This has been an existential question for a long time. How do you measure compliance success? How do you know if it’s working? Sean Griffith, director of the Corporate Law Center at Fordham University in New York casts a skeptical eye on compliance through the lens of corporate governance in a new law review article: Corporate … Read more »
Category: Compliance Programs
Alternative Funds and Valuations
It should come to no surprise that alternative funds have an extra level of scrutiny when it comes to valuations. RD Legal Capital is under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission according to a story in the Wall Street Journal. RD Legal is in litigation finance with a strategy to to buy stakes in … Read more »
Private Equity Real Estate Top 50 – 2016 Edition of Who is Registered
Private Equity Real Estate has released its ranking of the top 50 real estate private equity fund managers. As I have done in the past, I parsed the list to see which managers are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as investment advisers. Rank Firm Headquarters Registration 1 The Blackstone Group New York Registered … Read more »
Custody Failure Pinned On the Gatekeepers
I remember the SFX case because the CCO was charged for compliance failures. Now the auditors of SFX have been been charged for their failures. SFX Financial Advisory Management Enterprises is wholly-owned by Live Nation Entertainment and specializes in providing advisory and financial management services to current and former professional athletes. The SEC charged SFX’s … Read more »
Designated Lenders Counsel and Compliance
If you own a home, there was likely a lawyer sitting at the closing table. Who paid for the lawyer and who did the lawyer represent? You paid, but the lawyer worked for the bank. She or he was there to make sure the bank’s interests were protected. There was recent coverage of a similar … Read more »
Compliance and St. Patrick’s Day
My office is next door to Boston’s famous Irish pub, The Black Rose. It’s hard to ignore the celebrations, with patrons going in for a pint, while I’m going into my office. So I had to find a compliance angle. One of the miracles attributed to St. Patrick as part of his sainthood was driving … Read more »
Compliance Pie
Sometimes I’ve heard that the reward for a job is like winning a pie eating contest and finding out the prize is a pie. Is compliance like a pie eating contest? It seems to me that compliance only continues to get more complex and demanding. Companies will continue to do bad things. Legislators and regulators … Read more »
Adviser is Fined For Shortchanging Himself on Fees
Anyone in compliance and anyone running a fund knows that the Securities and Exchange Commission is laser-focused on fees being charged to investors. Marco Investment Management got it wrong and was subject to an order by the SEC. But, the firm actually short-changed itself. Marco’s advisory agreements with its clients called for a fee to … Read more »
Dodd Frank and Industry Consolidation
Enhancing regulations is meant to protect consumers. The side effect is often to protect the large incumbent firms and make it more difficult for smaller firms to thrive. This theory is proving true under Dodd-Frank. A study by Marshall Lux and Robert Greene on community banks found that since Dodd-Frank community banks have lost market … Read more »
Compliance Across Industries
One of the puzzling aspects of compliance is that it means vastly different things across industries. What compliance means to a bank is very different from what compliance means to a drilling company. I think the reasons are obvious: regulatory requirements. In a highly regulated industry, there will be a greater focus on complying the … Read more »