Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
Since 1972, the Securities and Exchange Commission has generally allowed companies and individuals to settle civil enforcement investigations without admitting to the SEC’s allegations, provided that the settling party also does not deny them. See 17 CFR 202.5(e) . “[I]t is important to avoid creating, or permitting to be created, an impression that a decree…
As private fund compliance officers shake off the work of the most recent Form PF, I decided to finally take a look at what the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are thinking about changing to Form PF. On April 20, the SEC and CFTC proposed amendments to Form PF and its…
Compute power is all the rage with AI companies demanding more and more to run their extensive systems. How about investing directly in the chipsets? You could just buy shares in Nvidia. Aaron Verdugo and his wholly owned entities, Verdugo Enterprizes, LLC dba BDaaSWorx and BDaaS Inc. had another way for investors to get in…
Ugh. Prosecutors filed charges against 30 people who allegedly participated in an insider trading scheme that involved several major corporate law firms. The defendants include corporate attorneys, who allegedly exploited confidential information from nearly 30 merger and acquisition deals. Charges were filed by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. At the…
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a proposed rule and form amendments that would give public companies the option of filing semiannual reports instead of quarterly reports to meet their reporting obligations under the federal securities laws. For those in the private space, that generates a yawn. Private companies are likely to keep reporting quarterly…
Early this year when the US invaded Venezuela and captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro there was a series of well timed trades on the Polymarket prediction market. “Predictios” purchases of $32,000 were placed from December 27 to January 2, just before the US military effort. Was it insider trading? No. Polymarket trades are not securities….
The prediction market platforms, Kalshi and Polymarkets have exploded this year. In some cases, for bad reasons: Federal prosecutors are exploring whether prediction market bets trip insider trading laws. The markets are not supposed to be taking predictions on the movements of securities. That would make them a derivative of a security and subject to…
Would you invest in a company that beat the S&P 500 with 19% returns over the last five years? Sounds interesting, sure… But what if the chart of performance looked like this: That is a really straight line. Just one little flat period in December 2022. No, thank you. That’s a fraud. I saw this…
It caught my by surprise that the Securities and Exchange Commission brought a case against a crypto-crap company this week. After the SEC published its “clarification” on the application of federal securities laws to crypto assets I thought we wouldn’t see a crypto case for a long time. I guess the SEC found the actions…
The other half of the Securities and Exchange Commission budget request for 2027 is a report on its performance in fiscal year 2025. How did the SEC perform in enforcement actions? The SEC was off its game. The 85% metric was the lowest in years. I believe this number might dip some more with the…