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Selflessly, Blaine Doyle recently attended a presentation here in Chicago by the SEC and CFTC, so you didn’t have to do it yourself.  Here is his recount of the highlights. – Alan

Anyone who has sat through a talk by financial regulators is undoubtedly familiar with the refrain from the individuals that they do not speak for the Commission and that the opinions offered are their own.  Even with that disclosure (and they ALWAYS make that disclosure), regulators are still notoriously tight lipped when it comes to just about anything, but especially if it relates to Enforcement.  However, when two high ranking officials from the CFTC and SEC decided to present, as the star attractions, at the Chicago Bar Association, they had no choice but to spill the beans.  While nobody would accuse them of having given up state secrets, they did offer some insights into where their respective Commissions are and, more importantly, where they are going.  With that in mind, here is what they had to say (with special emphasis on the securities side):

While the government shutdown of early 2019 is ancient history to most of us, the speakers from both the CFTC and SEC emphasized the disruption that the break caused to their respective organizations and personnel.  Moreover, on the issue of government funding, they both noted that their organizations are understaffed from past hiring freezes and are trying to backfill positions that have been open for some time.  The speaker from the CFTC mentioned that in some respects his organization had been in “triage” mode due to personnel shortages and that he was hoping that the additional hires will help ease the work load.  So why does this matter to the reader?  If you work in the industry, it would be reasonable to expect that as both organizations hire additional staff, scrutiny on registrants and, possibly, the number of enforcement actions will increase in the coming years.…
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My partner, Ken Berg, writes about his recent meeting with the NCLA, a group that anyone who has an administrative practice should be familiar with.  –  Alan

I had the privilege of being invited to attend in Washington, D.C., on February 28, 2019, the inaugural panel discussion hosted by a relatively new nonprofit civil rights…

A little over a year ago, I blogged about a FINRA Enforcement action against an Ameriprise rep – but, notably, not Ameriprise – to highlight what a great job the firm did in ensuring that its sales force was not engaging in any undisclosed outside business activities.  It had a robust supervisory procedure, with multiple…

Here is an important post by my partner, Ken Berg, regarding SEC administrative proceedings, and what we can expect following the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Lucia. – Alan

By now everyone knows the US Supreme Court declared the SEC’s administrative proceedings unconstitutional because the ALJs were improperly hired by the SEC staff instead of…

On January 12, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the constitutionality of the SEC’s appointment of its in-house administrative law judges (“ALJs” for short).

As we’ve discussed previously on the blog, a trip to SCOTUS seemed inevitable after the 10th Circuit handed down its decision in Bandimere, concluding that the SEC ALJs…