These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention. RBS Loses Senior Compliance Staff, Some Poached by HSBC by Margot Patrick And Rachel Louise Ensign in the Wall Street Journal The departures come as RBS, 80%-owned by the British government, faces a potential multibillion-dollar settlement with the Federal Housing Finance Agency over … Read more »
SEC Exam Priorities for 2015
In 2013 the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations at the Securities Exchange Commission laid out their examination priorities for 2013 and did so again last year with its 2014 Examination Priorities. OCIE just released its Examination Priorities for 2015. One item jumps out for a focus for private funds: Fees and Expenses in Private … Read more »
Private Equity Funds and Broker-Dealer Registration
There was a lots of hand-wringing after a speech by David Blass indicated that the SEC was focusing on transaction based fees that private equity funds were earning on securities transactions. Since then, there has been rumblings during presence exams, but no official enforcement action or ruling from the SEC. One group of fees at … Read more »
Cheating In Ethics Class
Is this the worst ethics teacher? 64 Dartmouth Students Charged With Cheating In Ethics Class According to the story, attendance in religion professor Randall Balmer’s “Sports, Ethics and Religion” was measured using handheld devices known as “clickers.” In late October, some students passed their clickers to fellow classmates. Those classmates then used the clickers to … Read more »
Working at Home this Weekend?
I home your home computer works better than this one and that you don;t have to use Fortran, no matter easy it may be to use. Perhaps this is a good example of why past performance is not an indication of future results. I think this gentlemen from 1954 would be very surprised at what … Read more »
Compliance Bricks and Mortar for January 9
These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention. Majority of RIAs should move under state regulation: Study by Mark Schoeff Jr. in InvestmentNews Shifting oversight of more registered investment advisers from the Securities and Exchange Commission to states would increase exam coverage at less cost than establishing third-party reviewers, a new … Read more »
Getting Ready for Your SEC Exam – Introductory Presentation
The phone rings and the caller ID pops up with US Securities and Exch… You swallow hard. They are coming. What now? One thing a private fund manager can do to smoothly take the SEC through an exam is to have an introductory presentation when they walk in the door. The SEC examiners will have … Read more »
More on the SEC and Funds’ REIT Subsidiaries
I discovered some additional information about the SEC’s position on the application of the Custody Rule to the REIT subsidiaries of private real estate funds. A few months ago, a real estate fund was undergoing an SEC exam and the examiners focused on custody. The examiners used the June 2014 Guidance on SPVs to take … Read more »
Related Party Mistakes with Private Funds
Related party transactions are rife with problems in all areas of the financial services industry. It’s hard to know if someone is looking out for your best interest, if they have interests on the other side of a transaction. Most private equity funds have some structure set up in the organizational documents to deal with … Read more »
Weekend Reading: Book de Tour
Do you like cycling? Do you like watercolors? Then Book de Tour is the perfect book for you. For the past few years, Greig Leach has been painting watercolors of key events from the Tour de France. This year he decided to compile all of the artwork with a narrative description into a single book. … Read more »