentiality with a Twist of Lemon (via Bow Tie Law’s Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Does an attorney violate client confidentiality by using public broadband? It appears so. There are clear implications for any profession in which confidentiality is a responsibility. Is this the first shot in a dispute about using public Internet access for professionals or all of us?

Maybe we should all be more aware of the risks to our own data?

Read this fascinating article on using the web and an attorney’s fiduciary duty.

James Pilant

Espresso, WiFi, & Confidentiality with a Twist of Lemon Many attorneys, as with a large contingent of the general public, do not possess much, if any, technological savvy. Although the Committee does not believe that attorneys must develop a mastery of the security features and deficiencies of each technology available, the duties of confidentiality and competence that attorneys owe to their clients do require a basic understanding of the electronic protections afforded by the technology they use in t … Read More

via Bow Tie Law’s Blog

Fiduciary Duty and Investment Brokers

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

Fiduciary Duty and Investment Brokers

“When I was growing up in the shadow of the Edgar Thomson Works of U.S. Steel a half century ago, it was easy to tell the bookies from the bankers — and it wasn’t just by the clothes they were wearing. If you wanted to place a bet, you went to a bookie; if you wanted to invest, you went to a banker or stock broker.”

This is the lead paragraph from Tom Michlovic’s opinion piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

It’s a dead on call. The Wall Street of the day feels no responsibility to the “knowledgeable investor.” The corner bookie has a greater moral responsibility to his client than our modern investment bankers.

Michlovic calls for the requirement of a fiduciary duty for all investment brokers. It would solve a lot of problems and I strongly agree.

But I am more concerned with how we got here and why we got here. At what point did investment advice become a buyer beware game? And how do members of what we would like to think is a advanced civilized Western culture find that abandoning honor, duty, and any semblance of integrity was the proper move?

The ethical abyss we are looking into did not take place in a few days. We are dealing with a cultural and institutional ethos that is places the future of the nation in jeopardy. Whether we exist as a cooperative society able to meet the challenges of history or simply dissolve into suicidal islands of self interest is a real question.

James Pilant

Here’s one commentator’s, Bob Monks, ideas on the subject. (I agree with him on this issue.)