Category Archives: International

Compliance, Enforcement, International, Regulatory, Standard of Care

Celebrating the SEC at 90!

August 24, 2024 BDIA Editors Leave a comment

Good people, important problems and workable laws – celebrating the SEC at 90!

On July 17, PLI hosted The SEC at 90: A Celebration and Retrospective in our New York Conference Center. The program, chaired by longtime Securities faculty Clifford Kirsch, featured SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, author Diana Henriques (Taming the Street and The Wizard of Lies), former SEC Commissioners Robert J. Jackson, Jr. and Troy Paredes, and other expert panelists. Speakers discussed the SEC’s formation, challenges it faces, opportunities in the next 90 years and beyond, and where SEC practice has been, is, and will be.

Compliance, Enforcement, International, Regulatory, Standard of Care

ESG and Asset Managers. . .

March 21, 2023 BDIA Editors Leave a comment

A major focus of asset managers continues to be environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. In response to investor and regulatory demands, ESG considerations and related-disclosures figure more prominently in investment strategies and investment vehicles. To help you make sense of it all attend ESG Considerations for Asset Managers.

Compliance, Enforcement, International, Regulatory, Standard of Care

What to Expect from the SEC Under the Biden Administration

February 10, 2021 Ronak V. Patel Leave a comment

We know there will be new leadership at the SEC. President Biden has already nominated Gary Gensler as the new SEC Chair. Mr. Gensler, who served as chairman of the CFTC under Obama, was widely perceived as an aggressive CFTC chairman during the financial crisis. At that time, this aggressiveness eased progressives’ concerns that President Obama was appointing a Wall Street executive (Gensler is an alumnus of Goldman Sachs) to head the CFTC. Now, opposition to Gensler is more likely to come from conservatives, who may regard him as an overzealous enforcer.

Meanwhile, the Commission is being led by acting Chair Allison Herren Lee. Chair Lee is a long-time SEC enforcement attorney who also acted as counsel to Commissioner Kara Stein before assuming her position as a commissioner in mid-2019. She is regarded as pro-enforcement and will be an ally of Mr. Gensler should he be confirmed as Chairman.

What will this new leadership mean for market participants?

The OCC’s 2019 annual report addresses anti-money laundering risks for financial institutions

January 21, 2020 Clifford E. Kirsch, Editor Leave a comment

The Annual Report summarizes the OCC developments against its 2019 strategic priorities, including its priority to reduce the burden of Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) compliance while protecting the financial system.

In 2019, the OCC, along with the other federal financial regulatory agencies, issued interpretive guidance statements on using collaborative arrangements to share resources to manage BSA/AML obligations, considering innovative technologies to meet BSA/AML compliance obligations, clarifying existing risk-focused approaches to examinations of financial institutions’ BSA/AML compliance programs, and clarifying suspicious activity report (SAR) filing requirements for banks providing financial services to hemp-related businesses.

The OCC appears very focused on encouraging banks to adopt innovative technologies to manage their BSA/AML compliance risks, and this trend should continue in 2020 as technological solutions evolve even further.