Career
Madoff was chairman of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC from its startup in 1960 until his arrest on December 11, 2008.
The firm started as a penny stock trader with $5,000 ($39,000 today) that Madoff earned from working as a lifeguard and sprinkler installer. He further secured a loan of $50,000 from his father-in-law which he also used to set up Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. His business grew with the assistance of his father-in-law, accountant Saul Alpern, who referred a circle of friends and their families. Initially, the firm made markets (quoted bid and ask prices) via the National Quotation Bureau's Pink Sheets. In order to compete with firms that were members of the New York Stock Exchange trading on the stock exchange's floor, his firm began using innovative computer information technology to disseminate its quotes. After a trial run, the technology that the firm helped develop became the NASDAQ.
The firm functioned as a third-market provider, bypassing exchange specialist firms by directly executing orders over the counter from retail brokers. At one point, Madoff Securities was the largest market maker at the NASDAQ, and in 2008 was the sixth-largest market maker on Wall Street. The firm also had an investment management and advisory division, which it did not publicize, that was the focus of the fraud investigation.
Madoff was "the first prominent practitioner" of payment for order flow, in which a dealer pays a broker for the right to execute a customer's order. This has been called a "legal kickback." Some academics have questioned the ethics of these payments. Madoff has argued that these payments did not alter the price that the customer received. He viewed the payments as a normal business practice:
If your girlfriend goes to buy stockings at a supermarket, the racks that display those stockings are usually paid for by the company that manufactured the stockings. Order flow is an issue that attracted a lot of attention but is grossly overrated.
Madoff was active in the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), a self-regulatory securities industry organization and has served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors and on the Board of Governors of the NASD.
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