Daily Compliance News: July 11, 2025, The What is a COI Edition
Nonprofit Basics: Conflict of Interest Policies and Best Practices for Approving Insider Compensation
Nonprofit Basics: Insider Transactions and Nonprofits – What’s the Big Deal?
Conflicts of Interest in Healthcare and Elsewhere
Payment for Order Flow (PFOF) and Gamification: Your Questions Answered
Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 124: Listen and Learn -- Duty of Loyalty (Corporations)
Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 282: Listen and Learn -- Duty of Loyalty (Corporations)
What to Do When Your University, FBI, or DOJ Knocks on Your Door: Responding to University, Criminal, and Civil Investigations
Videocast: Asset management regulation in 2020 videocast series – The ADV season
Videocast: Asset management regulation in 2020 videocast series – DOL: What’s ahead
Podcast: Credit Funds: Compliance Considerations for Valuation
CONVERGE18-Preview Podcasts-David Bunker on COIs in the Gig Economy
Podcast - Credit Funds: A Framework for Addressing and Mitigating Conflicts of Interest
Day 7 of One Month to Better Investigations and Report-How Investigations Inform Remediation
Day 15 of One Month to Better Compliance Through HR-Employment Separation Issues
Bill Beutler on Editing Wikipedia
Rules for rewarding 'super' condo board members
Bill on Bankruptcy: US Airways Need a Merger More than AMR
Private fund advisers continually balance their ongoing responsibility to ensure that the funds they advise comply with such funds’ governing documents and their responsibility to ensure their own compliance with applicable...more
The SEC on June 2, 2025, filed a complaint against David A. Nagler and New Line Capital LLC (Defendants) in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico for allegedly breaching their fiduciary duties and defrauding...more
SEC v. Nagler is the second enforcement action charging an investment adviser with undisclosed conflicts of interest since Chair Paul Atkins began his tenure on April 21, 2025. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)...more
Although certain enforcement priorities of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have shifted under new Chairman Paul S. Atkins, the SEC continues to scrutinize investment advisers’ disclosures regarding the fees...more
On April 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated a summary judgment ruling in favor of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Commonwealth Equity Services, LLC, also known as Commonwealth...more
On January 10, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settled charges against two fund managers (collectively the “Fund Managers”) and their sole owner, chief executive office, chief compliance office, and founder...more
On October 31, 2023, following its announcement by President Biden, the US Department of Labor (DOL or Department) released its Proposal 4.0 regarding ERISA fiduciary investment advice, including amended exemptions for...more
On August 23, 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), by a party-line vote of 3-2, adopted new rules applicable to investment advisers to private funds (“Private Fund Advisers”) that address transparency,...more
In a Legal Alert issued before the SEC open meeting, we posed five questions that our Investment Services team would be looking out for as part of this meeting. We now have answers to some of these questions....more
Presented below is a highlight of eight noteworthy enforcement actions the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken against investment advisers through the second quarter of 2023. Since the beginning of this year, the...more
Who may be interested: Registered Investment Advisers, Mutual Funds, Compliance Officers - Quick Take: The SEC settled charges against two affiliated registered investment advisers, alleging that the advisers failed to...more
On February 7, 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Division of Examinations (the “Division”) released its annual Priorities Report1 for upcoming examinations of registered investment advisers...more
In June 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed its first complaint alleging violations of both the care and compliance obligations of Regulation Best Interest, or Reg BI. In SEC v. Western International...more
Who may be interested: Investment advisers. Quick Take: The SEC announced settled charges against an investment adviser for the adviser’s breach of its fiduciary duty to its clients by failing to fully and fairly...more
Registered investment advisers, including dual registrant broker-dealers (collectively “advisers”) who provide discretionary investment management services to individual retirement accounts (IRAs), are fiduciaries under the...more
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has adopted a new standard called Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI) that shifts the focus on protecting customers first and foremost. Although the regulation possibly puts...more
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission staff recently published a bulletin reiterating the standards of conduct applicable to broker-dealers and investment advisers when making account recommendations to retail investors....more
The SEC Division of Examinations recently published its list of priorities for 2022. While it was a bit late compared to a typical year, the priorities letter provides a roadmap for firms to better understand where the...more
It may be a New Year, but 2022 is going to seem very familiar to Broker-Dealers (BD) and their Registered Representatives who advise retirement plans and IRAs: they are going to be spending a lot of time working to comply...more
The Department of Labor’s “Fiduciary Rule,” PTE 2020-02: The FAQs - Key Takeaways - ◾ The DOL has issued FAQs that generally explain PTE 2020-02 and the expanded definition of fiduciary advice. ◾ In FAQ 16, the DOL...more
In a forthcoming chapter in The Cambridge Handbook of Investor Protection (Cambridge University Press, 2021) UCLA Law Professor Sung Hui Kim asks "Do Lawyers Make Good Gatekeepers"? She posits that there is "a strong case...more
On October 25, 2021, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) released Field Assistance Bulletin 2021-02 (FAB 2021-02), which extends its non-enforcement policies regarding certain rules applicable to fiduciaries who provide...more
Overview: In general, the prohibited transaction rules (in ERISA and the Tax Code) (1) prohibit fiduciaries that provide investment advice to plans subject to Title I of ERISA (including 401(k) plans, pension plans and...more
President-Elect Joe Biden is quickly learning that the line of people seeking regulatory reform in the wake of the Trump administration's regulatory free-for-all is getting longer all the time. At the front of the line is...more
On December 18, 2020, the US Department of Labor (DOL or Department) adopted with limited changes its Proposal 3.0 regarding ERISA fiduciary investment advice, focused on the fiduciary status of rollover advice and a “best...more