Investment Adviser

In their first bipartisan action as heads of the House Financial Services Committee, Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Ranking Member Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) introduced a bill to implement preventive measures against illegal insider trading.

H.R. 624 would do so by mandating certain restrictions on when issuers and issuer insiders are able to buy or sell securities during issuer-adopted trading windows, the number of trading plans they can adopt and how often they can modify their trading plans, among other things.

Find out what the Securities and Exchange Commission would have to do to implement the measure.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has identified and charged nine parties for taking part in a scheme to hack the agency’s EDGAR filing system to extract nonpublic financial information to engage in insider trading.

This was not the SEC’s first run-in with some of the defendants. In 2015, the hacker, Ukrainian Oleksandr Ieremenko, and some of the traders involved in the EDGAR scheme were charged in connection with a similar plot to hack unpublished information held by newswire services for the same purpose.

Find out more details about the cybersecurity issues raises by the case.

Alleging that he repeatedly placed illegal trades using confidential information, the Securities and Exchange Commission recently charged an investment bank employee with engaging in insider trading.

The trades the employee made approximately $140,000 from trades he initiated in advance of deals for which the bank was providing investment advisory services.

Find out more about the charges and what is being required of the defendant.

Two of three panel judges of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s ruling on the Department of Labor’s (DOL) fiduciary rule, vacating the rule in its entirety.

The ruling signals victory for a coalition of financial and business trade groups who challenged the 2016 rule, shortly after President Barack Obama’s administration finalized it.

Find out what details the judges offered relating to their opinions on the matter.

The House recently passed bipartisan bills that could benefit financial institutions and investors. The bills include provisions that would amend the Volcker Rule, restrict federal regulators from engaging in activities previously permitted under the Operation Choke Point initiative and help small- and mid-sized mortgage lenders.

The bills are H.R. 2706, dubbed the “Financial Institution Customer Protection Act,” H.R.3971, known as the “Community Institution Mortgage Relief Act,” and H.R. 3093, the “Investor Clarity and Bank Parity Act.”

Find out more about the three pieces of legislation. 

The Department of Labor’s proposal to delay the applicability of amendments to its fiduciary rule has been approved by the Office of Management and Budget.

The delay, noted in a proposed rule published in the Federal Register on Aug. 31, would delay the end of the transition period by 18 months.

Make sure you are up to date on what this delay would mean if it would be finalized.  

Anyone banking on a redefining of what a “fiduciary” is as of April 10 likely will have to wait at least 60 days more while the Department of Labor (DOL) examines its final rule altering the word’s definition under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.

The DOL proposed a rule to delay the applicability of the new rule for 60 days for review purposes, in accordance with a presidential memorandum directing the department to do so.

Read on to learn more about the rule and what the delay means.