No man's land: The perils of advisers writing business 'on the side'

You're a client. You approach firm A, which is, according to its website and literature, an appointed representative of regulated network B. After advice, firm A commences an investment plan, which includes some vanilla funds and a couple of unregulated investments which, don't worry, are the ones that will really give you alpha. Something goes wrong, you complain, and it turns out the adviser had not written the business through the network, but on the side, via a little venture he or she has set up. Ah. What now? Historical cases - some very recent indeed - have seen problems emerge...