The Congressional Budge Office released a cost estimate of H.R. 3818, the Private Fund Investment Advisers Registration Act of 2009. Obviously, there will be an additional cost to fund managers that need to register with the SEC and operate under the SEC rules and oversight. There is also a real cost to the SEC (and … Read more »
New Anti-Bribery Compendium
Trace International has launched an online, fully-searchable database containing summaries and analyses of international anti-bribery enforcement actions and investigations in the U.S. and throughout the world. The Trace Compendium summaries are searchable by name or by numerous other criteria, including year, substantive criteria, enforcement authority, and enforcement result. Want the actions involving officials in Thailand? … Read more »
Criticism and Praise
Do criticism and praise work to affect performance? Leonard Mlodinow briefly addressed this topic in The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. He explores the studies of Daniel Kahneman who was lecturing the Israeli air force flight instructors on behavior modification. Kahneman was trying to make the point that rewarding positive behavior works, but … Read more »
The First CMBS Eligbile for TALF
Developers Diversified Realty Corp. sold $400 million worth of of debt backed by shopping centers backed by 28 malls in 19 states. The offering is the first to use the Federal Reserve’s Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility since it was opened to the debt in June. Investors can take out loans from the TALF to … Read more »
It’s Tough Being Green… And Charged With Fraud
Mantria Corporation is a “diversified and progressive business enterprise that seeks out emerging sectors with a passionate focus on sustainability and the commercialization of socially responsible products and services.” At least that’s what their website says. The SEC says: “In reality, the only green these promoters seemed interested in was investors’ money.” According to the … Read more »
Is PCAOB Constitutional?
Now that Jones v. Harris has been argued, we have to sit and wait for the decision. But there is another compliance case coming up for argument in front of the Supreme Court: Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB. The PCAOB case is much sexier than the Jones case since it involves the president’s constitutional powers … Read more »
PBWorks and Real Time Collaboration
PBWorks has announced a “Real-time Collaboration Update” which brings integrated Instant Messaging collaboration, Live Notifications (activity streams), Live Editing (rather than standard wiki asynchronous editing) and integrated Voice Collaboration with on-demand voice conferencing. This is a big step up. Instead of being a mere wiki, the platform now offers different ways to collaborate, but still … Read more »
The SEC is Going After the Geeks
First, Bernie the boss turned himself in, saying he did it all by himself. Nobody believed that, including the SEC. So the SEC went after Madoff’s right-hand man, DiPascali, and Madoff’s accountant, Friehling. Now the SEC is going after the geeks. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged two computer programmers for their role in helping … Read more »
Compliance Bits and Pieces for Nov. 13
Here are some stories that caught my eye over the past week: A Morgan Stanley star falls in China By George Chen and Steve Eder for Reuters His downfall, however, was just as precipitous. Morgan Stanley fired Peterson in December amid suspicions that he had violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law meant … Read more »
FCPA: Overcoming the Toughest Issues
Bruce Carton and SecurtiesDocket presented this informative webinar. The panelists were: – Hank Walther, Dept. of Justice – Larry Urgenson, Kirkland & Ellis – Elliot Leary, KPMG Forensic – Phil Desing, KPMG Forensic The panel started of with parallel international investigations. This is a new topic because for years there was no other country enforcing … Read more »