What were they Thinking?

By Scott Ronalds

In his Streetwise blog yesterday, Globe and Mail journalist Andrew Willis highlighted an $8 million fine that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently imposed on Fidelity Investments.  The penalty was imposed to settle charges that Fidelity’s in-house traders accepted improper gifts from investment banks in exchange for directing business to the dealers.

Along with weekend trips on private jets, also included in the improper gifts were “broker-sponsored parties that included prostitutes and dwarf-tossing.”

For a firm as large as Fidelity, the actions of a few employees aren’t indicative of the firm as a whole.  But they certainly taint the firm’s and the industry’s reputation and raise the question, What were they thinking?