Firm: Alaska Wealth Advisors Name: Dave Valdez Location: Anchorage, AK Team Custodied Assets: $934 million Background: Anchorage native Dave Valdez immigrated to the United States with his family from the Philippines in 19tk. His mother worked for the State of Alaska and would save every dividend check from Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, an annual payment distributed to residents from the state’s oil revenues, to put him through college. Valdez earned an undergraduate finance degree from Seattle University and a master’s from the University of Alaska Anchorage. After working for Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade, and consulting for hedge funds and…

Three years ago, Facebook parent company Meta agreed to pay a whopping $725 million to settle a class action lawsuit accusing it of making users’ data available without their consent (Meta denied wrongdoing). Payments were finally scheduled to start hitting consumers’ wallets this month, but court filings from last week show that the portion of the funds slated to be sent through digital prepaid cards are now under intense legal scrutiny. Forbes estimates those digital payments would total $150 million. The controversy stems from secret rebates that Blackhawk Network, the fintech that issues the digital cards, agreed to make to…