Financial Times (August 3)
“Companies denied votes on a record number of resolutions during this proxy season after US regulators made it harder for shareholders to demand changes related to climate, diversity and labour rights.” As a result, the number of shareholder proposals is down from last year. “ISS-Corporate found that 21 per cent of environmental and social proposals were omitted this year, compared with only 9 per cent last year.” The SEC granted nearly a third more “no-action” requests, which allow companies to omit shareholder proposals from proxy materials.
Tags: Climate, Companies, Denied, Diversity, Environmental, ISS, Labour rights, Proxy season, Regulators, Resolutions, SEC, Shareholder proposals, Social, U.S., Votes
Traders Magazine (September 25)
“Compliance and risk leaders need to reorient their processes and technology to align with how traders trade in today’s markets.” Many legacy systems are “decades out of date, designed in a time when you had to keep an eye on one financial instrument or venue at a time.” Insider trading can occur through economically related securities and a rising number of ”social media-related market manipulation cases” are facing regulators in India (SEBI), Hong Kong (SFC) and the U.S. (SEC). “Market operators and financial institutions must… innovate their practices to ensure market integrity while creating value and opportunities.”
Tags: Compliance, Economically related securities, Financial instrument, Hong Kong, India, Legacy systems, Market manipulation, Processes, Risk leaders, SEBI, SEC, SFC, Social media, Technology, Traders, U.S.
Institutional Investor (August 12)
“Institutional investors have long called for better transparency and disclosure regarding fees, expenses, pass-through costs, and conflicts of interest,” but the SEC’s private fund adviser rules “were struck down in June after being challenged in court by a number of industry organizations largely representing managers.” The “regulatory saga” seemed to pit “investors and managers against one another…. But this picture is too simple, ignoring the industry’s own track record of collaboration to improve practices and address many of these challenges.” Going forward, “stakeholders must pick up where regulators left off.”
Tags: Collaboration, Conflicts of interest, Costs, Court, Disclosure, Expenses, Fees, Institutional investors, Managers, Regulators, SEC, Stakeholders, Transparency
Traders Magazine (June 26)
Companies may find ways to effectively “use artificial intelligence themselves on their compliance, obligations to the [Securities and Exchange] Commission and look at unstructured data and look at chat and look at email and look at all these other things that they haven’t been able to do.” This could conceivably allow companies to spot issues earlier or stop them from arising.
Tags: AI, Chat, Compliance, Email, Issues, Obligations, SEC, Unstructured data
New York Times (November 18)
“An under-the-radar lawsuit has privately been a hot topic of conversation in Fortune 500 boardrooms and corporate security departments.” The suit by the SEC against SolarWinds and its chief information security officer appears to be the first lawsuit “in which the S.E.C. has charged a company with intentional fraud related to cybersecurity disclosures.” The suit suggests “boilerplate disclosures” are no longer “sufficient if the company knows of more specific risks.”
Tags: Boardrooms, Boilerplate, CISO, Corporate security, Cybersecurity disclosures, Fortune 500, Fraud, Lawsuit, SEC, SolarWinds, Specific risks, Under-the-radar
Markets Insider (October 16)
SEC Chair Gary Gensler “has warned that AI could trigger a financial crisis, as Wall Street rushes to adopt the new technology.” He is calling for “AI regulation that addresses both the underlying AI models built by tech companies and how they are used by Wall Street banks, describing it as a ‘cross-regulatory challenge.’”
Tags: Adopt, AI, Banks, Chair, Financial Crisis, Gensler, Models, New technology, Regulation, Rushes, SEC, Trigger, Wall Street, Warned
Bloomberg (June 7)
“The Securities and Exchange Commission has fired a major new salvo in Chair Gary Gensler’s war on crypto, declaring illegal two of the world’s largest digital-token trading platforms, Binance and Coinbase. It’s a welcome development: In myriad ways, the two enterprises exemplify what financial intermediaries shouldn’t do. What’s needed now is an actual rulebook.”
Tags: Binance, Chair, Coinbase, Digital-token trading platforms, Financial intermediaries. Rulebook, Gensler, Illegal, SEC, War on crypto
Institutional Investor (May 31)
Last December, “the SEC proposed a set of trading reforms detailing significant changes on vital features such as tick size, the access fee cap, and competition for retail orders.” NASDAQ broadly supports the moves, but worries that “they may not accomplish what the SEC is trying to accomplish” or lead to “unintended consequences that harm liquidity.” Instead, NASDAQ and others believe the SEC “should sequence the proposals rather than do them simultaneously and pause periodically to assess the impacts and determine whether additional reforms are warranted.”
Tags: Access fee cap, Assess, Competition, December, Impacts, Liquidity, Nasdaq, Proposals, Retail orders, SEC, Sequence, Tick size, Trading reforms, Unintended consequences
Reuters (May 6)
The SEC and its Chair Gary Gensler have refused to “make clear how existing securities laws apply to digital assets.” From their perspective, “there’s little upside in breaking the silence.” If they state digital assets are securities, “Gensler would have to show his reasoning, opening the SEC up to more costly legal battles that it could lose.” By refusing to rule make, “the agency can keep firing off enforcement actions.”
Tags: Costly, Digital assets, Eforcement actions, Gensler, Laws, Legal battles, Reasoning, Refusing, Rule make, SEC, Securities, Silence, Upside
Wall Street Journal (May 4)
“Companies will need to jump through more hoops to buy back their stock.” A new rule adopted by the SEC will require “more disclosure from public companies about share repurchases starting in the fourth quarter,” including daily data on buybacks, whether directors or officers sold shares within four days of a buyback, and the rationale for the buyback. The SEC believes this will “make it easier for analysts to compare the timing of buybacks and insider trades, or to identify buybacks designed to boost executive compensation or earnings per share.”
Tags: Analysts, Buybacks, Directors, Disclosure, EPS, Executive compensation, Hoops, Insider trades, Officers, Public companies, Q4, Rationale, SEC, Share repurchases, Stock, Timing
