Bruce Carton

Instead of trying to come up with new ways to repeatedly express public “disappointment” in the SEC, says enforcement blogger Bruce Carton, perhaps the U.S. Senate could simply do its own job and vote on the two nominees that President Obama nominated back in October 2015. Carton explores reasons behind the delay.

A disturbing video of a Chinese bank’s effort to improve employee performance — through public, violent spankings of employees — was posted yesterday. The video, which will make even the most hardened U.S. compliance officer cringe, shows a line of employees from Changzhi Rural Commercial Bank being subjected to an awful “team-building” workshop in which a corporate trainer spanks them with a paddle in front of a roomful of over 200 of their co-workers.

Constitutional challenges to the SEC’s use of administrative proceedings to carry out enforcement actions continue to find no success in federal circuit court. Last week, the Eleventh Circuit joined the three other circuits that have considered and rejected such challenges. More from Bruce Carton.

At a hearing this week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tried to hang her “disappointment” on SEC Chair Mary Jo White for the third time in 12 months. This time, to Sen. Warren’s surprise, Chair White was ready to fight disappointment with disappointment.

Bacchus is the Roman god of wine and intoxication (equated with the Greek Dionysus). “Bacchanalia,” or orgies in honor of Dionysus, were introduced in Rome around 200 BCE but eventualy got so out of hand that they were forbidden by the Roman Senate in 186 BCE. Roughly 2,000 years later, Bacchus made an appearance in the courtroom of U.S. Judge William H. Pauley III of the Southern District of New York.

The SEC brought its latest case under Regulation S-P today, announcing a settled administrative proceeding against Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. Morgan Stanley agreed to pay a $1 million penalty to settle the agency’s charges that it failed to protect customer data, some of which was hacked and offered for sale online.

Stephen Cohen, associate director for the SEC’s Enforcement Division, plans to leave the agency later this month after 12 years of service. A senior member of the Commission’s enforcement staff, Cohen joined the SEC in 2004 and has served as associate director since 2011. Bruce Carton has more.

Enforcement blogger Bruce Carton looks at a recent insider trading case, in which South Africa’s securities regulator agreed to reduce the defendant’s penalty because he claimed he “did not apply his mind to the applicable legislation at the time of the trading” but was now deeply sorry for his actions.