The American Bar Association is running its third annual Blawg 100 contest. They winnowed a list of nominees down to 100 and divided them into 10 categories: News, Legal Theory, IMHO, Geo, Practice Specific, Business, Careers, Tech, Justice, and Lighter Fare. I decided to throw my support behind those blogs that I read and enjoy … Read more »
CLawBie Nominations
The Canadian Law Blog Awards, a.k.a. the Clawbies, are a project started back in 2006 with the goal of highlighting great blogs published by the Canadian legal industry. Steve Matthews and his team at Stem Legal have been working to advance Canadian legal blogging. They just opened up the nominations for your favourite Canadian law blogs … Read more »
Compliance Bits and Pieces for December 4
Here are some compliance related news stories from the past week that caught my eye. SEC Steps up Insider-Trading Probes by Kara Scannell and Jenny Strasburg for the Wall Street Journal The Securities and Exchange Commission has sent at least three dozen subpoenas to hedge funds and brokerages within the past month in an expanding … Read more »
You Are Here: From the FTC for Your Kids
We’re from the government. We’re here to help. The Federal Trade Commission has launched a new site designed to help kids learn to protect their privacy, spot frauds and scams, and avoid identity theft. You Are Here is set up as a virtual mall. Visit the West Terrace to learn about advertising techniques, target marketing, … Read more »
Classification of Private Funds as Publicly Traded Partnerships
Due to the increasing incidence of fund investors who want to transfer their investment fund interests, private investment funds face a risk of being classified as publicly traded partnerships. That would mean the fund would become taxable as a corporation. A bad result. Under Internal Revenue Code § 7704, a partnership will be classified as a … Read more »
Amendment to the Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) amended the Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations, 31 C.F.R. part 594 to define the term “financial, material, or technological support,” as used in sanction regulations. Section 594.201(a)(4)(i) of the regulations implements section 1(d)(i) of Executive Order 13224, as amended, by blocking the U.S. property of persons who assist in, … Read more »
Hulk Smash Compliance Program!!
Hollywood has done it. Now it’s your turn. Reboot your compliance program. There is the “reboot” you hear from IT support when your computer is malfunctioning. It seems to always be the first response from the help desk. But once you start back up, its exactly the same computer with exactly the same programs. Hollywood … Read more »
FTC Guidelines Are In Effect
Today is a the day. The FTC’s recent updates to its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising are now in affect. To comply with the Guides, individuals (bloggers, users of social media) must disclose every “material connection” or relationship they have with an advertiser. How to comply with the changes? Disclose … Read more »
Enterprise 2.0 – The Book
At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, Andrew McAfee handed out a few copies of this new book: Enterprise 2.0. I was one of the recipients of a shiny new copy with his autograph on the cover page. If you have heard of Enterprise 2.0, they you have heard of McAfee. He coined the … Read more »
How Fraudsters Try to Look Legitimate
The SEC is putting its new investor-focused website to good use: Investor.gov. The first item that caught my eye was their article on how fraudsters use fake SEC registrations and bogus seals to make them look legitimate: Fake Seals and Phony Numbers: How Fraudsters Try to Look Legit. They offer these five pieces of advice: … Read more »