Compliance Bricks and Mortar for January 30

I have finally dug myself out from the 2+ feet of snow that buried me this week. These compliance-related stories caught my eye in between snow shoveling sessions.

SEC Co-Chief of Division of Enforcement’s Asset Management Unit Identifies 2015 Exam Priorities for Hedge and Private Equity Funds in the National Law Review

On November 18, 2014, Julie M. Riewe, Co-Chief of the Division of Enforcement’s Asset Management Unit of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), spoke at a Practicing Law Institute seminar and identified 2015 SEC examination priorities for investment managers of private funds. Ms. Riewe identified three themes on which the SEC will focus in its examinations of hedge and private equity funds: (i) conflicts of interest, (ii) valuation and (iii) compliance and controls. She discussed how these thematic issues related to both hedge funds and private equity funds.

S.E.C. Faces Challenges Over the Constitutionality of Some of Its Court Proceedings by Peter J. Henning in NYTimes.com’s DealBook

It is probably not a stretch to say that the Securities and Exchange Commission likes to win every case that it decides to bring.

But a recent push by the agency to bring more cases before its administrative law judges rather than filing charges in federal district court is drawing increased attacks from defense lawyers claiming that the entire process is not just unfair, but also unconstitutional. Those criticisms could call into question the legality of the process used by a number of federal agencies that have in-house judges who decide whether laws were violated.

Welcome to COSO and the World of Internal Controls – Part I and Part II by Tom Fox in the FCPA Compliance and Ethics Blog

[T]here is one area of FCPA enforcement, which I think underwent a sea change in 2014 and has significant implications for the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) and compliance practitioner in 2015 and far beyond. That change will be in the enforcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the internal controls provisions of the FCPA. Last fall we saw three SEC enforcement actions, where there was no corresponding Department of Justice (DOJ) enforcement action yet there was a SEC enforcement action around either the lack or failure of internal controls. Those enforcement actions were Smith & Wesson, Layne Christensen and Bio-Rad.