Sky Blog
Regulatory agencies are created to act in the public interest but often end up acting in the interests of those regulated. This is known as regulatory capture. The theory of regulatory capture may be given both a broad and narrow …
Attempts by U.S. federal officials to regulate corporate governance have been criticized by prominent scholars as “quackery.”[1] Major reforms like Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank may in fact do far more harm than good. But what if these efforts at healing …
Good morning and thank you, Dean (Trevor) Morrison (of New York University Law School) for that very kind introduction. It is a pleasure to be here today and I want to thank the NYU Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement
Today (November 16), we will consider the future of financial regulation and, more specifically, whether the Dodd-Frank Act went too far.[1]. I am I happy to share my views with you, but before I begin, I must give
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White, after nearly four years as the agency’s head, today announced that she intends to leave at the end of the Obama Administration. Under Chair White’s leadership, the Commission strengthened protections for investors …
The use of digital currencies, like Bitcoin, is becoming widespread. To date, much of the focus on digital currencies has been directed at their potential to substitute for or complement fiat currencies, but the true innovation lies in their underlying …
Thank you, Michael [Barr], for that kind introduction. Thank you also to the University of Michigan and the Office of Financial Research for organizing this important conference. I am pleased to be here with you today. This conference is a …
Two major challenges have arisen for financial services companies since the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008. On the expense side, post-crisis fines have exceeded $200 billion, and the ongoing cost of regulation and compliance has become massive. On the …
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the “CFPB” or “Bureau”) made headlines in FinTech on October 24, 2016. First, the Bureau released its first-ever Project Catalyst report on promoting consumer-friendly innovation (the “Report”). The Report summarizes the work conducted by Project …
There is an increasing worldwide focus on trying to end the problem of “too big to fail” (“TBTF”). Regulators are concerned that systemically important financial firms might engage in excessive risk-taking because they would profit from a success and be …
On October 19, 2016, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (“the Board”), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“the OCC”), and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“the FDIC”, and the three agencies collectively, “the Agencies”) …
In a September 22, 2016, post on this blog, available here, Professor Wulf Kaal asked in the title to his piece, “What Happens When Technology Is Faster Than the Law?” He noted that while “innovation driven by science and …
The latest Wells Fargo bank scandal has rekindled debates about breaking up banks that are too big to fail, too big to manage or too big to comply.
Echoing the debate between Louis Brandeis and Teddy Roosevelt in the Progressive …
On September 23, U.S. District Judge William Pauley refused to approve a settlement between the CFTC and Deutsche Bank covering the bank’s failure to report swaps properly. Instead of rubber-stamping the settlement, the judge asked the parties for additional briefing. …
Many contemporary discussions of finance or of subjects that implicate finance – for example, federal budgetary or finance-regulatory policy – seem to be systematically colored by a seldom-examined presumption. We call this presumption the “intermediated scarce private capital myth.”
Like …
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on October 11 that, in fiscal year 2016, it filed 868 enforcement actions exposing financial reporting-related misconduct by companies and their executives and misconduct by registrants and gatekeepers, as the agency continued to enhance …
Oral argument in the insider trading case, Salman v. United States, prompted dozens of questions related to the key issue before the U.S Supreme Court: whether an investment banker personally benefitted directly or indirectly when he disclosed to his brother …
Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC” or the “Commission”) announced its second whistleblower retaliation case since the enactment of Dodd-Frank’s anti-retaliation provisions in 2011. The In the Matter of International Game Technology [1] case is also …
Designing sensible defined-contribution retirement-plan rules is a challenging task since most Americans do not have sufficient financial acumen and self-discipline to manage their own retirement portfolio. In spite of the fact that retirement plans constitute the bulk of their savings, …