Category: Compliance Bricks and Mortar

These are some of the compliance related stories that recently caught my attention.

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U.S. Offers Rare Account of Why It Didn’t Pursue Bribery Charges by Samuel Rubenfeld in WSJ.com’s Risk & Compliance Journal

As the Securities and Exchange Commission announced it reached non-prosecution agreements in two unrelated foreign-bribery cases, the U.S. Justice Department took the rare step of releasing letters sent to the companies explaining why it decided to close the cases without filing charges.

The companies — Cambridge, Mass.-based internet-services provider Akamai Technologies and Providence, R.I.-based home-security and thermostat systems-maker Nortek — both agreed to forfeit ill-gotten gains connected to bribes paid to Chinese officials by foreign subsidiaries, the SEC said. Both companies self-reported the misconduct and they cooperated extensively with SEC probes, the SEC said. [More…]

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The Panama Papers and Shell Games, Part I by TOm FOx in the FCPA Compliance & Ethics Report

All of this is not simply about performing adequate due diligence so that you will know with whom you are doing business. Internal corporate investigators need to be aware of how shell corporations are set up to help detect fraud in their own organizations. In his piece Hubbs cited to a Department of Justice (DOJ) Press Release from then Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz around the resolution of the Hewlett-Packard (HP) FCPA resolution for the following, “Hewlett-Packard subsidiaries created a slush fund for bribe payments, set up an intricate web of shell companies and bank accounts to launder money, employed two sets of books to track bribe recipients, and used anonymous e-mail accounts and prepaid mobile telephones to arrange covert meetings to hand over bags of cash.” [More…]

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The First Form 1-Ks Are Filed! by Broc Romanek in TheCorporateCounsel.net

Hat tip to Bjorn Hall of Fundrise for letting me know that the Fundrise Real Estate Investment Trust, LLC (which they lovingly call the “Income eREIT”) filed the first-ever “Annual Report on Form 1-K” back in late April. Under Rule 257(b)(1) of Regulation A, Form 1-K is the annual report now required to be filed by Tier 2 companies that conducted their offerings under Regulation A+. The form is due within 120 calendar days of fiscal year covered by the report. Only Tier 2 companies are required to file a Form 1-K, one of trade-offs for not having to register with the states. Since Fundrise made their filing back in late April, there have been four other Form 1-Ks filed. [More…]

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Prostitutes, vacations and cash: The Navy officials ‘Fat Leonard’ took down by Craig Whitlock and Kevin Uhrmacher in The Washington Post

Leonard Glenn Francis, a Malaysian defense contractor, has pleaded guilty to bribing “scores” of Navy officials with cash bribes, prostitutes and other gifts – such as hotel stays, airfare and electronics – so they would feed him classified or inside information, which he used to defraud the Navy. The slowly unfolding investigation has exposed a staggering degree of corruption within the Navy. [More…]

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Pigeon at Castelvecchio, Verona by Andy Hay
CC BY

These are some of the compliance related stories that recently caught my attention.

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How the Feds Pulled Off the Biggest Insider-Trading Investigation in U.S. History by Patricia Hurtado & Michael Keller in Bloomberg

For more than seven years, the U.S. government has relentlessly prosecuted Wall Street traders who used inside information to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

Federal prosecutors in New York have racked up 91 convictions and collected almost $2 billion in fines. In the latest action on May 19, the government looked beyond Wall Street, accusing a legendary Las Vegas gambler of profiting from insider tips.

Here’s a by-the-numbers look at what happens when the Feds get serious about insider trading. [More…]

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The Most Powerful Man in Banking by Ryan Tracy and Emily Glazer in the Wall Street Journal

The most important person in the banking business isn’t a banker.

To most Wall Street executives, that title goes to Federal Reserve governor Daniel Tarullo, a brusque, white-haired former law professor who has come to personify Washington’s postcrisis influence over how banks do business.

