On June 7, 2022, Senators Cynthia M. Lummis (R-WY) and Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced a bill to regulate digital assets and promote financial innovation. The proposed legislation is the first significant, bipartisan effort to apply comprehensive regulation to digital assets.
On 18 November 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) published for comment proposed amendments to the broker-dealer recordkeeping rules with respect to the use of electronic storage. The principal change would be to eliminate the current requirement that electronic records of broker-dealers be stored solely in a “write once, read many” (WORM) format.
The SEC Division of Examinations (Exams) recently published a Risk Alert discussing observations on investment adviser fee calculations resulting from a review of approximately 130 firms. This 2021 Risk Alert supplements a prior alert on the same topic that Exams (then, the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations) published in 2018.
In yet another step forward on the SEC’s path toward a comprehensive ESG disclosure framework, on September 22, 2021, the Staff of the Division of Corporation Finance issued a Sample Letter to Companies on Climate Change Disclosure, relying on the Commission’s 2010 Climate Change Guidance.
In a keynote interview for Private Equity International, Michael Fieweger and Derek Liu consider opportunities and explore the potential challenges and conflicts of SPACs.
The SEC today issued its first Order under its Whistleblower Rules in quite some time, citing a registered broker-dealer with violating Rule 21F-17 of the Securities Exchange Act, which precludes conduct that could impede anyone from communicating with the Commission about potential securities laws violations.