Payment for Order Flow (PFOF) and Gamification: Your Questions Answered
Summer Enforcement Action Review; Raising Money in a Pandemic - Investment Management Roundtable Discussion
Investment Management and Private Funds Roundtable – June 2020
Videocast: Asset management regulation in 2020 videocast series – FinTech initiatives
Videocast: Asset management regulation in 2020 videocast series – Fiduciary investment advice: The patchwork emerges
Videocast: Asset management regulation in 2020 videocast series – SEC enforcement
Videocast: Asset management regulation in 2020 videocast series – Complying with new SEC rules for broker-dealers
Investment Management Roundtable Discussion – Regulatory and Enforcement Update
Regulation Best Interest Videocast Series: Establishing An Investment Platform Post-Regulation BI
Investment Management Update - Focus on Data Privacy and Cybersecurity
According to recent reports, two U.S. multinational financial technology companies have integrated Ethereum Name Service (ENS), a decentralized naming system built on the Ethereum blockchain, into their payment platforms....more
The IRS released a draft of a new tax form, Form 1099-DA, that brokers will use to report proceeds from certain digital asset transactions. The draft Form 1099-DA can be found on the IRS website and below. The effective date...more
KEY TAKEAWAYS - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved the first spot Bitcoin ETFs, also known as an exchange-traded product (ETP.) With the SEC now permitting spot Bitcoin ETFs, brokers must become...more
Promoting securities, cryptocurrency, and other investment opportunities is fraught with legal risks. Individuals who engage in promotional activities must ensure that they have a clear understanding of the federal laws and...more
Interactive Brokers LLC filed an action in the Southern District of New York seeking preliminary and permanent injunctions against an arbitration proceeding initiated by a group of non-signatories to an agreement between...more
The bane of every start-up company is the never-ending quest to raise capital for its operations. Newly (and not so new) formed companies seemingly would do anything to raise funds. Over the course of many decades, these...more
The issue of when a person may be considered a “broker” or “dealer” and subject to registration as such under the federal securities laws, as distinguished from so-called finders (and therefore not subject to the panoply of...more
On April 6, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) joined a multi-state settlement with a securities brokerage company stemming from an investigation spearheaded by state securities regulators...more
Even when surrounded by the ones we love, it is important to keep confidential information away from them. Others may not realize that they should not trade after overhearing interesting comments—or worse, they may try to...more
On July 27, 2022, FINRA filed a proposed rule change with the SEC that would “modernize” its supervision rule to make permanent pandemic-related temporary exemptions that allowed limited-scope work-from-home (“WFH”) for...more
BrokerCheck is the database through which FINRA publishes licensing, registration, and disciplinary history of brokerage industry firms and their personnel. BrokerCheck does not currently specify whether a particular firm is...more
Key Takeaways: ..After years of warning firms of the need for enhanced diligence in retaining or hiring brokers with a significant history of misconduct, FINRA has adopted new rules to address such brokers. ..As set...more
BROKER-DEALER - FINRA Seeks Comment Regarding Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives - The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is seeking comment on rules, operations and administrative processes that may...more
BROKER-DEALER - SEC Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee to Discuss Opportunities for Underrepresented Founders and Investors - On April 26, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that its Small...more
I get the fact that anyone silly enough to work for a broker-dealer knowingly chooses to live in a fishbowl. Thanks to BrokerCheck, you can very easily learn more about a registered representative than you can about, say, a...more
On Thursday, January 28, trading-app broker-dealer Robinhood – a self-styled disrupter democratizing trading – suspended its users’ ability to buy Gamestop stock or options (along with other stocks). After playing a...more
Through an investment bank (acting as broker), clients invested in Reverse Convertible Notes (RCNs). RCNs are a complex “structured financial product” that is sometimes championed as a high-yield, short-term investment...more
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has announced that it has adopted a rule to limit a registered person from being named a customer’s beneficiary, executor, or trustee or from holding a power of attorney or...more
This month’s coordinated U.S. multi-agency enforcement action against online broker Interactive Brokers (IBKR) signals authorities’ ongoing concerns about anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT)...more
Earlier this month, the SEC approved the first of several rule changes that FINRA has proposed for the process governing the expungement of customer complaints from a broker’s record. The approved rule change will make it...more
Brokers seeking to expunge customer complaints from their records can sleep a bit easier. Richard Berry, head of FINRA’s Office of Dispute Resolution (ODR), stated last week that FINRA intends to tweak some restrictions that...more
In the past week, I ran across two discrete instances in which FINRA acts as a secret gatekeeper of sorts, exercising its own subjective judgment, without anyone knowing what, exactly, it is doing or why, employing...more
On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “National Senior Investor Initiative Act of 2019” (H.R. 1876) (the “Act”), which directs the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) to establish a taskforce...more
This is the last in our series on the FINRA expungement process, and, unfortunately, the future looks grim. Not only has FINRA made it nearly impossible (in an obvious attempt to curry favor with the public investor bar),...more
This is our second blog on the vanishing FINRA expungement process. FINRA identifies specific grounds for expungement in FINRA Rule 2080. Rule 2080(b)(1) provided three specific grounds for expungement relief: (1) the...more