Still in the thick of the recent financial turmoil, the Securities and Exchange Commission began its new fiscal year Oct. 1, with as much uncertainty about its future as there has been in many years. There are far more questions than answers right now. What should be its priorities? Cleaning up the sub-prime mess? Financial […]
Bruce Carton
Posted inFrom the Archive
The SEC’s September Surge, Part II: Boosting Stats Through Deregistration “Filler” Cases?
As I wrote about here recently, SEC enforcement actions surge each September as the SEC tries to boost its stats for the fiscal year, which ends September 30. The WSJ had an interesting article last week that acknowledged this issue and digs another level down to ask whether the SEC is bringing record numbers of […]
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
Trend Watch: “Where Was the SEC?” Videos
You know you can count on Enforcement Action to keep a watchful eye out for SEC-related trends, so here’s the latest micro-trend I’m seeing: the major news networks take the latest twist in the financial crisis and make a video about it asking, “Where Was the SEC?” The first example of this came a few […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
The SEC’s Office of Risk Assessment: An Army of One
I feel like I’ve been patient with the SEC’s Office of Risk Assessment, but after today’s Congressional testimony by Lynn Turner, former chief accountant of the SEC, I’m giving up. OK, yes, I poked fun at the ORA when Chairman Donaldson first announced back in 2003 that the SEC was going to create a new […]
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
Like Clockwork, the SEC’s September Surge Returns Again
Each year in the last couple weeks of September, the flow of SEC Litigation Releases announcing new cases filed by the Enforcement Division seems to turn from a slow but steady drip to a firehose blast. This year has been no exception, as the chart above indicates. By my quick count, after averaging just under […]
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
China’s Sarbanes-Oxley
I was just reading Richard Meyer’s interesting article on Compliance Week (here) about “CSOX,” China’s version of governance and financial reporting akin to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States, which Chinese authorities would like to have in place by the middle of next summer. “CSOX”? People, please! I demand that the short name for […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
The SEC is Twittering!
Admit it. Even after reading the title of this post you have no idea what it is about. And I know you didn’t learn about Twitter on Compliance Week because I just got a big fat zero for my search result when searching for “Twitter” in the Compliance Week search box. So… “Twittering?” Is that […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
International Insider Trading Enforcement Showing New Signs of Life
The prosecution of the offense of insider trading has historically been confined largely to the United States. Even the US had not aggressively pursued insider trading until the late 1980s, when the SEC began a high-profile campaign highlighted by cases against Dennis Levine and Ivan Boesky. Although other countries have over the past decade or […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Enforcement Action: Oncology Edition
So which is worse — inducing shareholders to purchase $6.5 million of your company’s stock by falsely depicting the company as being on the verge of success curing cancer? Or defrauding a federal judge by falsely depicting yourself as having cancer such that you are so ill that you cannot participate in a potential SEC […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
Plan B
Yes, Treasury Secretary Paulson has a plan to deal with the current financial crisis. But so do “NBA Power Couple Doug and Jackie Christie.” Read “NBA Power Couple Doug and Jackie Christie Buy AIG Stock Promoting Everyone To Help With The Financial Crisis At Hand”