Mr. Tarullo heads the Fed’s Committee on Bank Supervision. On paper—and in practice for most of the previous decades—the post isn’t a hugely powerful one. But the 63-year-old took office at the Fed in 2009 at a moment of broad public support for a more aggressive tack and has pressed that advantage ever since. [More…]

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The Wall Street Golden Boy Who Allegedly Fleeced His Friends and Family by William D. Cohan in Vanity Fair

Groomed at Groton, Princeton, and Harvard Law, financial expert Andrew Caspersen had the trust of everyone around him. So why, as prosecutors allege, would he start a fraudulent investment that targeted his Wall Street buddies and even his own mother? William D. Cohan delves into the case and the two tragedies—the death of Caspersen’s fiancé on 9/11 and his father’s suicide—that could provide an answer. [More…]

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Want to Work in Compliance – Learn How to Read a Balance Sheet by Tom Fox in the FCPA Compliance & Ethics Report

One of the most interesting tag lines I heard at Compliance Week 2016 was the following, if you want to work in my compliance department; you need to learn how to read a balance sheet. I thought that single line encapsulated the change in the compliance function over the past few years more than any other. Why, because it speaks to the change of compliance from being centered in the legal department, run by lawyers as a rules based program, to fully understanding that compliance is a business process that needs to centered in its own discipline. For if you cannot read a balance sheet you cannot bring a positive value to a business unit. [More…]

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If you enjoy Compliance Building, please support my Pan-Mass Challenge ride to fight cancer. You can read more and donate here: https://www2.pmc.org/egifts/DC0176

 

These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.

Up Close and Personal: Individual CCO Liability – Part I by Tom Fox in FCPA Compliance & Ethics

For when should a CCO have liability and should the regulators, whether in the financial services industry or in the broader anti-corruption world of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), have such individual liability? While the financial services world is regulated by both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) they have specific regulations requiring companies they regulate to have anti-money laundering (AML) compliance programs, the FCPA does not have any such requirements, either written directly into the statute or by interpretation therefrom. [More…]

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Wall Street Crime: 7 Years, 156 Cases and Few Convictions by Jean Eaglesham and Anupreeta Das in the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal examined 156 criminal and civil cases brought by the Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission against 10 of the largest Wall Street banks since 2009. In 81% of those cases, individual employees were neither identified nor charged. A total of 47 bank employees were charged in relation to the cases. One was a boardroom-level executive, the Journal’s analysis found. [More…]

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At Swinging Wall Street Parties, the Feds Are Now on the Prowl by Matt Robinson in Bloomberg

Like a skunk at a garden party, the SEC has been moving in on the fun-loving Wall Street conference circuit in hopes of getting a better handle on who’s up to no good in the world of finance. Officials scour attendee lists to spot the biggest players in advance and, properly wearing name tags, schmooze over drinks. Of course, they don’t accept any — that’s a no-no under SEC policy.
The SEC isn’t the only regulator trawling conferences for tips of suspicious conduct. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission was especially transparent about its intentions when it set up a booth in the middle of an industry gathering in March. Attendees at the opulent Boca Raton Resort & Club in Florida were greeted by smiling agency officials handing out metal whistles emblazoned with “CFTC” and mouse pads advertising their toll-free number.[More…]

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GE Compliance Finds Simpler is Better By BEN DIPIETRO in the Wall Street Journal

Employees are much more likely to invest the time to read and interact with materials if they are short and simple and clearly written. In connection with our code, we dramatically reduced the length. That not only promoted readability but it helped us digitize the code, so the online version has becomes very popular with our employees, and this has been assisted by its brevity and clear messages. Simplification has allowed us to apply greater focus to how employees interact with the program. [More…]

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The SEC, CCOs and Compliance Programs by T. Gorman in SEC Actions

Perhaps the final point is most important. The effective CCO must constantly be asking “What am I missing?” Stated differently, the system must, as the Guide notes, be constantly evaluated and updated. If that is done it can improve the functioning of the business. In addition, if an issue arises which comes to the attention of the SEC or another regulator, the organization will be able to follow the advise of Mr. Cohen – address the issue first by pointing to the effective compliance program of the organization; then discuss the question as an outlier rather than waiting to the remediation stage of the discussion to mention compliance as do many firms. That approach argues for a much more favorable outcome of the regulatory inquiry since compliance is a key question in any charging decision.[More…]

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It’s No Accident: Advocates Want to Speak of Car ‘Crashes’ Instead By Matt Richtel in the New York Times

Roadway fatalities are soaring at a rate not seen in 50 years, resulting from crashes, collisions and other incidents caused by drivers. Just don’t call them accidents anymore.
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In April, The A.P. announced a new policy. When negligence is claimed or proven in a crash, the new entry reads, reporters should “avoid accident, which can be read by some as a term exonerating the person responsible.”

[More…]

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If you enjoy Compliance Building, please support Pan-Mass Challenge ride to fight cancer. You can read more and donate here: https://www2.pmc.org/egifts/DC0176

These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.

