By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) – Stifel Financial was ordered by a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration panel to pay a family $132.5 million for misrepresenting the risk of complex structured notes, causing what their lawyer called “staggering” losses.
The three-member panel on Wednesday awarded $26.5 million in compensatory damages, $79.5 million in punitive damages and $26.5 million for legal fees to David Jannetti, of Miami Beach, Florida, and his children Sarah, Adam and Leah, from New York.
Stifel said on Thursday it will appeal, calling the Jannettis “a sophisticated family of experienced and aggressive investors” who understood the risks, helped choose the investments, monitored them closely and complained only after losing money.
The Jannettis asked a Miami federal judge to confirm the award, which was imposed against the Stifel, Nicolaus wealth management and investment banking unit.
A $132.5 million award equals 19% of the St. Louis-based parent’s profit in 2024.
In an interview, the Jannettis’ lawyer, Jeffrey Erez, said the case concerned so-called auto-callable contingent coupon notes.
He said the Stifel broker did not understand the risks of the notes, whose value was linked to the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF and stocks such as DocuSign, Dynatrace, Palantir Technologies and Twilio.
The Jannettis ended up losing “a staggering amount of money” – about $60 million over three years, the vast majority of what they invested – after Stifel overconcentrated their money in the notes, Erez said.
“We’re extremely pleased” with the award, Erez said. “This is a strong message to Stifel and other broker-dealers that if you don’t enforce industry and compliance rules, there will be accountability.”
Stifel ended 2024 with 2,229 financial advisers and $501 billion of assets under management.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Matthew Lewis)
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