UBS will be paying $19.5 million to the SEC to settle charges that it “made false or misleading statements and omissions” when offering materials to U.S. investors who were sold structured notes tied to a proprietary foreign exchange trading strategy, say SEC officials. The SEC is not alleging that UBS officials intended to defraud investors… Read More >>
SEC Charges Two Grant Thornton Firms with Independence Violations
U.S. markets regulator the SEC has charged two member firms of Grant Thornton International (GTI), Grant Thornton India LLP and Australia-based Grant Thornton Audit Pty Limited, with auditor independence violations. Specifically, the two GTI member firms “represented in audit reports that they were independent of their respective audit clients when the audit clients paid fees… Read More >>
U.S. Regulators Crack Down on Reporting Failures with Stiff Penalties
The CFTC and SEC are continuing their crackdown on firms large and small that fail to sufficiently file regulatory reports that have accurate and usable data that can be applied to monitoring and analyzing securities transactions as evidenced by recent actions against Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse Securities. The CFTC has ordered Deutsche Bank to… Read More >>
Liquid Holdings Faces Nasdaq Delisting
Cloud-based investment management solutions vendor Liquid Holdings Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: LIQD) is facing a delisting from the Nasdaq Stock Market because it allegedly fails to consistently file reports with the SEC, say Liquid officials. The company has gotten a reprieve by requesting a hearing before Nasdaq to challenge its delisting but that only lasts until… Read More >>
SEC to Ease Up on Key Internal Court Burdens
Should the cop on the beat be able to appoint the judges who hear the case against the defendants that get hauled in? That, essentially, is the central criticism of the SEC’s system of internal administrative law judges and its various rules and procedures that allegedly disadvantage defendants. Now, the SEC has responded to the… Read More >>
Fears Over Liquidity Risk Spur SEC, FINRA Into Action
Better liquidity risk management amid volatile markets has become the new byword for regulators. The SEC is trying to rein in liquidity issues for mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs) while independent regulator the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is targeting liquidity problems for broker-dealers, even citing the liquidity risks that “played a large role… Read More >>
SEC’s White: Don’t Wait for Us on T+2
The securities industry’s desire for regulatory certainty on shorter settlement cycles based on the trade date plus two business days (T+2) faces a bit of setback as SEC Chair Mary Jo White suggested the industry continue its work on achieving T+2 without waiting for the SEC to propose the necessary rules. The SEC strongly supports… Read More >>
Looking for a Few Silver Linings
For this week’s posting, I purposely tried to find news items that if not necessarily good news had some silver linings of hope and progress. I found three via my random, unscientific search. SEC Achieves Early $30 Million Settlement in Newswire Hacking Case The first piece I hit upon was the news from the SEC… Read More >>
ISDA Pushes for a Derivatives Product ID Standard
Derivatives trading advocate the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) has launched a symbology project intended to provide an industry-wide, open-source standard to help all derivatives facilities such as trading venues, clearinghouses, repositories and other infrastructures meet regulatory needs. The new industry data project is charged with developing an open-source standard derivatives product identification system… Read More >>
SEC Slams Firms with Million-Dollar Settlements for Fee Schemes
The SEC announced that an investment advisory firm in Philadelphia, Taberna Capital Management, a subsidiary of RAIT Financial Trust, has agreed to pay more than $21 million to settle charges that it fraudulently retained fees belonging to collateralized debt obligation (CDO) clients, SEC officials say. The firm is also forbidden from doing business for three… Read More >>
