Investor Protections

In one of its first settlements between federal regulators and a Blockchain provider, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently reached a $24 million settlement with Block.one over allegations that the company conducted an unregistered initial coin offering (ICO), which raised the equivalent of several billion dollars in digital assets in about a year. 

The settlement shines a light on the question as to whether digital assets should be treated as securities, rather than currency.

Learn more about the nuances involved in this matter.

More than a year after a federal court vacated the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, the Securities and Exchange Commission finalized its own set of standards requiring investment advisors to act in their clients’ best interests.

The agency recently approved a package of rulemakings with the goal of enhancing the quality and transparency of relationships retail investors enter into with investment advisers and broker-dealers. 

Find out how the new rules differ from those proposed by DOL. 

Wells Fargo’s fourth quarter high-end estimate for its total losses related to legal actions was half a billion dollars more than what it projected in the third quarter.

This revelation comes as the embattled bank works to resolve investigations into its sales practices by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice. 

Find out more details about the projected losses.

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.

Citigroup recently agreed to pay more than $19 million in fines to the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for mortgage-related issues and unauthorized trading. 

The Fed fined the bank $8.6 million, citing improper handling of residential mortgage-related documents, while the SEC levied $10.5 million in fines against the company over allegations that employees engaged in unauthorized proprietary trading, and for failing to detect fraudulent loans issued by one of its subsidiaries.  

Read on to find out more about the settlements.

Wells Fargo has agreed to pay a $2.09 billion civil money penalty for misrepresenting the value of mortgages it originated and sold to investors who suffered billions of dollars in losses as a result.

The Department of Justice alleged that the bank knew income information included in the loans in question, from 2005 to 2007, was inaccurate, and that the loans were of lower quality than the bank represented. Investors, including federally insured financial institutions, lost billions of dollars investing in residential mortgage-backed securities containing loans originated by Wells Fargo.  

Find out more about the charges against the bank that led to the settlement.

Among the 32 legislative pieces comprising a substitute amendment to the bipartisan JOBS and Investor Confidence Act, also known as S. 488 and the JOBS Act 3.0, are provisions affecting the regulatory climate in ways that would be beneficial to financial markets, and help small businesses retain capital required to grow.

Those provisions first were introduced in bills H.R. 4292, the Financial Institution Living Will Improvement Act of 2017, and H.R. 4566, the Alleviating Stress Test Burdens to Help Investors Act (Sections 2 and 3).

Find out what Dodd-Frank changes those measures propose and what other provisions are included in the package.

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.

The five federal regulators have proposed numerous changes to the Volcker Rule intended to reduce compliance burdens for financial entities.

By eliminating or modifying requirements the agencies believe are unnecessary to effectively implement the rule’s provisions, regulators hope to streamline it without diminishing the safety and soundness of banking entities.

Find out details about what the regulators are proposing to change and what impact the proposal could have on the industry.