Article on Fiduciary Obligations of Financial Advisers

Robert H. Sitkoff (John L. Gray Professor of Law,Harvard University) recently published his article entitled The Fiduciary Obligations of Financial Advisors Under the Law of Agency, 2013.  The abstract available on SSRN is below: 

This paper considers how agency fiduciary law might be applied to a financial advisor with discretionary trading authority over a client’s account. It (i) surveys the agency problem to which the fiduciary obligation is directed; (ii) examines the legal context by considering how the fiduciary obligation undertakes to mitigate this roblem; and (iii) examines several potential applications of agency fiduciary law to financial advisors, including principal trades and the role of informed consent by the client, organizing the discussion under the great fiduciary  rubrics of loyalty and care. This paper was sponsored by Federated Investors, Inc.