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Compliance Goes to School by Geoffrey Parsons Miller

In my view there is no one “right” answer to the question of where compliance fits in a law school’s curriculum, just as there is no “one-size-fits-all” compliance program. A good model, however, is that core concepts can be taught in a first-year or second-year class on the administrative state (a number of law schools already include a required class on the administrative state as part of their core curricula). Compliance could then be offered as a second-year or third-year class. [More…]

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Check Your Use of “Check the Box” by Adam Turteltaub in SCCE’s Compliance Ethics Blog

But for all the talk about avoiding “check the box” compliance programs, I wonder how many of them there really are. I also wonder if we’re doing ourselves more harm than good by suggesting that the business world is full of “check the box” programs. Also, I’m not sure how to create a “check the box” program, given how complex some of the boxes are.[More…]

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SEC $3.5 Million Mystery Whistleblower Reward by Matt Kelly in Radical Compliance

We received another glimpse into the Securities and Exchange Commission’s thinking about whistleblowers on Friday—although as usual with SEC, details are sketchy and the primary thought is “we support whistleblowers as expansively as possible.” Compliance officers, take note.

The glimpse came in the form of a $3.5 million whistleblower reward issued on Friday. To whom? We don’t know. Against what firm, or for what type of misconduct? Unclear. Apparently, the media had already reported on potential misconduct at the company (yay media!) and the SEC had already opened an investigation. That led the whistleblower to provide his own information about said misconduct.

[More…]

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What’s up with Crowdfunding? So far, not much (but a fix may be coming) by Robert C. White Jr. in Securities Edge

The main problems with the new crowdfunding regulations are practical ones. First, the funding limit of $1 million each year is just too low for most companies. This is similar to the problem that we saw with Regulation A for a long time – essentially no one used it because the limit was too low in relation to the costs (although the old Regulation A limit was $5 million, substantially higher than the current crowdfunding limit). Regulation A+ has fixed this problem for Regulation A offerings, but the low limit remains a huge challenge for crowdfunding offerings. This low limit problem is made worse by the costs associated with a crowdfunding offering, which will be substantial for a small company. Legal and accounting work will be required. Companies must also use a registered funding portal in connection with the offering, and this will add to the cost burden. Finally, companies cannot “test the waters” before beginning an offering to see if the offering is even viable for them. The combination of all of these factors creates significant practical roadblocks for crowdfunding that cannot be overcome without some adjustments (as discussed below). [More…]

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WHY YOUR COMPANY SHOULD HAVE ZERO TOLERANCE FOR ZERO TOLERANCE BY ROBERT ZAFFT

For corporate compliance purposes, however, “tolerance” does not mean a lack of standards or failure to impose consequences for failing to adhere to standards. Rather, “tolerance” needs to be understood in an engineering sense, meaning an essential part of businesses processes and cultures that are dedicated to continuous improvement. As these processes and cultures improve – as they become more transparent and consistent – the degree of “tolerance” will narrow. [a href=”http://corporatecomplianceinsights.com/company-zero-tolerance-zero-tolerance/”>More…]

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If you enjoy Compliance Building, please support Pan-Mass Challenge ride to fight cancer. Donate here: https://www2.pmc.org/egifts/DC0176

These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.

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Stop Faxing by David Smyth in Cady Bar the Door

The problem was the same as with all faxes: nobody wants them. They want emails instead. So when the firm set up an electronic faxing service, they added an extra step in the communication chain, and routed the faxes to email addresses. While they should have sent those faxes to email addresses with the firm’s domain name, thousands went to personal email addresses instead. Those personal email addresses were outside the firm’s communication management system, and the data in the faxes was unprotected. [More…]

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Recent Criticisms of the SEC: Fair or Unfair? by Jon Eisenberg and Shanda N. Hastings of K&L Gates

Over the last few years, the SEC has been criticized for (1) failing to “consistently and aggressively enforce the securities laws and protect investors and the public,” (2) obtaining sanctions that amount to only a slap on the wrist against major financial institutions, (3) settling rather than taking big banks to trial, 4) failing to name individuals in enforcement actions, (5) failing to require that companies admit guilt, (6) granting waivers from the collateral consequences of enforcement actions, and, most recently, (7) failing to prevent a prominent hedge-fund manager from getting back into the hedge-fund business. [More…]

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Yates Assesses Effects of ‘Yates Memo’ by Samuel Rubenfeld in the WSJ.com’s Risk & Compliance Journal

Ms. Yates said Tuesday that despite predictions that companies would no longer cooperate, they’re now making “real and tangible efforts” to comply with U.S. requirements. They’re even providing troves of documents, called “Yates Binders,” that contain the relevant emails of individuals being questioned by the government, she said. Ms. Yates also said the new approach is causing positive change within companies, where she said compliance officers are helping steer employees toward best practices and higher standards.

