Wall Street spent years preparing to comply with the Labor Department fiduciary rule. The government estimated that preparation would cost banks and investment advisers as much as $3 billion. An industry group said the number was closer to $5 billion.
Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch is among the financial companies that started moving toward fee-based advisory models in response to the emerging Labor Department rule and continued on that path even after Trump ordered his review.
“At the very least, from a PR standpoint, it would be difficult to go back to the old ways of doing business,” Brian Gardner, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc., told Bloomberg Businessweek. “It just looks bad.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.