There is a lot happening in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. (Yes, that appears to be the agreed upon name of the financial reform bill.) I’m most interested in its Title IV: Private Fund Investment Advisers Registration Act of 2010(.pdf). The act will remove the current exemption from SEC registration for … Read more »
Category: Compliance Programs
Compliance Bits and Pieces for June 25
Here are some recent stories that I found interesting: Officially our best-ever cease and desist from ThinkGeek But what makes this cease and desist so very, very special is that it’s for a fake product we launched for April Fool’s day. No Fund for States to Oversee Advisers? by Mark J. Astarita, Esq. on SECLaw.com … Read more »
Compliance and Humor
At the Compliance Week 2010 Conference I was surprised to discover that the improv comedy group, Second City, had dived into the world of compliance and ethics awareness. They debuted three of their awareness videos during the conference keynotes. They are now available on their Real Biz Shorts website: Cracking the Code Up-Setting a Good … Read more »
Getting Cleaned by Oil Spill Stock Scams
I doubt you have missed the news about the oil spill mess in the Gulf of Mexico. The scammers have clearly noticed and sense an opportunity to make a quick buck. Some companies may issue press releases, or send unsolicited faxes or spam emails that might include: Claims to have products or technologies that are … Read more »
Side-by-Side Comparison Chart of Financial Reform Bills
The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, passed by the House on December 11, 2009 is over 1300 pages long. The Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, passed by the Senate on May 20, 2010, is over 1600 pages long. You have lots of reading to figure out the differences between … Read more »
Compliance and the Desert Island
A compliance challenge is seeing below the surface. The big danger comes from what you don’t know that you don’t know. I thought this cartoon was right on target Image is from XKCD Read more »
The 2010 OCEG GRC Achievement Awards Presentation
The Open Compliance and Ethics Group will recognize the great strides that many organizations have made in improving and integrating their approaches to governance, risk management, and compliance. The winners were: Best Buy – Ethics blog for employees Capital One – GRC implementation Carnival Corporation – Integrated approach to GRC Management Direct TV- Embedding spreadsheet … Read more »
Full Text of the Dodd Bill
The Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 has been published in the form passed by the Senate last night. Full Text of S.3217 in PDF (its a big file, 1566 pages) Read more »
Cash, Ash or Crash – Nobody Rides for Free
Iceland has been a sources of trouble. In October of 2008 their banking system crashed after ill-advised over-expansion. Proportionally, Iceland’s financial meltdown made the US failure look quaint. The three biggest banks in Iceland, a country of only 310,000, made loans totaling over 850% of Iceland’s Gross Domestic Product. In April, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted … Read more »
Trust and Compliance
To some extent, compliance programs are about the opposite of trust. A compliance professional wants to check on the status of a person’s actions to make sure rules are not being broken. Theoretically, you wouldn’t need to check on the status if you trusted that the person would not break the rules. There are two … Read more »