Whitepapers

It’s Friday afternoon, and you’re planning to leave early and get a jump start on your weekend. You receive an email with the subject “Office 365 – Failed Login Attempts – Password Reset Required Immediately!” You wonder who tried to access your account or whether you forgot to logout of your email on the public computer at the hotel business center.

Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR) requirements are expected to be adopted by the European Commission (EC) by Q1 2019. Prior to finalisation, the EC and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) must resolve some differences over the SFTR level 2 Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS), but no further material changes are expected.

Just a couple decades ago, our market infrastructure was dominated by only a handful of securities exchanges. Fast forward to the present day, and there are now 18 national securities exchanges registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under Section 6(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”), 44 Alternative Trading Systems (ATS) and over 200 brokerdealers that internalize their customers’ trades.

If you were asked to describe a hacker, what image comes to mind? If you’re like most, you are probably picturing unintelligible text flying across a monitor as young men in black hoodies attempt to break into networks, engaging in a very technical dance and speaking in terms the average layperson would not understand.

All too often, we hear how another elderly investor was taken advantage of by some type of fraudster. Even more frequently, we receive queries from registered investment advisers (“RIAs”) asking what they can do about an elderly client they feel is being financially abused by a caregiver or who is suffering from diminished capacity challenges.

In an April 2003 speech by Lori Richards, the then-director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations mentioned one area where she believed some less-than-meticulous care has been given: the supervision of service providers and in particular, sub-advisers.