Crews & Associates, the Little Rock bond brokerage owned by First Security Corp. of Searcy, agreed last week to pay a $250,000 penalty to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.
The language of the Sept. 30 order is almost identical to that in an order that imposed a $400,000 penalty on Stephens Inc. of Little Rock back in June.
In fact, the SEC has reached almost identical settlements with dozens of bond underwriters in an enforcement sweep known as MCDC — Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation.
Neither Crews nor Stephens wanted to comment on the settlements. Like the other firms swept up in the SEC’s MCDC mania, they neither confirmed nor denied any wrongdoing. But both self-reported — as encouraged by the SEC — that in the past five years they might have served as underwriter for some municipal bond issues in which the continuing obligation to make disclosures to bondholders was not fulfilled to a T.
The MCDC initiative doesn’t end with the financial penalties, which have totaled more than $13 million with more to come. Every company has had to engage an “independent consultant” to review policies and procedures for compliance.
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