Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup (Smith Barney) & Wachovia

This is a class action brought by a group of individuals alleging that Defendants engaged in deceptive and misleading "cash sweep" programs, in breach of their fiduciary duties, whereby Defendants, acting in the role and guise of Plaintiffs' "Financial Advisors," caused billions of their clients' uninvested cash to be automatically swept – not into money market accounts or comparable savings accounts currently yielding 4%-5%, as was the previous practice and as any disinterested and unconflicted financial advisor would require – but into Defendants' owned and controlled bank accounts, so that defendants were able to use their clients' uninvested cash for their own profit, achieving yields of 8% and higher, while paying their clients as little as less than 1% (collectively, the "Cash Sweep Programs").

This class action is brought on behalf of clients of defendant firms who have had the uninvested cash held in their brokerage accounts at defendant firms automatically swept into low interest bearing bank accounts (paying as low as less than one percent interest) at defendants' controlled and affiliated banks.

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To find out more about this case, please contact us at shareholderrelations@spornlaw.com or 212-964-0046.

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