Peter Arbogast Merrill Lynch is a name that may show up in your search for a financial advisor in the San Francisco area. He is the head of a financial consulting firm that preys on its clients by charging them exorbitant fees and imposing onerous terms and conditions on them.
This company is engaging in virtually every imaginable practice designed to exploit its customers, from exposing them to unnecessary danger to exploiting their money for improper purposes. The worst part is that you have to agree to these conditions without even reading them before becoming a client.
To assist you gauge his suitability as a financial counselor and form realistic expectations, I’ve highlighted the following clauses:
Who is Merrill Lynch’s, Peter Arbogast? Disputes with Customers and Their Past
San Francisco, California is home to financial advisor Peter Arbogast of Merrill Lynch. You may reach them at 415-955-3821 or visit them at 555 California St Ste 1800, San Francisco, CA 94104, USA.
Peter Arbogast isn’t the only well-known employee here; William D. Hobi, CFA Craig Alexander Scott Steiger, and Michael J. Breen also deserve recognition. They’re all managing directors here at the company.
They promise to provide individualized assistance to a limited clientele of individuals and households. They say they’ll give you one-on-one service and help you create a plan to reach your specific financial objectives.

Unsuitability Customer Complaint
As said by Peter Arbogast Merrill Lynch makes numerous assertions regarding his qualifications. However, he doesn’t mention that he and one of his clients disagreed in 2010. The customer claimed they were given unsuitable investment advice. This dispute was denied, as are the vast majority of disputes with financial advisers.
Be aware that dubious financial advisors will insist that you sign a long list of waivers before they’ll take you on as a client. They can engage in reckless conduct without fear of repercussions thanks to these waivers. Because of this, most consumers who try to sue their financial advisors end up with nothing.
Terms and Conditions by Peter Arbogast Contain Predatory Language
Commission-based Income
The fact that Peter earns a lot of money through commissions is a major red sign. Commission-based fiduciaries have a disincentive to focus on their client’s needs and objectives.
Your financial advisor should be making recommendations for assets based purely on how well they fit your needs. However, if your financial planner is paid in commissions, he or she will make investment recommendations that benefit the advisor rather than you.
As you might expect, it is quite difficult to have faith in an advisor’s advice when they are financially motivated to do so through commissions. You can obtain an indication of how trustworthy your financial advisor is by inquiring as to which investments result in commissions for them.
The fact that a fiduciary receives a commission on an investment is not usually disclosed. The major conflicts of interest that arise from commission-based income are:
Financial advice that amounts to “selling” rather than recommending
Peter Arbogast and his group will not merely suggest securities for you. To put it another way, they “sell” them. Peter works for Merrill Lynch, a large financial institution that offers a wide range of its products and those of other companies. Peter would be wasting his time if he recommended anything other than his company’s proprietary and connected products, on which he earns substantial fees.
This means that even if there are more suitable assets available on the market, his firm will likely recommend proprietary investments or linked investments instead. After all, advisors are in it for the money, and none of them would risk losing out on their compensation to help a customer.
In addition, Peter’s litigation record indicates that he doesn’t value client satisfaction above financial gain.
One major motivation for advisors to make inappropriate suggestions and misrepresent their clients is the desire to sell proprietary items. A financial advisor’s ability to recommend investments to his clients is limited by the commissions he stands to earn from those recommendations.
Investing in Suggested Stocks
On their website, Peter Arbogast and his team say that they offer individualized assistance to certain clients. That is to say, they specialize in handling very sizable portfolios.
Your portfolio is impressive on its own, but think of what could be accomplished if just one individual had access to ten more portfolios just like yours. That’s an awful lot of clout for one individual. The major problem with Peter Arbogast Merrill Lynch is not the scenario just described, but rather the abuse of power by the person in charge.
Peter and his company make a market in the investments they advise their clients to make. They can leverage your portfolio and the portfolios of all of their other clients to acquire the returns they want on specific assets by artificially influencing their performance.
Such advisors frequently engage in front-running, a practice in which they acquire or sell an investment before recommending it to their clients.
Other advisors besides Peter engage in such dishonest practices. Scot Benefiel Merrill Lynch is another advisor who takes a similar approach. You should exercise extreme caution around such trusted advisors and stay far away from them.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that Merrill Lynch is a dishonest financial counselor. Several of his investors have filed complaints against him, and he has a history of client disputes.
Working with such a consultant would be extremely risky. You should explore elsewhere for assistance because working with this counsel could put you in a bad position.
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