Bruce Carton

Usually when the headline to a post reads something like, “What Tibetan Goatherders Can Teach us About Lawyering,” the true answer is — nothing. Bucking this trend, however, is compliance guru Doug Cornelius’ Great Dane, Ghost, who actually does dispense some wisdom in Cornelius’ post today entitled, “Compliance Lessons From My Dog.” Cornelius, Chief Compliance Officer […]

Yesterday, President Barack Obama proposed a fiscal year 2015 budget of $1.7 billion for the Securities and Exchange Commission–a 26% increase over the agency’s FY 2014 budget.  As discussed here, the fact that the president is seeking $1.7 billion for the SEC is hardly the end of the agency’s budget story for FY 2015. Last month, for […]

In its Form 10-K filed yesterday, Morgan Stanley disclosed that it has reached a tentative agreement with the staff of the SEC’s Enforcement Division to resolve the agency’s investigation into subprime RMBS transactions the firm sponsored and underwrote in 2007. Morgan Stanley stated that under the agreement, which has not yet been presented to, or accepted by, […]

Are you a “rat trader?” Probably not, but if that phrase is new to you (as it was to me until today), allow me to enlighten you. Today I stumbled up on the following headline from the Chinese publication, Global Times: “Rat trader faces 5-10 years for insider dealing.” Rat trader?? It turns out that in […]

As I noted here, Mark Cuban was in D.C. yesterday to speak at an event sponsored by law firm Cooley LLP that focused on his SEC insider trading case. For whatever reason I assumed he would be headed out of town yesterday but it turns out that Cuban had other D.C.-based plans today — at the […]

The SEC has named Sharon B. Binger as the new director of its Philadelphia Regional Office. Binger fills the vacancy created in October 2013, when Dan Hawke stepped down as director to focus on leading the Enforcement Division’s Market Abuse Unit. As director of the office, Binger is responsible for overseeing SEC enforcement and examinations in the […]

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued an interesting ruling in the case of SEC v. Contorinis that provides the SEC with an additional weapon in its effort to deter insider trading. The defendant in the case, Joseph Contorinis, was a portfolio manager at Jeffries & Company, Inc. who had investment control over […]

As I have noted here before, attorneys in the SEC are actually part of a union–National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 293. When I last checked in on the goings-on at Chapter 293, it was on red alert about theoretical time limits being placed on SEC employee lunch breaks that the agency did not seem to be actually […]