“That’s exactly what we had hoped for. After all, it is much better to deter bad conduct from happening in the first place than to have to punish it after the fact,” said Ms. Yates, according to her prepared remarks. [More…]

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Measuring Culture by Erica Salmon-Byrne This post originally appeared on Ethisphere Insights

Measuring culture is a topic many companies struggle with – or have delegated to HR to handle through an engagement survey. It should be noted that while engagement is a critical component of culture, it isn’t a synonym – a good engagement survey is no substitute for a culture survey, because how someone feels about their benefits, their work environment and their colleagues is not a proxy for how likely they are to tell you when something’s gone wrong in the company. And at the end of the day, that’s your key metric – how likely are your employees to notice misconduct, and to tell you about it? [More…]

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America! The Cyclist Is Not Your Enemy by Jason Gay in the Wall Street Journal

But it’s exasperating to see how Bad Cyclist anecdotes receive equal treatment to voluminous statistical evidence that cycling makes communities better. It’s maddening to watch public meetings where bike lanes are raged over like they’re landing pads for Martian armies. The transportation data is incontrovertible: Streets that accommodate for cycling get safer. Fewer people get hurt. Fewer people get killed. People on bikes and people walking on the street. Everybody. Even people in automobiles. [More…]

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I’m back from vacation and have a big stack of compliance-related stories to read. These are some of them.

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Why Haven’t Bankers Been Punished? Just Read These Insider SEC Emails by Jesse Eisinger in Pro Publica

James Kidney, a longtime SEC lawyer, was assigned to take the completed investigation and bring the case to trial. Right away, something seemed amiss. He thought that the staff had assembled enough evidence to support charging individuals. At the very least, he felt, the agency should continue to investigate more senior executives at Goldman and John Paulson & Co., the hedge fund run by John Paulson that made about a billion dollars from the Abacus deal. In his view, the SEC staff was more worried about the effect the case would have on Wall Street executives, a fear that deepened when he read an email from Reid Muoio, the head of the SEC’s team looking into complex mortgage securities. Muoio, who had worked at the agency for years, told colleagues that he had seen the “devasting [sic] impact our little ol’ civil actions reap on real people more often than I care to remember. It is the least favorite part of the job. Most of our civil defendants are good people who have done one bad thing.” This attitude agitated Kidney, and he felt that it held his agency back from pursuing the people who made the decisions that led to the financial collapse. [More…]

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Yes, But WHY Are There So Many Fewer Publicly Traded Companies? by Kevin LaCroix in the D&O Diary

This often-overlooked observation is important, but it doesn’t address the more fundamental question of why there are so many fewer publicly traded companies than there once were. A recent academic paper documents the decline in the number of publicly traded companies and suggests several possible reasons for the decline. I have my own thoughts, as well. As discussed further below, these decline in the number of listed companies has important implications for the economy generally and for the D&O insurance marketplace in particular. [More…]

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Private Offerings and Public Ends: Reconsidering the Regime for Classification of Investors Under the Securities Act of 1933 by Jonathan D. Glater in the CLS Blue Sky Blog

There are different ways to limit how much risk an investor takes on. One is to impose a fiduciary duty on a fund manager, for example, requiring that the level of risk be consistent with the goals of the future retiree. My article addresses another method: Restricting investment in securities more likely to be high-risk and, consequently, less certain to produce the return needed to achieve the goal of financially secure retirement. [More…]

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Adviser official to pay $650K for soft-dollar manipulation, misuse by Amy Leisinger, J.D. in Jim Hamilton’s World of Securities Regulation

When the soft-dollar balance fell too low to pay the fake invoices, the court stated, the individuals churned the stocks in the funds’ brokerage accounts to generate more, increasing the trade commissions paid by the funds. When they knew the funds would need to close due to poor performance, they continued to trade in the accounts to eliminate the deficit in the soft-dollar balance that Archer would have had to pay when it closed the soft-dollar accounts. The excessive trading was inconsistent with the funds’ stated investment strategy, the court noted. [More…]

