July 25, 2018
The purpose of this letter is to provide the Securities and Exchange Commission with comments on the above referenced proposed rule change which was filed by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA) on July 13, 2018.
I am an attorney whose practice is exclusively devoted to the representation of individual and institutional investors in their disputes with the securities industry. Moreover, I am the current Chairman of FINRAs National Arbitration and Mediation Committee (NAMC) and a public member of the NAMC the former Chairman of FINRAs Discovery Task Force Committee (DTFC) a former member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) Modernization Task Force and a former President and current Director Emeritus of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association (PIABA).
It is my understanding that the proposed amendments would amend FINRA Rules 12214 and 13214 that govern the payments (referred to as honorarium) arbitrators receive for deciding contested requests to issue subpoenas and orders for production and appearance.
It is my opinion that the proposed amendments would be a fair, equitable and reasonable approach which would provide uniformity regarding when and how much arbitrators receive when deciding contested subpoenas and orders for production and appearance without a hearing session and would assist in insuring that the honoraria that arbitrators receive will reflect the time and effort they spend in deciding requests without a hearing session and fairly compensate them for this work..
At the same time, and of equal importance, is that the proposed amendment would reduce the honorarium for contested subpoena requests and removing the per-case cap on these payments which would provide consistency and fairness to the arbitrator payment rules by ensuring that the payment arbitrators receive for deciding these requests is commensurate with the time and effort spent on each motion.
Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to submit my comments on this rule filing.