Tag:United States

1
SEC Publishes Its 2024 Exam Priorities—Early
2
Securities Lending Reform: Daily Public Reporting of Aggregate Loan Amounts in 2026
3
SEC Adopts Amendments to Beneficial Ownership Reporting
4
U.S. Congressional Hearing on Oversight of SEC’s Division of Investment Management
5
Amendments to the Names Rule
6
Spot Bitcoin ETFs – Coming to an Exchange Near You (Maybe)!
7
Brokers Beware – The Massachusetts Fiduciary Rule is Here to Stay
8
The SEC’s New Rules for Private Fund Advisers: A Dose of Transparency for the Private Markets
9
ICYMI: Integrity Council Launches Global Benchmark and Core Carbon Principles for Voluntary Carbon Markets
10
United States: SEC Charges 11 Firms with Record Retention Violations

SEC Publishes Its 2024 Exam Priorities—Early

By: Jennifer Klass and Wiley Cole

On 16 October 2023, the Division of Examinations (the Division) of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released its examination priorities for the 2024 fiscal year. In an interesting twist, the SEC released the examination priorities early, changing the timing to correspond to the beginning of its new fiscal year.

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Securities Lending Reform: Daily Public Reporting of Aggregate Loan Amounts in 2026

By: Stacy Fuller, Kristina Zanotti, and Chase Ponder

On 13 October 2023, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted new rule 10c-1a under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The new rule is intended to shine light on the securities lending market by providing the SEC with detailed information about most securities loans and making public, including to boards of trustees who oversee registered funds that engage in securities lending, sufficient information about such loans and Loan Rates (defined below) that they may evaluate the fairness of the loans in which funds engage.

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SEC Adopts Amendments to Beneficial Ownership Reporting

By: Jennifer Gonzalez, Trayne Wheeler, and Megan Clement

On 10 October 2023, the SEC adopted amendments to beneficial ownership reporting requirements under Sections 13(d) and 13(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The amendments shorten deadlines for Schedule 13D and 13G filers, clarify Schedule 13D disclosure requirements for derivatives, and require filers to use machine readable data language.

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U.S. Congressional Hearing on Oversight of SEC’s Division of Investment Management

By: Megan Clement

On 19 September, U.S. Congress’ Sub-Committee on Capital Markets held a hearing on oversight of the SEC’s Division of Investment Management during which Director William Birdthistle testified on various SEC proposed rules affecting investment funds and advisers.

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Amendments to the Names Rule

By: Abigail Hemnes, George Zornada, Franklin Na, Donela M. Qirjazi and Christine Mikhael

On 20 September 2023, the SEC adopted amendments to the Names Rule (35d-1) that will significantly expand the Names Rule’s applicability and will require all funds to consider whether changes are required to their names, 80% policies, disclosures, compliance tests, and reporting requirements.

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Spot Bitcoin ETFs – Coming to an Exchange Near You (Maybe)!

By: Rich Kerr, Peter Shea, Andrew Hinkes, and Brian Doyle-Wenger

On 29 August 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (Court) issued a decision siding with Grayscale Investments, LLC (Grayscale) and vacated the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) rejection of the NYSE Arca’s (NYSE) request for approval of a listing rule that would permit it to list shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBT) for trading.

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Brokers Beware – The Massachusetts Fiduciary Rule is Here to Stay

On 25 August 2023, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed a Massachusetts Superior Court ruling and denied Robinhood Financial LLC’s attempt to block the implementation of Massachusetts’s unique fiduciary duty rule, adopted in February 2020 within weeks of the final adoption of the SEC’s Regulation Best Interest, which imposes the duties of care and loyalty on broker-dealers (Fiduciary Rule). A summary of the Fiduciary Rule is available here. Robinhood’s action to overturn the Rule was brought after the Commonwealth of Massachusetts brought an administrative action accusing Robinhood of violating Fiduciary Rule with its video game-like design and marketing tactics.

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The SEC’s New Rules for Private Fund Advisers: A Dose of Transparency for the Private Markets

By: Ken Holston, TJ Bright, Pablo Man, Matthew Mangan, Chris Phillips-Hart, Annabelle North

On August 23, 2023, the SEC adopted sweeping new rules that will impose substantial regulation on the management and operation of private funds by investment advisers.  The rules appear to be somewhat less burdensome than the rules originally proposed in February 2022.  

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ICYMI: Integrity Council Launches Global Benchmark and Core Carbon Principles for Voluntary Carbon Markets

By: Cheryl Isaac and Christine Mikhael

In case you missed it: late last month, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (“ICVCM”) launched its Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) and Program-level Assessment Framework (Framework). With the publication of these new standards (developed with the input of hundreds of stakeholders in the voluntary carbon markets), we now have a set of fundamental principles for high-quality credits that create a verifiable climate impact, and a framework for determining whether carbon credit programs are eligible to label themselves as being in compliance with the CCPs.

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United States: SEC Charges 11 Firms with Record Retention Violations

By: Neil Smith , Hayley Trahan Liptak and Peter Shanley

For over twenty months, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has steadily announced settled orders against broker-dealers and investment advisers for failure to retain business-related communication.  On 8 August 2023, the SEC released another round of settled orders with 11 firms for violation of Exchange Act Rule 17a-4 for failing to retain off-channel business-related communication.  One dually registered broker-dealer and investment adviser was also charged with violating recordkeeping provisions of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.  The content of the orders, and the firms involved, show the SEC’s attention may be shifting from wide-spread violations at large institutions to more limited compliance failures at firms of differing sizes. The assessed penalties, although still considerable, are consistent with this shift.

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