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SEC warns of third party cybersecurity risks by Elizabeth Wu in PFM

Before using a third party vendor, firms should conduct significant amounts of due diligence on the vendor, warned Steven Levine, associate regional director, National Exam Program, Chicago Regional Office at the SEC at a compliance outreach event.
RT Jones is an example of the risks. The firm, a provider of investment advice for retirement plan participants, was a victim of a cyber-attack. The firm used a third-party hosted server containing client information for four years and failed to report it to the SEC, for which it was fined $75,000 in September 2015. [More…]

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SEC’s Ceresney says more cybersecurity cases ‘coming down the pike’ by Bruce Carton in Compliance Week

The SEC has begun to bring cybersecurity-related enforcement actions under Regulation S-P of the Securities Act of 1933, and Enforcement Director Andrew Ceresney stated this week that more such cases are now “coming down the pike.” [More…]

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These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.

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Am I a Good Compliance Officer? by Kristy Grant-Hart in SCCEs Compliance & Ethics Blog

I thought for a long time about a single criterion which could determine whether a person was good or bad at the job. I finally decided that the best way to determine whether a person is a good compliance officer is whether, over time, the business proactively comes to the compliance officer with problems or to ask for advice. The most successful compliance officers are those who gain the trust of the business and who become integral to its operations. [More…]

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The Morning Risk Report: Report Details ‘Right Way’ to Teach Ethics

The research involved showing the survey subjects a conflict of interest presented in four different ways: just presenting it and asking them what they thought; providing them a dictionary definition of what a conflict of interest is; giving them one example of a conflict and, finally, giving them two examples and asking them to compare them, said Mr. Loewenstein. In the first three instances, about 10% to 15% of the subjects were able to identify the conflict, whereas in the final instance the numbers jump to between 30% and 50%, he said. [More…]

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What Goes on a Compliance Dashboard? by Matt Kelly in Radical Compliance

The starting point should be to ask, what worries compliance officers and general counsels the most? That is easy enough to answer at a high level: you worry that risks the company has are metastasizing beyond your comfort zone. A dashboard should show you which risks may be doing that at any given time. [More…]

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The SEC’s Shift to Administrative Proceedings: An Empirical Assessment by Stephen J. Choi and Adam C. Pritchard in the CLS Blue Sky Blog

We show that the shift toward administrative proceedings has been accompanied by a substantial increase in the average civil penalty imposed on non-financial public companies named as defendants, both in court and in administrative proceedings. We also provide evidence that the complexity, and thus the cost, of cases the SEC brings in administrative proceedings increased after the enactment of Dodd Frank. Specifically, we show an increase in two proxies for the complexity of the nature of the alleged underlying securities law violation, the disgorgement amount, a measure of the underlying profits from the alleged securities law violation, and the number of years during which the violation allegedly took place. Violations that involve greater profits are likely to be longer running and involve more transactions and participants. [More…]

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Managing Gatekeeper Anxiety by Michael W. Peregrine in the D&O Diary

Corporate board members are encountering a new, perhaps unexpected and likely distracting oversight responsibility: managing the personal liability concerns of corporate “gatekeepers”. This new responsibility is the byproduct of three particular, intersecting developments: the Department of Justice enforcement focus on individual accountability; regulatory scrutiny of the role of corporate “gatekeepers” in connection with financial reporting and corporate compliance; and ongoing litigation addressing access to traditional individual defenses. The corporate board will want to pursue pro-active responses to these concerns in order to assure the continued engagement of its valued “gatekeepers”. [More…]

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These are some of the compliance related stories that recently caught my attention.

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Valeant may get bank waivers but risks default with SEC and NYSE by Francine McKenna in MarketWatch

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. may get a waiver from its bank lenders to file its Form 10-K annual report and first-quarter report later than required. But that doesn’t solve the problem of who will sign off on those reports and whether they will be ready in time to meet its reporting obligations to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York Stock Exchange. [More…]

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Why Compliance Matters: Credit Suisse Edition by Matt Kelly in Radical Compliance

The real news for compliance professionals—or anyone else working in finance who wonders why compliance is supposedly so important—is the outburst Credit Suisse’s new CEO Tidjane Thiam delivered while disclosing those 2,000 job cuts. The cuts, plus a $346 million write-down in business the bank took this quarter, were required because of sloppy risk management and compliance. [More…]

