Andrew Donahue, the Chief of Staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission gave a speech earlier this month to the National Society of Compliance Professionals National Conference. He was attempting to share his thoughts on the current and future challenges that compliance professionals in the financial services area face. He envisions that CCOs will need … Read more »
Category: Compliance Programs
The SEC’s Pay-to-Play Rule and California Labor Law
Keith Bishop chimed in on Campaign Contributions and the SEC in the context of California law: Pay-To-Play Meets The California Labor Code at the California Corporate & Securities Law blog. He point to California Labor Code: Section 1101. No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy: (a) Forbidding or preventing employees from … Read more »
Post Debate Campaign Contributions and the SEC
With the first of the presidential debates over, I thought it would be a good time to refresh myself on the SEC’s limits on political campaign donations by investment advisers. SEC Rule 206(4)-5 was put in place to limit political influence on government pension plan investment choices. Under the rule: 1. All political campaign contributions should be … Read more »
The SEC Wants To Know If You Have An Outsourced CCO
Continuing this week on the changes to the Form ADV is a revision to Item 1.J that lists the chief compliance officer. The new Form ADV will require a registered investment adviser to disclose whether the firm’s CCO is compensated or employed by someone other than the adviser. That is, the SEC wants to know … Read more »
The SEC Wants To Know About Your Social Media
The Securities Exchange Commission published an update to Form ADV last week. I’m going to devote this week’s stories to some of the new requirements. Today, I’m looking at reporting of social media. Item 1.I of Part 1A of Form ADV currently requires registered investment advisers to list their websites. The SEC is casting a wider … Read more »
DLA Piper Takes a Look at Compliance
DLA Piper conducted its first compliance survey. I assume they reached out to some subset of the law firm’s clients seeking responses to the 34 questions. The answers came from not just the biggest companies. Although 38% of the companies had more than 5,000 employees, 20% had 100 or fewer. The companies were split 60/40 … Read more »
How Good Is Your Business Continuity and Transition Plan?
The Securities and Exchange Commission had indicated that it was going to tackle operational issues at investment advisers. It just released a proposed rule on business continuity and transition plans for registered investment advisers. The proposed rule would require SEC-registered investment advisers to have written business continuity and transition plans reasonably designed to address operational and other … Read more »
Compliance Lawyers and Legal Education
I had an interesting discussion on the possible role of law schools in helping train law students for jobs in the compliance field. Compliance does not require a law degree, but there seems to be a demand for compliance professionals with legal degrees in the mid and higher levels, particularly in highly regulated industries. Part … Read more »
Charging Fund Investors For In-House Legal Staff
In house lawyers fall into two sections of typical fund documents. On one had, fund documents usually state that the fund pays for legal expenses. Another section states that the general partner is responsible for employee expenses. Can you charge in-house legal staff as a fund expense? It depends. This was mentioned by Marc Wyatt, Deputy … Read more »
Private Equity Fund Managers and Broker Dealer Registration
The Securities and Exchange Commission has been poking around fees earned by private equity firms and found many to its distaste. One item the SEC has highlighted in the past was fees for acting as a broker dealer. I’ve been waiting to see if the SEC’s distaste would be enough to bring an enforcement action. … Read more »