Earlier this year, the SEC, NASAA, and FINRA issued an Investor Alert cautioning investors about the rise of investment fraud involving artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies. The overarching concern:...more
On March 18, 2024, the SEC announced—in videos posted on YouTube and Twitter—regulatory actions against two investment advisers for “AI washing,” a practice defined by the SEC as “making false artificial intelligence-related...more
Firms will be able to treat private residences from which certain supervisory activity is conducted as non-branch offices instead of OSJs. The adoption comes after nearly two years of FINRA efforts to align its supervisory...more
A September report of the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) on broker-dealer compliance with the SEC’s Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI) finds...more
The bane of every start-up company is the never-ending quest to raise capital for its operations. Newly (and not so new) formed companies seemingly would do anything to raise funds. Over the course of many decades, these...more
Firms would be able to treat private residences as non-branch offices instead of OSJs under certain circumstances. FINRA hopes to align its supervisory rules with current work-from-home practices....more
Section 15(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”) requires registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) of securities brokers, which is defined as “any person engaged in the...more
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, d/b/a Mark Twain, was the author of many outstanding (and often humorous) books and short stories that had good guys (e.g., Huck, Jim and Tom), bad guys (e.g., Pap Finn; the Duke and the Dauphin, who...more
SEC/CORPORATE - SEC Division of Corporation Finance Issues Four FAQs Addressing the SEC’s Conditional Relief Order - On May 4, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance (the Division)...more
Forced to sit at home under government-ordered decree, and having finished binge-watching Season 3 of Ozark and Season 4 of Money Heist on Netflix, what’s left to do except prey upon scared investors – particularly seniors –...more
On May 23, 2019, in recognition of the one-year anniversary of the passage of the Senior Safe Act, the SEC, the North American Securities Administrators Association and FINRA issued a fact sheet to raise awareness of the act...more
To mark the one-year anniversary of the passage of The Senior Safe Act (the “Act”), the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), the North American Securities Administrators Association (“NASAA”), and the Financial...more
BROKER-DEALER - SEC Adopts Rules and Interpretations To Enhance Protections and Preserve Choice for Retail Investors - On June 5, the Securities and Exchange Commission voted to adopt a package of rules and...more
On August 21, 2017, the North American Securities Administrators Association (“NASAA”) released a survey on senior citizens and financial exploitation. The survey of the state securities regulators highlighted, among other...more
The final report from the forum held in November 2016 was recently published. The recommendations of the forum often provide the Securities and Exchange Commission with insights regarding measures that could promote capital...more
CFTC Indicates Willingness to Help Incubate Fintech - On February 21, 2017, J. Christopher Giancarlo, the acting chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC"), has diverged from other U.S. federal...more
SEC approves FINRA rule designed to protect seniors and other specified adults from financial exploitation. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved a new rule proposed by the Financial Industry...more
Last Thursday, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) submitted proposed rules to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) designed to address “financial exploitation of seniors and other...more
Highlights from FINRA/SIFMA Senior Investor Conference - On October 22-23, members of the securities industry, academia, regulators, and public policy experts gathered in Washington, D.C., at the joint Financial...more
FINRA Revises its Proposed Amendments to Rule 2210 - In our recent Client Alert, we wrote about the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc.’s proposed changes to Rule 2210, Communications with the Public. One of...more
On May 2, 2016 the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) issued a release requesting public comments on a proposed Statement of Policy (SOP) that would allow issuers and its selling agents to use...more
The Bernie Madoff scandal exposed a lot of people and institutions. One of those, obviously, was the SEC, and it has been working hard to live that fiasco down ever since. But one aspect of the current securities enforcement...more