Sky Blog
With the stock market regularly surpassing record highs, housing prices surging 13.6 percent in 2013 alone, and unemployment down to 6.7 percent, it is easy to forget just how dire the economic outlook appeared just five years ago. It is …
INTRODUCTION
On June 24, 2014, the House of Representatives voted 265 to 144 to pass H.R. 4413, entitled the “Customer Protection and End-User Relief Act” (the “Reauthorization Act”). The Reauthorization Act reauthorizes the operations of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission …
Nearly four years after the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank Act”), on June 25, 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) adopted its first in a series of final rules aimed at cross-border …
High frequency trading has more enemies than friends, but the key question is what are the costs of reform. Attorney General Schneiderman’s pending suit against Barclays PLC for allegedly misrepresenting that its dark pool (known as “LX”) was “safe” from …
On June 16, 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued an order against Paradigm Capital Management, Inc. (Paradigm), a registered investment adviser, and its principal for engaging in principal trades without effective client disclosure and consent, and for retaliating …
Six months after issuing regulations to implement the Volcker Rule[1] (the “Rule”), the Federal Reserve Board, the other federal bank regulators and the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Agencies”) on June 10 issued guidance on the Rule in the form …
The following remarks were delivered by Commissioner Kara M. Stein of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission before the Peterson Institute for International Economics on June 12, 2014. A copy of the speech is also available here.
Thank you, …
The following post comes to us from Henry T. C. Hu, Professor at the University of Texas School of Law. It is based on his recent paper, “Disclosure Universes and Modes of Information: Banks, Innovation, and Divergent Regulatory Quests,” which …
The following post comes to us from Michael W. Peregrine, Partner at McDermott Will & Emery, Andrew C. Liazos, head of McDermott’s executive compensation practice, and Timothy J. Cotter, Managing Director at Sullivan, Cotter, and Associates, Inc.
Governing boards should …
On May 8, 2014, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Board (the “FRB”) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (the “Proposed Rule”) implementing the financial institutions concentration limit provision in new Section 14 of …
The following post comes to us from James F. Reda, Managing Director, Kimberly A. Glass, Principal, and David M. Schmidt, Senior Consultant, all in the HR & Compensation Consulting Practice at Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. It is based on …
On March 21, 2014, the Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (“Division”) of the CFTC issued a no-action relief letter (the “2014 Letter”),1 to temporarily allow entities to deal in utility operations-related swaps, as defined in the 2014 …
The following comes to us from Paul C. Hilal, a Partner at Pershing Square Capital Management, a New York City-based hedge fund founded in 2004.
Is shareholder activism good for the world?
A simple question, and yet it’s the subject …
Our Blog’s most recent Marketplace for Ideas series has considered whether the SEC should tighten its rules under the Williams Act, which now require that investors must disclose purchases of a 5% or greater stake in public companies within ten …
This year’s “SEC Speaks” conference in Washington, D.C., was most notable for an obvious shift in the SEC’s enforcement priorities. Several significant issues and efforts that had been the subject of extensive discussion last year – including financial crisis and …
The following post comes to us from Maria von Tippelskirch, Assistant Professor, University of Hamburg and LL.M. candidate, Columbia Law School.
The Dodd-Frank Act protects whistleblowers from retaliation by their employers. Yet it is not clear whether this protection is …
The Federal Reserve’s recent Dodd-Frank enhanced prudential standards final rule subjects foreign banking organizations with ≥ $50 billion in U.S. assets (“Foreign Bank”) to a qualitative liquidity framework. Among other things, the qualitative liquidity framework requires a Foreign …
The following remarks were delivered by Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C. at the Institute of International Bankers 25th Annual Washington Conference on March 3, 2014. A copy of the speech is …
The following post is based on an article by Professor Steven Schwarcz of Duke Law School entitled Intrinsic Imbalance: The Impact of Income Disparity on Financial Regulation, which documents and examines the consequences of the extraordinary two-to-one income disparity …