The ongoing saga of billionaire hedge fund manager, Steven A. Cohen, completed another episode with his settlement this week with the CFTC, which may help him create a path back to investing other peoples’ money by 2018 or beyond. The former hedge fund heavyweight Cohen settled with the SEC this past January after the regulator… Read More >>
Asset Control Taps Interactive Data for New CEO
Asset Control Names a New CEO Asset Control, a financial data management company, reports the appointment of Mark Hepsworth as chief executive officer. Hepsworth, who will be based in London, has replaced Richard Petti who was appointed in 2013. Before joining Asset Control, Hepworth was president, EMEA, at market data vendor Interactive Data Corp. (IDC),… Read More >>
Binary-Options Firms Fined $4.58M, Banned from Trading
Two web-based binary-options firms, Vault Options, Ltd. and Global Trader 365, have been hit with a $3 million civil monetary penalty, plus $1,587,731 in restitution, and have been banned from future trading, for defrauding their customers and violating the Commodity Exchange Act. The two companies, both based in Israel, apparently are no longer doing business… Read More >>
SEC Shuffles Personnel in Chief Accountant’s Office
SEC Names Interim Chief Accountant as Deputy Chief Accountant to Exit The SEC reports that Wesley R. Bricker has been named the interim chief accountant, heading the commission’s office of the chief accountant, while Chief Accountant James V. Schnurr “recovers from a serious bicycle accident.” In his interim post, Bricker will be the “principal advisor… Read More >>
Smarsh, Symphony Partner to Ease Digital Compliance
Smarsh, a vendor of cloud-based archiving, and Symphony Communication Services, a chat and collaboration vendor, are joining forces to help their mutual clients archive, search and produce Symphony content to support the recordkeeping and electronic communication oversight requirements of regulators FINRA and the SEC. Symphony is an open source communications platform that features security support,… Read More >>
New Rules Clarify Security-Based Swaps Reporting
The SEC reports that it has adopted “new rules and guidance … designed to increase transparency in the security-based swap market.” The additional rules, proposed by the SEC’s division of trading and markets as amendments to existing SEC rules intended to implement mandates under Dodd-Frank’s Title VII, are “related to rules regarding the regulatory reporting… Read More >>
SEC Whistleblower Chief to Leave
More than $85M Awarded to 32 Whistleblowers SEC officials report that Sean McKessy, chief of the SEC’s office of the whistleblower, is planning to leave the agency later this month. McKessy became the first head of SEC’s whistleblower program in February 2011, the SEC notes in a statement, and he “helped establish the whistleblower office… Read More >>
Citi and Others Sing the ‘Blue Sheet’ Blues
Regulators are continuing their crackdown on securities firms that send erroneous or incomplete information about their transactions as evidenced by the SEC hitting Citigroup Global Markets with the largest penalty so far — $7 million — for “a computer coding error” that caused incomplete “blue sheet” information about executed trades to be sent to the… Read More >>
Elizabeth Warren, Others Push for Derivatives Overhaul
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and two other Democrats in Washington, D.C. are proposing sweeping legislation governing derivatives that includes authorization for the CFTC to collect user fees from financial services firms to cover its budget in a way similar to fees collected by the SEC. Industry observers, however, counter that if those fees are… Read More >>
Time for a CFTC User’s Fee?
Would it really be such a bad idea for the CFTC to charge a user’s fee? That issue may wind up being a spinoff from a bill put forth late last month by the Wall Street lightning rod U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) with the support of Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)…. Read More >>
