Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention. SEC’s Clayton Vows to Do More Exams with Less Funding in AdvisorHub SEC Chairman Jay Clayton testified to Congress on Tuesday morning that the agency will increase its examinations of investment advisers by 20% in the current fiscal year and nudge the numbers … Read more »
The firing of FBI Director has set off a firestorm. Obviously, there is a great deal of partisan tilt to the action. I wanted to focus on the lesson we can see from a compliance perspective. It is an example of the need for independence of compliance and investigations. President Trump fired someone who was … Read more »
It was four years ago that David Blass mentioned that the SEC was taking a closer look at broker-dealer requirements for private fund managers in two contexts: selling interests in the funds and earning fees from the fund for capital transactions. Part of the problem is that the safe-harbors for selling your fund interests is … Read more »
Air travel has gotten has gotten less pleasant over the years. The TSA makes it unpleasant to get to the plane. Then the plane themselves have reduced passenger room. United took the unpleasantness to an even lower level when it forcibly removed a passenger from an overbooked flight. “Flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville was … Read more »
The sculpture, titled “The Fearless Girl,” was made by Kristen Visbal and photographed by Federica Valabrega. State Street Global Advisors conspired in the middle of the night to drop a statue in Bowling Green Park of a girl facing off against the famous Wall Street Charging Bull. It’s part of a campaign by SSGA to … Read more »
John Glenn passed away at the end of 2016. He was a Senator, an astronaut, and distinguished pilot in the World War II and the Korean War. The picture below struck me as one of ultimate cool. Mr. Glenn had just finished orbiting the Earth on February 20, 1962. Doing so in a tin can … Read more »
Dodd-Frank made the Securities and Exchange Commission create a rule on the disclosure of payments by resource extraction issuers. The SEC finally got the rule out this fall. Now Congress is threatening to abolish the rule. Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act directed the Securities and Exchange Commission to “issue final rules that require each … Read more »
Last week, the Trump Organization kicked off its compliance program by making two appointments. Bobby Burchfield will be independent ethics adviser. He’ll be responsible for signing off on transactions that could raise ethics or conflicts of interest concerns. George Sorial will become chief compliance counsel. In the January 11 press conference, Sheri Dillon announced: [T]o … Read more »
Conflict disclosure and management of the conflicts are central to the Investment Advisers Act. Clients are supposed to come first. That means that conflicts must be disclosed and steps taken to manage the conflict must be put in place. An affiliated service provider is a common conflict. Centre Partners Management used a service provider for … Read more »
Susan Diamond was Chief Compliance Officer of Saddle River Advisors. Now, Ms. Diamond is out of pocket for a $15,000 penalty and is subject to a nine-month suspension from being associated with any investment adviser or other financial services firms. After the suspension, she will be prohibited from acting in the securities industry in certain managerial … Read more »