Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
There have been several challenges to the constitutionality of the in-house administrative judges at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The problem is that the judges are appointed by an internal panel instead of by the President or the SEC Commissioners. The SEC has fended off attacks. Now there is break in wall. The 10th Circuit found … Read more »
One of the rallying cries for President-elect Trump was to drain the swamp of corruption. Compliance professionals could think of many things that could happen to remove conflicts or the appearance of conflicts. Personally, as a compliance professional and a voter, I was disappointed to learn that Hillary Clinton did a poor job of walling … Read more »
I hope you are having a happy and joyous holiday season. Whether it be Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Festivus, Feast of Winter Veil, Saturnalia, or New Year’s Eve, I hope you get to spend some extra time with friends and family during this last week of 2016. Doug Read more »
It’s been a busy week for whistleblower cases. The latest is a case against SandRidge Energy for using severance agreements that impeded employees from contacting the Securities and Exchange Commission. In response to Dodd-Frank, the SEC adopted Rule 21F-17 in August 2011, which provides: (a) No person may take any action to impede an individual … Read more »
Compliance officers need to take a look at severance agreements. The Securities and Exchange has blown up another company for including provisions in its severance agreements that may have impeded employees from communicating information to the SEC. NeuStar Inc. used severance agreements that contained a broad non-disparagement clause forbidding former employees from engaging “in any communication … Read more »
I have seen a few indications from the Securities and Exchange Commission showing that examiners are concerned about co-investments. I have yet to see a large over-arching activity in the industry that has been identified as problematic. I saw an action last week for a fund advisor related to co-investments so it caught my eye. Upon … Read more »
These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention. An Insider-Trading Ruling that Delights Prosecutors – And One Manhattan Judge by Roger Parloff in The New Yorker Last week, prosecutors rejoiced when the U.S. Supreme Court decided an insider-trading case called Salman v. United States, and in doing so clarified that leaking … Read more »
President-Elect Trump has many conflicts of interest as he prepares to take office. It’s been a long time since the president-elect has been so deeply involved in a active businesses. His appointment of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State creates another batch of conflicts for the administration and for Exxon-Mobil. As is typical with many … Read more »
In a new paper, researchers found that hedge fund managers who own powerful sports cars take on more investment risk and are more likely to engage in fraudulent behavior. The inverse is also true: Drivers of minivans tend to deliver less volatile returns, according to the study. “Specifically, sports car drivers deliver returns that are … Read more »
Widespread cheating by Russian athletes has been uncovered. One of the key figures was Russian Dr. Rodchenkov who had breakthrough work on the detection of peptides and long-term metabolites of prohibited substances. In the jargon of espionage, Dr. Rodchenkov was a double agent. While operating at the forefront of doping detection, he was secretly developing a … Read more »