It wasn’t much, but given the complete lack of movement in the languishing nominations of Hester Peirce and Lisa Fairfax to be SEC commissioners, we’ll take it. On Thursday, May 19, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee finally voted to advance the nominations of Peirce and Fairfax to the full Senate for a vote.
Bruce Carton
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
Congress to SEC: You’ll get nothing and like it
Twice in recent years, the House Appropriations Committee’s approved budget for the SEC has been $222 million less than the SEC requested. For FY 2017, the SEC requested a budget of $1.781 billion. Anyone care to guess what the Committee approved?
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
60 Minutes: The inside story of the fall of Roomy Khan and Raj Rajaratnam
Bruce Carton offers a look at a 60 Minutes piece called “Inside Edge” about former stock analyst Roomy Khan, who was caught early by federal prosecutors investigating insider-trading by hedge funds and ultimately became a critical government informant in the criminal case that brought down Galleon Group’s Raj Rajaratnam and dozens of others.
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
SEC’s whistleblower office on winning roll
The SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower has been on a winning streak, which continued this week as it announced an award of between $5 million and $6 million to a former company insider whose tips uncovered hidden securities violations. The office has now awarded more than $67 million to 29 whistleblowers since it launched in 2011. Bruce Carton has more.
Posted inData Privacy
SEC’s former AMU co-chief Marshall Sprung joins Blackstone Group
Marshall S. Sprung, former co-chief of the SEC Division of Enforcement’s Asset Management Unit since 2013, is reportedly joining Blackstone Group LP as the firm’s global head of compliance. As emphasized in a speech last week by SEC Enforcement Director Andrew Ceresney, the Enforcement Division has recently increased its scrutiny of private equity firms.
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
After rejection, SEC whistleblower’s persistence leads to $3.5 million award
On Friday, the SEC announced its latest whistleblower award — a sizable one that is noteworthy for at least three reasons.
Posted inFrom the Archive
SEC in the movies: ‘The Big Short’
The SEC and the topic of “regulatory capture” make a brief but memorable appearance in The Big Short, the Academy Award-winning film based on the best-selling book by Michael Lewis.
Posted inFrom the Archive
What is the ‘KickAss Insider Trading Forum?’
It seems to me that if you are actually able to create an online forum of hackers and others that allows you to engage in profitable insider trading, that you might want to keep that on the “down low.” According to a recently-published interview, the “KickAss Insider Trading Forum” disagrees.
Posted inFrom the Archive
Pros vs. Joes: SEC enforcement headlines edition
Yesterday, however, the UK’s Daily Mail weighed in on the SEC’s recent Stephen Ferrone case with a headline that shows the difference between pros like itself and the rest of us average Joes in the “click economy.”
Posted inFrom the Archive
2016 SEC trial scorecard update: agency moves to 4-0 in trial verdicts
Yesterday, the SEC continued its undefeated streak in its FY 2016 federal court trials. The SEC announced that on April 29, following a two week trial in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, a jury returned a verdict in favor of the SEC in its case against Stephen D. Ferrone.