News
New Money Fund Reforms: Safer and More Resilient Cash Collateral Pools?
More liquidity, transparency, and safety for institutional investors? The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently adopted final rules on money market (2a-7) fund reforms. These reforms are designed to make money market funds more resilient and liquid, potentially making them safer and more attractive vehicles for mutual funds to use as collateral pools for their […]
SEC Adopts Long Awaited Securities Lending Disclosure Rule
Persuasive Public Comment Helps Mold the Final Rule The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has adopted a new rule, rule 10c-1, to increase transparency in the securities lending market. The rule requires certain persons to report information about securities loans to a registered national securities association (RNSA). The RNSA will then make certain information publicly […]
Untold Stories of Market Manipulation: Archegos Capital
How Securities Lenders Unraveled the $100 billion Pump and Dump Scheme By Ed Blount and Dan Hammond “In a matter of days, the companies at the center of Archegos’s trading scheme lost more than $100 billion in market capitalization, Archegos owed billions of dollars more than it had on hand, and Archegos collapsed.”U.S. Federal Bureau […]
Archegos Litigation Heats Up
Rogue Trader’s Collapse Still Ripples Through the Financial Industry In March 2021, Archegos Capital Management, a family office run by Bill Hwang, collapsed in a spectacular fashion, leaving its counterparties with over $10 billion in losses. The collapse of Archegos was one of the largest hedge fund failures in history, and it has since been […]
Modernizing Beneficial Ownership Reporting
The Industry Waits for Final Action from the SEC In early 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed several significant changes to Regulations 13D and 13G, which require certain persons to disclose their beneficial ownership of equity securities. These changes seek to improve the transparency and timeliness of beneficial ownership reporting and to make […]
The SEC Unveils its Agenda for 2023
A Busy Mix of New Business and Old In its recently updated regulatory flexibility agenda, the Securities and Exchange Commission has announced its regulatory priorities for 2023. A mix of old and new business, the Commission’s 2023 plans include finalizing 29 existing proposals and placing 23 new proposals up for consideration. In a January 4, […]
SEC Beefs Up Proxy Voting Disclosure
Does meaningful proxy voting transparency reveal too much? On November 2, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finalized the first of its market data rule proposals. The amendments to form N-PX bring greater detail, consistency, and usability to the proxy voting information reported by mutual funds. These changes came in response to investors, who […]
Common Domain Model Paves the Way to the Future
“The common domain model is a natural starting place for DLT-based smart contracts” The Common Domain Model (CDM), the International Securities Lending Association’s (ISLA) ambitious securities lending standardization project, is a step closer to reality. And industry leaders already see opportunities for application. In a report jointly produced with Linklaters, ISLA outlined the project’s progress […]
Serious Doubts About the SEC’s Short Sale Proposals
Disclosures Could be a Real Challenge for Managers and Brokers In February of 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed new disclosures to provide more transparency into institutional investors’ short-selling activity. According to Chairman Gensler, collecting more granular data from large short sellers “would help us to better oversee the markets and understand the role […]
Bringing Crypto Asset Activities Into the Regulatory Perimeter
Tech Innovation Meets Prudential Regulation A collection of the globe’s most significant securities trade associations[1] joined forces to file a comprehensive response to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s (BCBS) second public consultation on the prudential treatment of banks’ crypto-asset exposures. The September 30, 2022, letter voiced support for the design of the crypto-asset exposure […]