Remember that time in 2020, when the pandemic was just beginning and its dangers were not yet widely appreciated? That was when a group of United States Senators received closed-door briefings on the imminent crisis presented by COVID-19. What did these senators do right after their secret briefings? Alert the mostly unsuspecting public? Nope. They… Read More >>
SEC Advances T+1 via Proposed Rules Changes
The SEC has given a major boost to the movement to shorten settlement times in U.S. equities markets from T+2 to T+1 via a vote this week to formally propose rule changes that tighten clearing and settlement time-frames and facilitate T+1 by mid-2024. The SEC wants the proposed changes because they will “reduce the credit,… Read More >>
NY AG, Regulators Charge Safeguard Metals with Fraud
New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed suit against Safeguard Metals LLC, a precious metals company, and its owner and manager, Jeffrey S. Santulan, alleging that they defrauded investors, including many seniors, across New York and the United States. The lawsuit, originally filed by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and a bipartisan coalition… Read More >>
SEC Moves to Revamp Form PF & Other Briefs
SEC Lowers the PE Threshold for Form PF The SEC is proposing changes to Form PF, which is the reporting form “for certain SEC-registered investment advisers to private funds,” including lowering the threshold for firms that come into scope for the reporting requirement. The SEC proposal “would decrease the reporting threshold for large private equity… Read More >>
FINRA Alleges DriveWealth Broke Regulation SHO Rules
FINRA, the self-regulatory organization for broker-dealers, has censured and fined DriveWealth Institutional LLC, formerly known as Cuttone & Co., $100,000 for alleged violations of Regulation SHO rules. Last February, DriveWealth Holdings, Inc. acquired Cuttone & Co. and renamed it to DriveWealth Institutional. The renamed firm “specializes in execution services for institutional and broker-dealer clients. The… Read More >>
T+0 Settlement via New Exchange & Other Briefs
SEC Approves BSTX’s Launch The SEC has blessed the creation of a regulated, national securities exchange facility, dubbed BSTX, that can settle instruments in one day (T+0) while providing blockchain-based market data reporting, officials say. The BSTX is a trading facility of BOX Exchange and a joint venture of tZero Group, Inc., and BOX Digital… Read More >>
Gensler Mulls New Cybersecurity Rules via Expanded SCI
SEC Chair Gary Gensler wants to breathe new life into the fight against cyberattacks and is calling for a refresh of Regulation Systems Compliance and Integrity (Reg SCI) that might mean new cybersecurity hygiene and incident reporting rules for investment companies, investment advisers, and broker-dealers. During his speech for the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s… Read More >>
Credit Suisse Securities Settles Conflicts of Interest Case
FINRA, the financial industry’s non-profit self-regulatory authority, has fined Credit Suisse Securities $9 million for “failing to comply with securities laws and rules designed to protect investors, including the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Customer Protection Rule and FINRA rules requiring firms to disclose potential conflicts of interest when issuing research reports.” In a formulation that’s… Read More >>
tZero’s ATS Fumbled Disclosures: SEC
The SEC and the blockchain-based, broker-dealer tZero ATS have reached a settlement in a case where the regulator alleged that the firm while trading National Market System and digitally enhanced securities failed to make timely disclosures via Form ATS before key order book data was shared with third parties. tZero ATS, which is based in… Read More >>
Crypto Crime Hits $14B in 2021: Report
Crypto investors beware. The good news: Crypto-crime is “becoming a smaller and smaller part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.” That’s according to a blog post “preview” of the 2022 “Crypto Crime Report” from Chainalysis, a cloud-based, blockchain data and analysis platform provider founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York City. The not-so-good news: Crypto crime… Read More >>
