that is an unusual (and, without further details, seemingly unjustified) arbitration result: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/interactive-brokers-ordered-pay-1-184510479.html
I can understand how the trust fund kids would be pissed off but this doesn't seem like an IB problem whatsoever. It's an issue with the trustee and purely the trustee.
Unless IB authorized trading approvals that the trust or the trustee was not allowed to engage in. For example if the trust docs prohibit options trading IB would have some obligation in not approving options trading for the account.
At this rate, IB will be bankrupt from all the lawsuits. I suggest they move to a less lawsuit-happy jurisdiction like UK or Singapore.
The complainants' trustee made some bad trades which lowered their account from $800k to $75k. For that, they got $1.2M from the broker who simply processed the trades, in addition to an "undisclosed" amount from that trustee. Something's not right here.
Must be punitive awards as well. Broker has some liability to know your client and I bet in this case they didn't do their job. My guess is they prob approved options trading when the trust forbade it and for that they deserved to be punished.
I am thinking after he lost the first $150k I might get nervous and change trustees. Of course all information is not known, but this ruling is complete bullcrap if taken on face value.
So many in the financial industry are at all time highs and bankrupt/taken over for pennies within a month.
Did you actually know that Thomas Peterffy, a self-made man and the founder of IB, is one of the richest people on earth with a net wealth of 11 billion according to wikipedia?