Steven Larson and Michael Standley owned Oakbridge Financial Services along with Kathy Winter. All three of them functioned as registered representatives of the broker-dealer as well. The three were also associated with a state registered investment adviser, Private Label Money Management (PPMM). Late last year Winter agreed to pay a small fine and submit to heightened supervision due to her alleged administrative failures as president of PPMM. She was also barred from operating as a supervisor for either a broker-dealer of RIA for two years. Not long before that, Winter had been suspended by FINRA for selling unregistered promissory notes that went sour.
This month her two former co-owners were barred for their failure to supervise Robert Boyer, II of the Heroic Life Assurance Company. Larson was also tagged for over-concentrating some of his clients’ portfolios with reverse convertible securities, also known as “recons.” Recons are: “…complex, structured products that contain a put option held by the issuer that triggers if the underlying equity falls below a certain barrier price and stays there at the end of the term. When the equity price triggers the put option, the investor gets a certain number of shares of the equity at the ‘strike price’. Whether or not the barrier price is breached, the investor gets income during the term of the Recon at an above market interest rate. The interest rate is a function of the volatility of the underlying equity. The higher the volatility and closer the barrier price to current price, the higher the interest rate. Recons are sold in $1,000 increments.”
All three orders can be reviewed here.