Academic

I watched a good chunk of the Senate Goldman hearing today and was most interested to see what it might signal about financial reform.  Perhaps the most interesting signal came during Senator Collins (R-Me) questions during the first panel.  Her questions of the Goldman employees (as well as her opening statement) suggested she is considering whether SEC regulated broker-dealers ought to be subject to fiduciary duties for clients.  She contrasted investment advisers, which are subject to fiduciary duties and must therefore act in the best interests of clients, with broker dealers, which are not under such duties but do have more limited suitability requirements.  Her press statement also signals that she is interested in exploring fiduciary duties for broker dealers.

This may seem like a small detail, but if this idea from a senior Republican gains any traction it could dramatically change the way broker dealers and Wall Street firms do business.  The Goldman employees and former employees in the first panel took pains to characterize their roles as "market makers."  If fiduciary duties apply to broker dealers, that role might no longer be possible.  In fact many practices of broker dealers might have to be scuttled if they are forced to act in the best interests of a client.  It would be harder to act as a middleman between two clients or to invest on the other side of a client trade, if the broker dealer is held to a high standard of acting in each client's best interest.  Of course, "fiduciary duties" can mean different things in different contexts, as any business associations scholar can tell you.  But applying investment adviser-style fiduciary duties to broker dealers would be a sea change. 

Senator Collins' idea is not coming out of nowhere  Harmonizing investment adviser and broker dealer standards has been discussed at various junctures in the current reform debate.  For recent scholarship on the question of applying fiduciary duties to broker dealers, see Tamar Frankel, Arthur Laby, and Barbara Black.