Securities America Settles Medical Capital Holdings Case With Massachusetts For $5 Million Hot
The first $2.8 million payment to 63 aggrieved MA investors is due in the next few days. Another $2.2 million will follow.
What's remarkable here, as usual, is the scale of these accounts that almost brought down one of the biggest firms out there -- and did in fact destroy several smaller ones.
Securities America sold $700 million in bad debt instruments from Medical Capital Holdings, but apparently only 0.7% of that came from the small but wealthy state of Massachusetts.
And those Bay State citizens who bought into these investments only nibbled, buying maybe $80,000 apiece.
It's real money, but I have to wonder now how concentrated these holdings were. Are we talking about widows and orphans being sold Medical Capital debt as a core investment, or ultra-high-net-worth families getting a taste of something exotic?
Insiders I've talked to say Securities America did its due diligence on these instruments. So if these were ultra-wealthy clients -- in Massachusetts and throughout the country -- wouldn't having a small allocation go bad be part of the normal cost of participating in the market?
And if these were middle-market retirees, the issue isn't really due diligence so much as the suitability of cramming so much of an exotic Reg. D instrument into a retail portfolio.