Business Commons^™

Do I Have A Bridge For You: Fiduciary Duties And Investment Advice, Francis J. Facciolo

Faculty Publications

The debate about financial advice in the United States has taken a wrong turn. Instead of focusing on particular practices and the potential that these practices raise for conflicts of interest between advisers and their clients, the debate has focused recently on whether brokers, advisers to municipal and state issuers, and advisers to employee benefit plans regulated by ERISA should be held to a fiduciary duty standard. A fiduciary standard implies, in the words of Justice Cardozo, that “[a] trustee is held to something stricter that the morals of the market place. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an …