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July 08, 2011 at 10:20 AM
Boston University Law Professor Tamar Frankel has written and taught on such topics as mutual funds, securitization, financial system regulation and corporate governance, but she is perhaps most revered for her teachings on, and knowledge of, fiduciary law, so much so that the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard recently named its annual fiduciary award after her.
A long-term member of the Boston University School of Law faculty, Frankel was a visiting scholar at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 1995-1997, and at the Brookings Institution in 1987. A native of Israel, Frankel served as an attorney in the legal department of the Israeli Air Force, an assistant attorney general for Israel’s Ministry of Justice and the legal advisor of the State of Israel Bonds Organization in Europe.
When asked by AdvisorOne what she believed her greatest career achievement has been over the past year, Frankel said in a July 7 email message that it has been her strides to push Congress to impose a fiduciary duty on broker-dealers, as Dodd-Frank gives the SEC the authority to do. However, imposing a fiduciary duty on brokers “is not a simple mission,” she says, and it “will take time and education to achieve.”
Frankel says that she believes simply providing disclosures and educating investors “may not be enough when [investors] deal with people who are far more experienced and knowledgeable” than they are. Advisors and brokers “who give investors advice in one form or another ought to be trustworthy to advise for the sole benefit of the investors,” she says. “When they say: ‘Trust me,’ they have to be trustworthy.”
