Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network announced its intention to postpone the effective date of the final rule establishing Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism Program and Suspicious Activity Report Filing Requirements for Registered Investment Advisers and Exempt Reporting Advisers and to revisit the scope of this rule at a future date. FinCEN said it anticipates delaying the effective…
Two days in a row of compliance officers making the mistake of faking compliance documents. Yesterday it was a compliance officer who faked compliance reviews. Today, its a compliance officer who faked employee securities transaction approvals. According to the SEC Order, Suzanne Ballek was the Chief Compliance Officer of Inland Investment Advisors, part of the…
The sad case of a compliance officer who faked compliance reviews and the company president who went along. American Portfolio Advisors was subject to an examination by the Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC staff asked for copies of the most recent compliance review pursuant to Rule 206(4)-7. The rule doesn’t require a written documentation of…
Last week there was a last minute extension of the compliance date to changes to Form PF. That seemed relatively straightforward. The detailed data and parsing of the data and reporting of the data is a lot for the large hedge funds and other private funds that have to do quarterly reporting. It’s a lot…
It should come as no surprise that the current Securities and Exchange Commission under Chair Atkins would retreat from the rule-making of the SEC under Chair Gensler. We’ve seen it with the rapid retreat on crypto. Last week the SEC formally withdrew 14 proposed rule-makings. Happy to see the Safeguarding Advisory Client Assets proposal go…
President Trump signed an executive order in February that paused all of the Department of Justice investigations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Perhaps lesser noticed was that the pause was to allow a review of enforcement policies. That review has happened and new guidelines are out. According to the memorandum, the Justice Department will resume investigating FCPA…
An essential element of an advisory agreement is the fee schedule. The biggest conflict every advisor has is fees. The advisor is literally taken cash from their clients. So, it’s essential that the advisor and the client are very clear about the fee calculation. David A. Nagler and his firm, New Line Capital, LLC, stand…
At the end of March, FinCEN published an interim final rule that removes the beneficial ownership reporting requirements for U.S. companies and limits it to only those entities that are formed under the law of a foreign country and that have registered to do business in any U.S. State or Tribal jurisdiction. Comments are flowing in…
Cherry-picking and block trading accounts go hand in hand. The most recent firm to be found doing this is North East Asset Management and its principal Greg Zandlo. According to the SEC order, the firm had block trading account at an unaffiliated brokerage firm. This allowed the firm to place purchase and sale orders for…
Ever wonder what the Securities and Exchange Commission does with Form PF data? The SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis just published a paper analyzing beneficial ownership concentration and fund outcomes: Beneficial Ownership Concentration and Fund Outcomes for Qualifying Hedge Funds. Specifically, DERA looked at Form PF question 15 that asks what percentage of…