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LONDON ‘KLEPTOCRACY TOUR’ FEATURES OLIGARCHS’ MANSIONS (WITH VIDEO) by Richard L. Cassin in the FCPA Blog

How do the wealthiest citizens of post-Soviet countries keep their money safe? For some, it’s simple: just buy a palatial home in London. To show the public how it’s done, anti-corruption campaigners took journalists on a “Kleptocracy Tour” of London, showing them residences owned by foreign oligarchs. [More…]

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Court Won’t Hear Dispute Over Constitutionality of SEC’s Administrative Law Judges by Rodney F. Tonkovic, J.D. in Jim Hamilton’s World of Securities Regulation

The Supreme Court has denied certiorari in three securities-related cases. The court declined to hear Laurie Bebo’s argument that the Seventh Circuit misapplied the high court’s jurisdictional test in ruling she could not challenge the constitutionality of the SEC’s administrative law judges in a federal district court. The second petition denied today was brought by an adviser seeking review of an SEC administrative law judge’s finding of liability for market manipulation. The Court also let stand a Fifth Circuit decision finding that the extender provision of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) preempted the statute of repose in the Texas Securities Act. [More…]

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Can Securities Regulation Solve Social Problems? by Hans Christensen, Eric Floyd, Lisa Liu and Mark Maffett in the CLS Blue Sky Blog

Regulators seem to think so. In the Dodd-Frank Act, policymakers made an unprecedented move towards using securities regulation to address issues unrelated to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) core mission of protecting investors and maintaining the fair and efficient functioning of financial markets. The Dodd-Frank Act requires financial statement dissemination of information regarding purchases of war minerals from Congo and mine health and safety performance. The objectives of these policies are noble—more than ten million people have died in Africa’s Great War and every year hundreds of workers are injured or killed in U.S. mines. Yet, can such regulation affect wars or improve mine safety? Research by Hans B. Christensen, Mark Maffett, and Lisa Liu from the University of Chicago and Eric Floyd from Rice University suggests it can. [More…]

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RECOGNIZE A LOW TRUST ORGANIZATION, AND REAP THE REWARDS OF A HIGH TRUST CULTURE by Barbara Kimmel in the FCPA Blog

Not just Barclays but many organizations find themselves in trust traps because they hold on to the notion that trust and ethics are “soft skills.” So over time, trust and ethics in their organizations are overlooked or taken for granted, and eventually decline.

In fact, that’s the pattern of decline we can see across all major institutions, public and private, in every industry and segment.

To avoid falling into that pattern, leaders need to recognize the warning signs of a decline in low trust and ethics. Only by seeing the problem can they bring a solution. [More…]

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These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.

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Five Questions for Our SEC Commissioner Nominees by Matt Kelly in Radical Compliance

How would you strike the balance between investor access to information and companies’ ability to raise capital easily?

We have already seen reduced disclosure obligations for newly public companies thanks to the JOBS Act, and the SEC is mulling other ideas such as updating and expanding the definition of accredited investors who can participate in private offerings.[More..]

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How to Stay Sane as a CCO by Thomas Fox

Mindset No. 1: “Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Taken”

This quote comes from Oscar Wilde. Maslanka is worried that many lawyers look around and see someone smarter or better and they feel “Cue the scene from Wayne’s World – “I’m not worthy!” Except you are. For the CCO, I think this means there will always be someone else in your company who has more of something you might think you need to do your job well (or even better). [More…]

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Crime Scene: Who Stole $100 Million From Bangladesh’s Account at the New York Fed? by SYED ZAIN AL-MAHMOOD in the Wall Street Journal

In scenes that would be right at home in Hollywood, the unknown criminals sent 35 transfer requests through the Swift interbank messaging system, a Bangladesh Bank official and an official of the Ministry of Finance have said. Whoever made the requests had the necessary codes to authorize Swift transfers and put in the payment requests on a weekend, the officials said. [More…]

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Secondary Sales and An Investor Covenant You Don’t Want To Miss by Joe Wallin in the Startup Law Blog

Section 4(a)(7) is a new federal securities law that basically says, it’s OK for you to sell your investment in a private company, as long as you don’t generally advertise the securities for sale, sell to another accredited investor, and the company cooperates with certain information requirements. [More…]

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Investment Advisor or Investment Adviser? by Keith Paul Bishop in California Corporate & Securities Law blog

Even though the federal statute is named the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, persons regulated by that act often refer to themselves as “advisors” and not “advisers”. Which is spelling is correct? [More…]

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