What better way to ensure compliance than to have an eye watching you while you work? What better eye than the ultimate evil eye of Sauron? It’s a product of the day at ThinkGeek. But since the day is April 1, it’s not real. (At least not yet.) Your workers can breathe a sigh of … Read more »
Fund Investing and Crowdfunding
As the Securities and Exchange Commission has been dragging its feet on new crowdfunding regulations, companies are finding a way to crowdfund using the current rules. The biggest challenge is dealing with the broker-dealer registration requirements. If you sell securities on a transaction basis, you are likelya broker-dealer and need to deal with the registration … Read more »
Compliance Bricks and Mortar for March 29
These are some compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention. Kathleen Edmond of Best Buy Receives ERC’s Carol R. Marshall Award for Innovation in Corporate Ethics Established last year as a posthumous honor to former ERC Board member Carol R. Marshall, the award recognizes a chief ethics and compliance officer for innovation and leadership in … Read more »
File Your Fund’s PPM With FINRA?
FINRA Rule 5123 requires each FINRA member firm that sells securities in a private placement, subject to certain exemptions, to file with FINRA a copy of any private placement memorandum, term sheet or other offering document the firm used within 15 calendar days of the date of the sale, or indicate that it did not … Read more »
Antifragile – Things That Gain from Disorder
Taleb is back, and he is even more brash and brilliant. Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s fame grew from his second book, The Black Swan, being timely released just before the 2008 financial crisis. Antifragile continues his narrative on probability and risk. The Black Swan took on the theory that the highly improbable was a lot more … Read more »
One Week Left to File Your Form ADV Update
Most advisory firms and fund managers end their fiscal year on December 31. Under the SEC Advisers Act Rule 0-4, you have 90 days to file your Form ADV update after the end of your fiscal year. Last year that put the filing deadline on March 30 because it was a leap year. The next … Read more »
Compliance Bricks and Mortar for March 22
These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention. NoDoz: Early Birds Needed to Work at SEC by Bruce Carton in Compliance Week What impact will White will have on the SEC? For one thing, it appears that those at the agency who work closely with the chairman will need to set … Read more »
Massachusetts Proposes New Regulations Related to Investment Adviser Representative Registration
On March 15, 2013, the Massachusetts Securities Division started the process to amend the regulations for investment adviser representative (“IAR”). The proposal would require an IAR applicant to submit to a review of the Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) of the applicant. The Division believes that it is in the public interest and for … Read more »
Not Quite Spring
Yet another heavy snowfall in Greater Boston. I spent my time this morning shoveling, instead of writing a new blog post. Read more »
How to Do Everything Wrong in a Securities Offering
I first looked at the First Choice Investments action by the Securities and Exchange Commission because it involved a real estate investment company. I thought it would be another to case to help me explore “What’s a Security“. Instead I found a train wreck, at least if what the SEC alleges is true. The company … Read more »