On September 16, 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced the latest sanctions in a continuing enforcement initiative against certain hedge fund advisers and private equity firms that have participated in an offering of a stock after short selling it during a restricted period in contravention of SEC rules.…
This article was originally published in The Wall Street Journal‘s CIO Journal on September 11, 2014. Today as companies increasingly realize the value of strong cybersecurity, those CIOs who successfully implement an effective cybersecurity system should be viewed as a critical part of the revenue generation effort. An effective CIO…
In a press release yesterday, the CFTC issued an exemptive letter, CFTC Letter No. 14-116, providing relief from certain provisions of CFTC Regulations 4.7(b) and 4.13(a)(3) that restrict marketing to the public. The exemptive relief was issued to make CFTC Regulations 4.7(b) and 4.13(a)(3) consistent with SEC Rule 506(c) of…
China imposes controls on the inflow and outflow of foreign exchange. Given the involvement of State Administration of Foreign Exchange and various other governmental agencies in the process, repatriating funds from China can be a trap for the unwary. Foreign investors should familiarize themselves with the approval requirements and procedures.
The relentless attention being paid to cyber-attacks is driving companies to increase cyber security budgets and purchases. In turn, this has led institutional investors and asset managers to see potentially massive returns associated with companies in the cyber security market. Indeed a number of companies that have gone public have…
At the Intersection of Faith and Illiteracy. In what may have been one of the more interesting weeks this year for SEC enforcement actions, the Enforcement Division brought a number of actions last week, several of which will make you wonder if the warnings that we issued when the JOBS…
The Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) charged Kevin McGrath, a partner at a New York investor relations firm with insider trading. According to the SEC complaint, McGrath allegedly received confidential information from clients in order to prepare press releases. The SEC discovered McGrath used non-public information from two different…
Private equity firms were put on notice last year that they may be subject to registration as broker dealers when David Blass, head of the Division of Markets and Trading at the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), provided his insights at an industry conference. Since that time, the SEC has…
In a move that should place securities lawyers and their clients on notice, Commissioner Kara Stein of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) recently indicated that lawyers may become targets of SEC enforcement actions when a registrant has been poorly advised by its attorney and the result of that advice…
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) staff recently issued guidance to registered CPOs regarding the delegation of commodity pool operator (“CPO”) functions from persons that might otherwise be subject to CPO registration. For non-natural persons delegating CPO functions to a registered CPO, the relief from registration is conditioned on the…