"Naming and Shaming" - from the VancouverSun.com

"Naming and shaming" should discourage most people from wrongdoing, although those without shame will not be deterred. SIPA attempted the "naming and shaming" game a decade ago by having a public webpage "Brokers Hall of Shame" on our website. It was popular with Canadian investors but not so popular with the industry. It posted only information available to the public and published by the regulators or the national news media. Nevertheless, we soon received complaints from the industry ranging from telephone calls to threatened lawsuits.

One broker called to say he admitted he had been disciplined for breaching the rules, but his infraction was minor compareed with those of many others on the list and he did not like being listed with them! I suppose we could have awarded asterisks ranging from 1 to 100. He would have rated about 7.

Telephone complaints from industry were soon followed by threatened lawsuits from lawyers representing clients whose name appeared on our lists. One or two was not a problem: we simply removed the name of the perpetrator as we had lots of other names to show the prevasive wrongdoing in the investment industry. By the time the third threat arrived the British Columbia Securities Commission had followed suit by providing an alphabetical list of persons disciplined. Mission accomplished ... or so we thought. The other provinces failed to follow suit. So we continued asking for this from all the regulators.

One of our great pleasures earlier this year was to read that the broker who had threatened the first lawsuit has once again been disciplined and had previously been released from the major brokerage they were with when first disciplined. As they say "Leopards don't change their spots." Seems also to be true of financial predators.

Earlier this year this year the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) announced an alphabetical list of disciplined persons. Mission accomplished again ... or so we thought. Upon closer examination the reality is that the list includes only those persons disciplined by the provincial securities regulators and not those persons disciplined by the Self Regulatory Organizations (SROs), the Investent Dealers Association of Canada and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association. The CSAs have delegated investor protection to the SROs so if any registered representative has been disciplined for cheating investors you will not likely find them on the CSA list.

It's all part of the investor protection illusion created by industry/regulators.