Securities Lawyers Blog
Our firm is investigating potential securities claims against brokerage firms over sales practices related to the recommendations of oil & gas and commodities products such as exchange traded notes (ETNs), structured notes, private placements, master limited partnerships, leveraged ETFs, mutual funds, and individual stocks. Investors may have potential legal remedies due to unsuitable recommendations by their broker to invest in this speculative and volatile area. Targa Resources Partners (Ticker Symbol: NGLS) is a Master Limited Partnership (MLP). About 86% of the total MLP securities market, a $490 billion sector, can be attributed to energy and natural resource companies. Targa Resources Partners has declined about 81% in value over the last two years and is trading at less than $10 a share. According to its website, Targa Resources Partners is a growth-oriented provider of midstream services and one of the largest independent midstream energy companies operating in North America. The company owns, operates, acquires, and develops a diversified portfolio of midstream energy assets.
Our firm continues to file complaints on behalf of investors who have been overconcentrated in MLPs like Targa Resources Partners. Our clients tell us similar stories that their advisors hyped MLPs as high yielding investments without significant discussion of risk. In a recent Associated Press article, common stories of how investors are pitched by their financial advisors on oil and gas private placements were reported on. Often times these products are pitched as ways to ride the boom in U.S. oil and gas production and receive steady streams of income.
In the past year, investors have lost $20 billion in publicly traded in master limited partnerships, publicly traded oil funds. This amounts to an astonishing $8 of every $10 they had invested, according to a report prepared for The Associated Press article. The research does not include losses from $37 billion of bonds sold by the partnerships in the five years since 2010 or losses from private placement partnerships. However, banks like Citigroup, Barclays, and Wells Fargo made an estimated $1.1 billion in fees for selling these products to investors.
Brokers that have recommended MLPs to investors may have made unsuitable recommendations based upon the yields of these investments rather than the risk to principal. Over the past year MLPs have been hammered due to weaknesses in oil and gas and commodities markets.
Before recommending investments in oil and gas and commodities related investments, brokers and advisors must ensure that the investment is appropriate for the investor and conduct due diligence on the company in order to understand the risks and prospects of the company. Oil and gas and commodities related investments have been recommended by brokers under the assumption that commodities prices would continue to go up. However, brokers who sell oil and gas and commodities products are obligated to understand the risks of these investments and convey them to clients.
Our firm is investigating potential securities claims against brokerage firms over sales practices related to the recommendations of oil & gas and commodities products. Investors who have suffered losses may be able recover their losses through securities arbitration. Our consultations are free of charge and the firm is only compensated if you recover.