Actually its not 10k i put up but more like 35K............and i got swindled, b/c Andover originally didnt have that rule, but one day when i was trading in the office, a secretary girl came running over to us during trading hours..and said in her sweet cunning little voice...just sign these and your contract agreement will roll over to ASSENT from ANdover....and little did we know that in the new agreement they had added the clause that your money is locked up for a year. They strategically got us to sign the new agreement during trading hours so we would be caught of guard and not have proper time to review what were signing and they sent a woman to trick us.....
This lawyer is currently being quiet as I watch this very hot topic get rolling. I would love to put in my two cents but will not as I am witness and a concerned party. However, this could be so serious I expect it to get resolved asap.
I know what you mean about the office girl handing over new paper work. On top of that it seemed I was signing a new batch of paper every 2 days. Sungard must have a whole office dedicated to Andover prop paperwork stacked to the ceiling. Although this clause was in the paperwork, it was definitely not brought to traders attention of the change which seems very shady. The office people are telling you one thing while the paper work says something else.
something with the shunting off of the Andover traders from the Sungard takeover caused their net capitalization to be at risk. Or, Sungard no longer wants the exposure and risk of so many traders as thier customer that they are now requiring higher margin for clearance services. Whatever is going on, clearly there's a problem, based on this thread and other sidebar conversations, clearly there's a problem with accurate dissemination of facts, perception and values. not good....
What Dattrader says above is probably true (they do hold hold the Prop money for Net capital rules). Interesting post, where he says "Assent does not hold..." and the his first sentence is "Assent does hold ....for prop accounts"...(I'm not trying to make a hassle here, just thought it was funny. Perhaps you could do what one of our people did, transfer all the money to a retail account, and then take it out. Assent is a lot different than the old Andover model, and I mean that in a good way. I'm sure if you follow the rules, that Sungard has enough $$$ to give you your money back. Don
Sungard is a firm which did not pass our business partner requirements and thus is not allowed to do business with our firm. This should not be construed as a negative or a positive, just something peculiar to our firm. Sungard has done very well in the past and has been and is in some great businesses. IMHO if you want to do business with any company then just be sure that you thoroughly check them out to ensure that they are a good match for you or your company with respect to an ongoing business relationship. Its better to get the match right than go into a mismatched relationship .....
No offense, but as i have stated before, don;t hold your breath with legal action...the regulators don;t really get in a tizzy over this because for the most part, many of these complaints are from individuals trying to circumvent the PDT rules they enacted....so they are not going to drop every thing to help you...and although you are lawyer, you have to probably go to arbitration with your claim ....that only takes about 1.5 -2 years...Im not saying your wrong, im just saying that if you put 10k into a retail account and couldn't;t get the $$ back, they would take off like a bat out of hell after them...but if you put it into one of these LLC's...they feel you are trying to beat their rules and they go at a snails pace...good luck
Sorry Automated, I'm not here to defend Assent, but if you signed the deal, you signed the deal. Don't bitch about it afterwards. It is a lesson for all. You MUST READ YOUR CONTRACTS! I don't care if it was Pam Anderson telling you to sign the deal, you tell her "I'm busy right now, I'll sign it after I read it"!