From Caribbean News Now

PENSACOLA, USA — Securities lawyers have filed 140 arbitration claims on behalf of Puerto Rico investors against UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank. The complaints allege that UBS provided unsuitable investment recommendations to investors and recommended concentrated investments in Puerto Rico leveraged municipal bond funds with high risk holdings.

news2.jpg After analysing almost 200 Puerto Rican UBS investors’ portfolios, the Securities Department at Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Rafferty & Proctor has reportedly uncovered a consistent pattern: the UBS financial advisors consistently recommended high risk and illiquid Puerto Rican bonds in large concentrations that were underwritten by UBS.

“After reviewing these UBS portfolios,” said Peter Mougey, head of the Securities Department at Levin Papantonio, “it is like going to an ice cream parlour and all they sell is rocky road. Industry standards require firms like UBS to tailor the recommendations to each investor. Not every investor should be served rocky road no matter what their needs. From our investigation, UBS sold almost exclusively rocky road. These bonds were recommended both individually and packaged in closed-end funds.”

The recommendations from UBS financial advisors are said to have been unsuitable and caused significant but unwarranted losses.

“The losses,” according to Mougey, “are not from the softening of Puerto Rican bond prices, but the concentration of ridiculously high risk debt on leverage.”

UBS advised investors to concentrate investments across multiple, closed-end bond funds and individual bonds when it had a financial interest in selling them. While these bonds were high-risk, UBS repeatedly assured investors that the bonds and bond funds did not carry significant risk.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” said Mougey.

“Puerto Rican investors are victims of conflict-ridden advice to concentrate their life-savings in high-risk garbage,” said Mougey. “UBS put its bottom line ahead of hard working Puerto Ricans who have saved a lifetime to have a worry free retirement. UBS has now ruined that dream for many Puerto Ricans.”

Levin Papantonio is currently investigating more claims involving the practices in sales of Puerto Rico bonds. UBS allegedly underwrote billions of dollars of low-tier, high-risk bonds and made millions of dollars in fees, mark-ups, and commissions. Levin Papantonio intends to file more claims on behalf of UBS investors.

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-Arbitration-claims-filed-by-140-Puerto-Rico-investors-against-Swiss-bank-23394.html