问题如下：
One of the discretionary accounts managed by Farnsworth is the Jones Corporation employee profit-sharing plan. Jones, the company president, recently asked Farnsworth to vote the shares in the profit-sharing plan in favor of the slate of directors nominated by Jones Corporation and against the directors sponsored by a dissident stockholder group. Farnsworth does not want to lose this account because he directs all the account’s trades to a brokerage firm that provides Farnsworth with useful information about tax-free investments. Although this information is not of value in managing the Jones Corporation account, it does help in managing several other accounts. The brokerage firm providing this information also offers the lowest commissions for trades and provides best execution. Farnsworth investigates the director issue, concludes that the management-nominated slate is better for the long-run performance of the company than the dissident group’s slate, and votes accordingly. Farnsworth:
选项：
A.Violated the Standards in voting the shares in the manner requested by Jones but not in directing trades to the brokerage firm.
B.Did not violate the Standards in voting the shares in the manner requested by Jones or in directing trades to the brokerage firm.
C.Violated the Standards in directing trades to the brokerage firm but not in voting the shares as requested by Jones.
解释：
B is correct.
This question relates to Standard III(A) –Loyalty, Prudence, and Care—specifically, a member’s or candidate’s responsibility for voting proxies and the use of client brokerage. According to the facts stated in the question, Farnsworth did not violate Standard III(A). Although the company president asked Farnsworth to vote the shares of the Jones Corporation profit-sharing plan a certain way, Farnsworth investigated the issue and concluded, independently, the best way to vote. Therefore, even though his decision coincided with the wishes of the company president, Farnsworth is not in violation of his responsibility to be loyal and to provide care to his clients. In this case, the participants and the beneficiaries of the profit-sharing plan are the clients, not the company’s management. Had Farnsworth not investigated the issue or had he yielded to the president’s wishes and voted for a slate of directors that he had determined was not in the best interest of the company, Farnsworth would have violated his responsibilities to the beneficiaries of the plan. In addition, because the brokerage firm provides the lowest commissions and best execution for securities transactions, Farnsworth has met his obligations to the client in using this brokerage firm. It does not matter that the brokerage firm also provides research information that is not useful for the account generating the commission because Farnsworth is not paying extra money of the client’s for that information.
提供这些信息的经纪公司也提供最低的交易佣金，并提供最佳的执行。所以选择这家经纪公司为客户服务是正确的。
但是请问额外提供的信息算不算softdollar呢，那些信息只对其他账户有用，对这个账户没有用。
还是说，如果最低佣金最佳执行就可以不考虑softdollar了？
