Stifel settles large $30 million criticism involving star dealer’s sale of structured merchandise.

Stifel Financial Corp. keeps paying large greenback quantities in settlement to shoppers who claimed they had been wronged by former star dealer, Chuck Roberts, and simply days in the past agreed to pay prospects who just lately sued the firm a shocking $30 million.

Roberts and his former brokerage agency, Stifel Nicolaus & Co. Inc., for years have been going through scrutiny because of sales of structured products and structured notes, refined however at occasions unstable investments for shoppers.

In complete, Stifel Nicolaus has paid or is on the hook for greater than a staggering $230 million in damages and settlements to former shoppers of Roberts. Roberts was barred in July 2025 from the securities trade by FINRA.

According to Roberts’ BrokerCheck report and work historical past, Stifel settled two claims this month involving the previous star dealer. Both claims had been settled on September 11.

One group of shoppers, who in December 2024 filed a lawsuit with FINRA Dispute Resolution Services and claimed breach of fiduciary obligation, negligence and different fees, obtained a settlement of $30 million, based on BrokerCheck.

In one other lawsuit filed two years in the past, shoppers alleged comparable fees to the lawsuit listed above and obtained a settlement of $2.35 million, based on BrokerCheck.

A spokesperson for Stifel didn’t return a cellphone name Wednesday to remark.

According to a tally by InvestmentNews of Roberts’ BrokerCheck report, Stifel has paid near $89.2 million in settlement cash to shoppers who sued the agency and one other $14.3 million to shoppers who received a 2024 arbitration case in opposition to the agency.

Stifel has gone to federal court docket to problem the FINRA arbitration panel’s resolution in March 2025 to award Roberts’ shoppers $132.5 million in damages in a big declare; this yr, a federal choose denied the agency’s movement to vacate that award.

The dimension of that FINRA award surprised the securities trade, and Stifel has been settling some consumer complaints ever since.

Roberts left Stifel in July 2025 and days later was barred from the securities trade. Roberts refused to look to testify to FINRA, leading to his being barred from the securities trade for failing to cooperate with the regulator. According to the FINRA order, he consented to FINRA’s findings with out admission or denial.

The consumer complaints, basically, stem from losses linked to Roberts’ structured-note technique, with prospects claiming the technique was not of their greatest curiosity or that Roberts had inaccurately described the merchandise.

The efficiency of structured notes is usually tied to an underlying asset, corresponding to a particular inventory or an index such because the S&P 500 inventory index. 

FINRA in May mentioned it was launching a proper evaluate of how broker-dealers supervise concentrated consumer positions in among the structured merchandise market’s most advanced devices.

The regulator mentioned it could look at agency practices associated to non-principal protected “worst-of” structured notes – a class that features merchandise the place payoffs are tied to the worst-performing asset in a gaggle of two or extra reference property.

FINRA mentioned it has recognized a number of situations through which representatives concentrated consumer property in merchandise carrying each an absence of principal safety and worst-of options, a mixture it described as presenting “notably advanced options.”