The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a New York City “pay-to-play” law against various constitutional challenges: Ognibene v. Parkes. The Pay to play law is in Local Law 34 and it: Lowers the caps applicable to campaign contributions from parties that have “business dealings” with New York City to $400 (otherwise … Read more »
Private Fund Managers and SEC Registration
The SEC has provided a no action letter in response to an American Bar Association request on guidance for private fund managers. The ABA requested clarification that a group of funds could use a singe registration where the fund managers are in a control relationship and conduct a single advisory business subject to a unified … Read more »
Why How We Do Anything Means Everything
An acquaintance in the compliance field sent me a copy of Dov Seidman’s How and I let it sit around for months. (My “To Read” stack has grown very tall.) I assumed How was vanity book and would rattle on and on about Seidman’s company: LRN. I recently moved and my “To Read” stack was tumbled … Read more »
Ethisphere’s 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics
The Ethisphere Institute unveiled its “100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics,” an annual list of individuals who have made a significant impact in the realm of corporate citizenship over the course of the previous year. Some are world famous and some are little unknown. Here are some that caught my attention: #48 Stephen Colbert … Read more »
Compliance Bits and Pieces for January 20
These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention. Bruce Carton’s “2011: The Year in Enforcement” in Securities Docket 2011 was another difficult year for the Securities and Exchange Commission, even though another Madoff or Stanford-like scandal didn’t emerge to bring new embarrassment. Indeed, the SEC seemed to be under attack from … Read more »
Amending the Ban on General Solicitation and Advertising
There seems to be some momentum for changes to the Regulation D’s prohibition on advertising a private fund offering. The Managed Funds Association has asked the SEC to start a rulemaking and one of the SEC’s new advisory committees has also recommended a change. The SEC’s new Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies approved … Read more »
Stop SOPA
Based on the White House statement about Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the PROTECT IP Act and the Online Protection and Digital ENforcement Act (OPEN), those bills may be in serious trouble. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261, as originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice to take action against … Read more »
Informants and Insider Trading
The cooperation of a single Wall Street trader has led directly led to the prosecution of 10 individuals. That makes David Slaine one of the most productive informants in the history of US financial crimes. In a sentencing memorandum (.pdf), the US Attorney’s office states that “Slaine’s cooperation has been nothing short of extraordinary” and … Read more »
Compliance Bits and Pieces for January 13th
Here are some compliance-related stories for Friday the 13th: Regulatory Risk Factors in the Carlyle Group S-1 by Seattle lawyer William Carleton. The Carlyle Group is preparing to go public. There are some interesting risk factors in the S-1 registration statement relating to use of leverage in investments, continued control of prior owners following the … Read more »
Manufacturing Jobs, Robots, and the Economy
We still make lots of stuff in the United States. China is our closest competitor. The two countries are very close at the number 1 and number 2 positions of manufacturing output. In the past decade, manufacturing output in the US has risen by a third. What hasn’t risen is the number of jobs in … Read more »