The North American Securities Administrators Association has named Franklin Widmann, chief of New Jersey’s Securities Bureau, to a one-year term as NASAA president succeeding Ralph Lambiase, director of the Connecticut Division of Securities.

In a speech to delivered over the weekend to NASAA’s 87th annual conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., Widmann called upon regulators and the securities industry to continue to work together to restore market integrity. “We must focus our priorities to help investors regain confidence in our financial markets,” he said. “Together, we must honor our responsibilities to ensure that all investors are treated fairly.”

“We’re all in this together and we each have to live up to our own responsibilities,” Widmann said. To that end, Widmann asked the securities industry to “take every step possible” to strengthen its supervision efforts to ensure that employers comply with the law. “We will do our part to fulfill our responsibilities to do all that we can do as regulators to ensure that financial markets provide for economic growth and offer a level playing field for all investors.”

“To that end, I call on the securities industry to continue to work with us to restore the integrity of our financial markets. Specifically, the industry should take every possible step to strengthen its supervision, not by simply complying with the rules, but by actually making sure that their employees comply with the law and put their customers’ interests ahead of their own,” he said.

“When mutual funds, a bedrock investment for millions of middle-income investors, and analyst research, are suspect, investors no longer know where to turn or who to trust. And when investors take money out of the market and put it under their mattresses, or are tempted to invest in get-rich-quick-schemes to recoup their losses, all of us are harmed,” he warned.

Widmann said that brokers “must have a higher ethical responsibility than their own well being or that of their firm, so that all investors have confidence not only in the markets but also in the systems in place to protect their interests”. And, he said state and provincial securities regulators will continue to monitor firms and agents through the registration procedures, compliance reviews and enforcement actions “against those who would let their own self-interest take precedence over the public interest”.

As for NASAA, he cited its priorities as: training, investor education and enforcement. Widmann has served as the chairman of the NASAA Broker-Dealer Section Committee for five years. He was co-chair of the NASAA task force investigating and negotiating the global settlement of research analyst conflicts of interest and also served as a member of the NASAA CRD Steering committee.

Patricia Struck, Administrator of Wisconsin’s Division of Securities, will succeed Widmann as NASAA President in the fall of 2004.