News & Events –

We may be as little as ten days away from the final form of the controversial fiduciary standard rule from the Department of Labor (DOL).

The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided to leave interest rates unchanged at 0.25-0.50% after a two day meeting.

FINRA listed "senior and vulnerable investors" as a focus in its 2016 priority letter, as we blogged about previously, and the conclusion of a recent enforcement action supports the agency's focus in this area.

Last Friday FINRA announced that it had approved a proposal to require the disclosure of bond markups and markdowns for retail fixed income investors.

As foreshadowed in their 2016 Priority Letter, FINRA has begun examining--in the form of inquiry letters--the idea of a "culture of compliance."

In a new blog post, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York considers whether or not asset managers are vulnerable to ”run on the bank” scenarios and, more broadly, what the implications of those ”runs” might be for financial markets. The concern is that while open-end mutual funds may be holding sufficient levels of cash to meet the normal demand for daily redemptions, a sudden (or sustained) wave of redemptions may force them to liquidate holdings, perhaps at undesirable “fire sale” prices.

This Monday's SEC Daily Digest Bulletin included a transcript of a Q&A session between SEC  Chair Mary Jo White and Steven Bochner, Chair of the Securities Regulation Institute.

The New York Department of Financial Services, which oversees some of the largest banks in the world, may soon find itself in opposition to its normal allies: compliance officers.

We have blogged previously about the rise of automated investing advice as a service offering, and about the joint release that FINRA and the SEC put out regarding how to use these automated tools. 

The SEC's whistleblower program, as outlined in the Dodd-Frank Act, has a very simple origin story. Work by an outside analyst, which was presented repeatedly to the commission and could have brought the Madoff fraud to light, was repeatedly ignored.

Last week we got FINRA's 2016 priorities, and this week the SEC announced theirs.

FINRA released its priorities for 2016 this week, with many new priorities appearing on this year’s list. While many of the same (or similar) target areas appear, we wanted to highlight a few new ones that may be of interest to you.