About Jeremy L. Bartell

Jeremy L. Bartell (vCard) is a financial services attorney with 22 years of experience, including 10 years with two major national law firms. He has extensive experience representing many of the nation's largest broker-dealers and investment advisers in FINRA arbitration, FINRA and SEC regulatory investigations, disciplinary actions, employment disputes and registration and disclosure matters. Jeremy currently focuses on representing individual financial advisors, including registered representives, investment adviser representatives, managers and other financial professionals in FINRA inquiries, investigations and disciplinary hearings, FINRA customer and industry arbitrations, employment disputes, Form U4 disclosures matters, FINRA eligibility hearings, and investigations and hearings before the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. 

Background and Education 

Jeremy is a veteran of the U.S. Army with service in Germany and in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War. He graduated with a B.S., summa cum laude, in Business Administration from the University of Colorado, and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Boston University School of Law, where he was a note editor on the Law Review. After law school, he clerked for Justice Raya Dreben of the Massachusetts Appeals Court. From 2001 to 2004, Jeremy was a litigation associate at Goodwin Procter LLP, defending financial institutions and corporations in a variety of complex commercial litigation. From 2004 to 2010, Jeremy was an associate and later Counsel in the Broker-Dealer Group at Bingham McCutchen LLP, where he focused on defending national broker-dealers, registered investment advisers, and individual financial professionals in Finra arbitration, and in SEC and Finra Investigations and disciplinary actions. He is admitted in the District of Columbia and Massachusetts. 

Finra and SEC Regulatory Inquiries, Investigations and Disciplinary Actions

Jeremy regularly represents financial advisors in Finra inquiries and investigations. He has also defended national broker-dealers in a number of state and federal regulatory investigations, regulatory sweeps, and administrative actions, including those by the SEC, FINRA, state securities regulators and state attorneys general. He has, for example, handled matters concerning:   

• Unsuitable investment recommendations;
• Unauthorized trading;
• Discretionary trading without written authorization;
• Failure to disclose or update Form U4;
• Alteration of client account documents; Forgery;
• Expense account padding; falsification;
• Expense reimbursement misconduct;
• Impersonation of clients, others;
• Loans, borrowing from customers;
• Mutual fund, or annuity, switching violations;
• Unit Investment Trusts - early rollovers;
• Unauthorized account opening;
• Exam cheating, irregularities; 
• Selling away of securities without firm approval;
• Unauthorized outside business activities;
• Undisclosed criminal charges; 
• Continuing Education (CE) violations;
• Complex retail structured products issued by broker-dealers;
• The sale and structuring of collateralized debt obligations;
• The sale and marketing of auction rate securities;
• Auction management and proprietary trading in auction rate securities;
• The 50-state settlement of auction rate securities investigations through NASAA;
• Broker-dealer sales contests;
• Unfair customer account fee structures;
• Brokerage cold-calling practices and state and federal do-not-call violations;
• Investor privacy policies and procedures

FINRA Customer Arbitration

Jeremy has substantial experience defending investor claims in FINRA arbitration. His experience ranges from investor suits following the dot-com crash through the collapse of the mortgage market and its continuing aftermath. He has, for example, defended claims concerning the collapse of the market for auction rate securities, the packaging and sale of collateralized debt obligations, the sale of mortgage-backed securities to government entities, and the sale of restricted investments to potentially unqualified purchasers. He also has experience defending against a wide variety of claims often found in customer arbitration, including:

FINRA Industry Arbitration

Jeremy also has substantial experience representing broker-dealers and financial advisors in FINRA industry arbitrations. These are typically employment disputes between financial advisors and broker-dealers. Jeremy has, for example, litigated matters involving: 

• Unpaid promissory notes / employee forgivable loans;
• Fraudulent misrepresentation in the recruitment of financial advisors from competitors;
• Selling away by registered representatives;
• Unauthorized outside business activities by registered representatives;
• Wrongful termination of employment or securities licenses;
• Defamation based upon reason for termination on FINRA Form U5;
• Claims for unpaid compensation by securities research analysts;
• Negligent administrative transfer of recruited broker’s accounts.   

Complex Business Litigation

Jeremy also has broad experience in complex commercial litigation, having represented corporations, trusts, hedge funds, broker-dealers, directors, officers and financial professionals in a wide array of matters. He has, for example, litigated preference actions against international currency traders; intervened on behalf of a major hedge fund to object to the settlement of a class action; defended CERCLA contribution claims concerning a Superfund site; pursued claims for contamination coverage against a major insurer; appealed an improper retirement account rollover to the IRS; defended a national bank against a fraudulent conveyance claim by a state superintendent; represented corporate directors suing a bank for wrongful deprivation of their stock options; defended a trust company against claims of breach of fiduciary duty over a loan secured by restricted Internet stock; and pursued pharmaceutical patent litigation on behalf of a generic drug manufacturer, among many others.