Ted Nunez, Ph.D. Director, Ethics & Corporate Compliance at Kaplan EduNeering gave the presentation on this webinar. Compliance already has a lot on its plate, does sustainability also belong there? These are my notes: To start, what is corporate social responsibility? It depends on who’s asking. Different companies have different views and different needs. It’s … Read more »
New York Public Pension Fund Reform Code of Conduct
In a widely publicized story, The Carlyle Group has agreed to adopt New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s Public Pension Fund Reform Code of Conduct. It is the first money manager to adopt Cuomo’s new “code of reform” for the municipal-pension market. (Carlyle executives will not be subject to any criminal liability under the settlement … Read more »
Have a Coke and . . . Alternative Billing
Many have been contemplating and prognosticating the death of the billable hour for lawyers. I found it interesting to see a similar movement in the advertising industry. (I was unaware that the advertising industry also worked on a billable hour model.) A story in the latest issue of The Economist points to a movement to … Read more »
Supreme Court to Rule on Sarbanes-Oxley
On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to rule on the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed in 2002 created PCAOB as a new government agency to regulate firms that audit the books of publicly traded companies. The key question in the case is whether the Act violated the separation-of-powers … Read more »
Insider Trading at the SEC
A report from the SEC’s Inspector General has publicized that two attorneys at the Securities and Exchange Commission are under “active” criminal investigation by the FBI for trading stocks based on inside information. Bad news for an agency that is still under fire for missing the Madoff fraud. Besides the salacious news, there are some … Read more »
When Someone Steals Your Content
The web is a cut and paste world. Inevitably, someone will steal your blog post content. Rarely is their much you can do about it. Another compliance blog copied my post on Perspectives on Hedge Fund Registration and plopped it into their blog. They were lazy and just copied the html, leaving the picture hotlinked … Read more »
New Custody Rules for Investment Advisers
The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rule amendments as part of their Open Meeting on May 14, 2009. They talked about the proposed rules, but have not actually made them available. It is hard to judge the potential impact of the rules with being able to see them. According to the press release and the … Read more »
Perspectives on Hedge Fund Registration
On Thursday, May 7, 2009, the House Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises held a hearing on: “Perspectives on Hedge Fund Registration”. During the hearings on legislation to regulate hedge fund advisers, Rep. Paul Kanjorski said that hedge funds deserve to “continue swimming in the deep end of the pool.” But if … Read more »
Subprime Lending Settlement in Massachusetts
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Office announced that it has reached a settlement agreement with Goldman Sachs & Co stemming from the office’s investigation of subprime lending and securitization markets. The Attorney General’s Office has been investigating the role of investment banks in the origination and securitization of subprime loans in Massachusetts. The Attorney General’s … Read more »
Watch Frontline’s “The Madoff Affair” Online
For those of you who missed last night’s airing of “The Madoff Affair” it’s now available online. The program has a startling interview of Michael Bienes, one of the first people to set up a feeder fund for Madoff. Bienes describes those early years as “easy, easy-peasy, like a money machine.” When asked if he … Read more »