Final answer:
Brokers must uphold duties of fairness, loyalty, confidentiality, and obedience to their customers, aligning with moral principles such as fidelity and non-maleficence. These duties ensure equitable dealings, prioritize the client's interests, protect private information, and comply with lawful instructions.
Step-by-step explanation:
A broker owes several duties to a customer, which generally include fairness, loyalty, confidentiality, and obedience as part of their professional responsibilities. These duties align with some of the prima facie duties outlined by philosopher W.D. Ross, who advocated for moral commitments such as fidelity, reparation, gratitude, promoting aggregate good, and non-maleficence. In the context of brokerage, fairness involves equitable dealing and providing all the relevant information for informed decisions. Loyalty means putting the client's interests ahead of one's own, avoiding conflicts of interest, and seeking the best terms. Confidentiality is safeguarding the customer's private information, while obedience requires acting according to the customer's lawful instructions.
The oversight of these standards within the sale of securities is typically enforced by governmental regulatory bodies to ensure these ethical and professional obligations are met.