Luis Miguel Cespedes, Exchange Act Rel. 62374 (June 24, 2010)
In February 2009 the Commission issued an opinion upholding a NYSE imposed 10 year bar based on unsuitable recommendations to fourteen customers.
Cespedes appealed to the D.C.Circuit. In that appeal the Commission noted that NYSE had not included in the record a transcript of a hearing session at NYSE in the original disciplinary action. The Commission requested that the case be remanded and it ordered that NYSE supplement the record with the missing transcript. NYSE produced the missing transcript.
The missing transcript included testimony from a character witness and a branch manager at the firm Cespedes was employed at at the time of the hearing who testified he was under heightened supervision.
Neither testified concerning the violative conduct that formed the basis for the findings of violations by the Commission. As a result the Commission affirmed its previous ruling upholding the NYSE sanctions.
Cespedes made several new arguments that he did not raise in his original appeal brief. The Commission rejected those claims, noting that by failing to make them in his initial appeal they were waived as the scope of the remand was only to consider the missing transcript.
