Tuesday, November 30, 2021
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently proposed a new reporting regime to increase transparency and efficiency in the securities-lending market. The proposal is a sweeping change and a somewhat novel approach to bringing securities lending out of the dark. While the merits of the proposal's approach will no doubt be thoroughly scrutinized and debated, so should its cost and who will bear that cost. While the potential benefits would seem to flow to all participants in the securities lending markets, the SEC's choice to place the reporting burden on lenders and their agents also burdens those loan participants (lenders particularly) with nearly the entire cost of compliance.
Categories: All, Commentary, Disclosure Regimes, Cross-Post
Tags: securities lending
Sunday, November 28, 2021
Make no mistake. The new 10c-1 disclosure proposal by the SEC is an Investor Protection Rule on steroids. It is also a profound escalation of regulatory support for Investor Self-Protection. Nothing less than a near real-time stock loan ticker will result, if enacted, that is intended to reveal U.S. loan rates and liquidity to the investing public for the first time in history.
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Sunday, November 21, 2021
On November 18, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed broad disclosure rules intended to "provide transparency in the securities lending market." As directed by the Dodd-Frank Act, the Commission proposed these rules to (1) supplement publicly available information, (2) close data gaps in the securities lending market, (3) minimize information asymmetries between market participants, and (5) provide market participants with access to pricing and other material information.
Further, the data elements proposed to be collected are intended to provide regulators with the information necessary to perform effective market surveillance. "This proposal would bring securities lending out of the dark," according to SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
Categories: All, Disclosure Regimes, Formal Regulatory Remedies, Cross-Post
Tags: securities lending, short selling, ESMA, Gensler
Monday, November 15, 2021
Certain challenges in securities finance can only be met with better data and newer data models. Market regulators now coping with investor demands for ESG-compliance will have to monitor the disclosures of regulated entities by combing through vast pools of stock loan and proxy voting data. Bank custodians and brokers, if tasked with validating the social propriety of their stock loans, will have to dive deep into customer profile data, deeper than either regulators or vendors can today access efficiently.
Categories: All, Commentary, Cross-Post
Tags: Proxy Voting, datasets, cross-border, Compliance, ESG
Monday, November 8, 2021
Master Criminals don’t usually confess in public. If prosecutors’ charges are true, Sanjay Shah is the leading figure in the largest reported tax swindle in history. Yet, Mr. Shah, unbowed, pleading his case to reporters, has openly admitted to borrowing the assets of widows and orphans in one country to kick-start a pyramid scheme of dividend capture trades, so as to swindle widows and orphans in other countries. Mr. Shah’s attorneys argue that his trades were not illegal. Mr. Shah, according to the reporters, claims everything he did was legal, and then he appeals to the Law of the Jungle:
“If there’s a big sign on the street saying, ‘please help yourself’, then me or somebody else would go and help themselves.”
Tags: ESMA, cross-border