Compliance Tip of the Day: COSO Objective 5 – Monitoring Activities
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Raising Capital 101: A Securities Podcast - What Laws Affect Securities Offerings?
Payment for Order Flow (PFOF) and Gamification: Your Questions Answered
Summer Enforcement Action Review; Raising Money in a Pandemic - Investment Management Roundtable Discussion
Investment Management and Private Funds Roundtable – June 2020
Videocast: Asset management regulation in 2020 videocast series – FinTech initiatives
Videocast: Asset management regulation in 2020 videocast series – Fiduciary investment advice: The patchwork emerges
Videocast: Asset management regulation in 2020 videocast series – SEC enforcement
Videocast: Asset management regulation in 2020 videocast series – Complying with new SEC rules for broker-dealers
Investment Management Roundtable Discussion – Regulatory and Enforcement Update
Regulation Best Interest Videocast Series: Establishing An Investment Platform Post-Regulation BI
Investment Management Update - Focus on Data Privacy and Cybersecurity
These days, you'd be hard-pressed to find an business that isn't advertising on social media. But when it comes to financial service providers, social media marketing can become a double-edged sword, or worse a compliance...more
The year 2024 remained a busy one for state attorneys general (State AGs) and 2025 promises to be even busier. To assist in-house counsel, compliance professionals, and defense lawyers navigate the 2025 State AG enforcement...more
Gone With the Wind? Closed-End Funds Risk Extinction - Shares of SEC-registered closed-end funds (CEFs) have long held significant potential advantages for some investors. For example, unlike shares of mutual funds...more
Social media marketing is an important form of advertising in our digital world, particularly with a target audience of younger investors. This has caught the eye of FINRA and the SEC....more
The digital revolution has transformed the banking industry. As financial services and associated communications move online, it is more important than ever for institutions to manage and control their online presence....more
In the all-encompassing age of social media, a new breed of influencers has emerged — FINfluencers (financial influencers). These individuals leverage their significant number of followers on social mediaon platforms such as...more
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced an upcoming meeting of its Investor Advisory Committee, which will be held on June 6, 2024. The agenda includes a number of interesting topics....more
Welcome to the latest issue of Bracewell’s FINRA Facts and Trends, a monthly newsletter devoted to condensing and digesting recent FINRA developments in the areas of enforcement, regulation and dispute resolution. This month,...more
FINRA, as part of its targeted exam of member firms’ social media practices for gaining new customers, recently announced an $850,000 fine against M1 Finance LLC (“M1 Finance”) stemming from promotional social media posts...more
Investment firms and other financial institutions are subject to the strict recordkeeping and communication regulations laid out by both the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities and Exchange...more
On March 18, 2024, FINRA announced that it has fined a broker-dealer $850,000 in connection with the firm’s program to pay individuals with followings on social media sites (i.e., “influencers”) to promote the firm in social...more
Several years before announcing the first “off-channel” communications enforcement action, the SEC and FINRA cautioned broker-dealers and investment advisers about problematic record-keeping practices involving the use of...more
Securities products and social media don’t always mix. Just ask any of the celebrities who in recent years have faced SEC charges for unlawfully touting crypto asset securities. In March, the SEC settled charges against six...more
Welcome to the latest issue of Bracewell’s FINRA Facts and Trends, a monthly newsletter devoted to condensing and digesting recent FINRA developments in the areas of enforcement, regulation and dispute resolution. This...more
I attended the four-day SIFMA Compliance and Legal seminar last week, and there were a bunch of interesting soundbites from regulators that folks might find interesting. The challenge at these conferences is always...more
Social media influencers are individuals, sometimes celebrities, who help businesses gain customers through social media communications. Influencers may communicate, for example, on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,...more
In This Issue. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a sample comment letter on climate change disclosures; the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is conducting a review of brokerage firm...more
If you’re a regular reader of Hanzo, we’ve probably already convinced you that you need to be archiving any social media profiles that your organization maintains, along with your website. Chances are you’ve heard us talk...more
WARCs? WORMs? Is this a lost installment of the Lord of the Rings? Unfortunately, no. Rather, WARC and WORM are abbreviations that you should be familiar with if you’re maintaining digital archives for regulatory compliance,...more
When you need information, where do you go? For the majority of people today, the answer involves a smartphone and social media. From Facebook and LinkedIn to Instagram, Twitter, and even YouTube, social media is...more
Remember when nothing terribly important happened on social media? When Facebook was just a silly diversion where twenty-somethings could let their friends know what they were up to? For better or for worse, those days are...more
Do your web archives have inTegrity? There’s a trend today toward more interactive and personalized web content, but that makes online archiving technically challenging. In the financial services industry, FINRA and SEC...more
Reviving the U.S. IPO Market - A recent study based on work undertaken by the University of Florida found that the median age of companies going public in the United States in 1999 was 5 years. Between 20042016, the...more
On April 25, 2017, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (“FINRA”) released a Regulatory Notice titled Social Media and Digital Communications: Guidance on Social Networking Websites and Business Communications...more
It was a productive morning at the last meeting of its current term for the SEC Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies. The Committee, which has been renewed for two more years, approved three recommendations to...more