Commissioner: ‘Millionaires can fend for themselves’ by Mark Schoeff Jr. in Investment News
“This obsession with ‘protecting’ millionaires — potentially at the cost of hindering the wildly successful and critically important private markets — strains logic and reason,” said SEC member Daniel Gallagher Jr. “Millionaires can fend for themselves.”
S.E.C.’s Delay on Crowdfunding May Just Save It by Steven Davidoff Solomon in the NY Times.com’s DealBook
But the crowdfunding industry is eager for guidelines. And so it has started to go to the states to work around the S.E.C.’s inertia. Under the securities laws, an offering made in a state by company from that state is exempt from the S.E.C. rules on securities offerings. This was intentional when the Securities Act of 1933 was passed. The idea was that individual states should maintain jurisdiction of offerings limited to their borders because only their residents would be affected.
SEC Whistleblower program has historic year by Mary Jane Wilmoth in the Whistleblower Protection Blog
On November 17, 2014, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of the Whistleblower released its 2014 Annual Report to Congress. According to the report, 2014 was a historic year for the SEC Whistleblower program in terms of both the number and dollar amount of whistleblower awards. The SEC issued whistleblower awards to more individuals in 2014 than in all previous years combined.
Opinion Release 14-02: Dis-Linking The Illegal Conduct Going Forward by Tom Fox
One of my favorite words in the context of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement is dis-link. I find it a useful adjective in explaining how certain conduct by a company must be separated from the winning of business. But it works on so many different levels when discussing the FCPA. Last week I thought about this concept of dis-linking when I read the second Opinion Release of 2014, that being 14-02. One of the clearest ways that the Department of Justice (DOJ) communicates is through the Opinion Release procedure. This procedure provides to the compliance practitioner solid and specific information about what steps a company needs to take in the pre-acquisition phase of due diligence. However, 14-02 directly answers many FCPA naysayers long incorrect claim about how companies step into FCPA liability through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity.
SEC: Sending Saudi Officials on ‘World Tour’ Was FCPA Violation by Bruce Carton in Compliance Week
In case there was any ambiguity that companies may not send foreign government officials on a “world tour” in order to secure business, the SEC made that clear yesterday. In an administrative proceeding filed yesterday, the SEC sanctioned two former employees in the Dubai office of U.S.-based FLIR Systems Inc. for violating the FCPA via such conduct.
Image of Kingston Brick Wall is by Nicholas Laughlin