25 Years Later, RIA Executive Clears His Brokerage Record

It happened almost 25 years ago, but the head of an independent advisory firm rollup succeeded this week in expunging a $30,000 settlement with a customer over a stop-limit order from his regulatory record.

Michael H. Nessim, chief executive of Kingswood U.S. and Kingswood Acquisition Corp., convinced a Finra arbitrator on Tuesday that the 1996 settlement—a commission credit to a customer’s account made in Nessim’s rookie year as a broker at the erstwhile Josephthal & Co.—was based on a false claim or allegation.

Nessim followed the customer’s instruction to place a stop-loss order on his account, and executed it, but due to “market volatility/poor trading execution,” the account lost value during liquidation, the arbitrator wrote in an award document.

Nessim’s BrokerCheck record said the account was liquidated at $70,000, $30,000 below the loss-order trigger price of the client’s portfolio.

“In order to preserve the account relationship and at the direction of his branch manager, [Nessim] contributed an amount equal to the decline in value into the Customer’s account” from his commissions, Robert E. Anderson, the sole public arbitrator, wrote in the award document that Finra accepted on Wednesday.

Nessim, who spent the bulk of his career as an independent broker, did not respond to requests for comment as to why he underwent the time and expense of filing for expungement last September, almost a quarter of a century after the underlying event occurred.

He testified during the single expungement hearing, which was telephonic, that the disclosure has adversely affected his “business marketing efforts,” the arbitrator wrote.

The only other disclosure on his BrokerCheck record is a 2000 complaint for $215,000 from a customer who alleged recommendations that were “too speculative and resulted in losses.” Newbridge Securities, Nessim’s broker-dealer at the time, denied the complaint, according to the database.

The expungement award came two days after Kingswood elevated Nessim to CEO of its U.S. operations, formerly known as Chalice, which owns two RIAs and two broker-dealers and works with 160 independent contractor advisors overseeing $2.1 billion. He replaced brokerage veteran Derek Bruton in the role.

Nessim continues in the role of president of Kingswood U.S. and head of its Benchmark Investments unit.

Nessim first registered as a securities rep in 1995 with now-defunct New York City penny stock firm A.R. Baron & Co., shifted that same year to Josephthal, and subsequently worked for almost a decade at both J.P. Turner & Co., an Atlanta-based firm that closed its doors in 2015, and Newbridge Securities. He was also affiliated until last June with Cape Securities and its RIA unit, Cape Investment Advisory, according to BrokerCheck.