Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
A major goal of a chief compliance officer at a registered investment adviser is to avoid have to face the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement staff. I’ve never spent much time reading its enforcement manual. It’s been updated. The last update was in 2017. There are updates to the Wells process when one becomes the…
Every parent wants their kid to succeed. If the kid wants to be a soccer superstar, you help your kid. Maybe a high-end sports camp will take your kid’s talent to the next level, so you send them to IMG Academy, one of the world’s leading sports training schools. (It even has a wikipedia page…
You are happily working at a public company with 100,000+ shares of stock. The stock price was in the dumps. It was close to $20 per share when you started and was now down to less than $0.50. Telehealth was having some rough patches. Selling teeth aligners, Smile Direct had served more than 2 million…
The Securities and Exchange Commission has embraced President Trump’s regulatory review and rollback Executive Order. It’s also addressing the Registered Fund Association’s concerns about proposed rules in 2024. First up the SEC is extending the compliance dates for the Investment Company Names Rule. The compliance dates for the Form N-PORT amendments adopted on September 20,…
Last week a legal case tacked a novel issue involving Artificial Intelligence. The defendant used Claude, Anthropic’s AI platform, to prepare reports that outlined his possible defense strategy. The defendant argued that the reports were subject to privilege. The government argued they were not and wanted them produced for discovery in the legal case. The…
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Rule 2210 generally prohibits the use of “predictions and projections” in written communications with the public. FINRA has proposed to dramatically curtail that prohibition. The proposed amendment to Rule 2110 tries to align with the Investment Advisor Marketing Rule’s treatment of “hypothetical performance.” The FINRA proposal is intentionally more narrow. It…
Goodwin Procter put together an informative summary of the California’s Fair Investment Practices by Venture Capital Companies. The compliance date is March 1, 2026 for venture capital fund sponsors. Unlike some of California’s other diversity initiatives, this law does not mandate operational changes. It requires disclosure on demographics of the founders of portfolio companies. The…
Here are some compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention. 2026 Crypto Crime Report by TRM LAbs FINRA Proposes Overhaul of Outside Activities Rules by Brynn Rail, Erin M. Fredrick Conklin, SaraAnn Bannister of Ropes & Gray The Proposal would consolidate the OBA and PST frameworks of Rules 3270 and 3280 into a single rule, new Rule…
We have a few examples of eavesdropping as a source of information for fraudulent insider trading. This was a heightened problem during the work-at-home era and interacting with family members. The insider trading case against a translator was a new take. The translator in question has a family that is a high level executive of…
The Securities and Exchange Commission labels language purporting to limit an adviser’s liability in an advisory agreement as a “hedge clause.” In 2019, the SEC published the Commission Interpretation Regarding Standard of Conduct for Investment Advisers summarizing its position on an advisor’s fiduciary obligations. That statement stated: “there are few (if any) circumstances in which…