Tag Archives: Volcker Rule

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Letters to Regulators: Letter to the SEC in Response to Request for Comment on Certain Information Providers Acting as Investment Advisors

AFREF sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission supporting its proposal to treat index providers as investment advisers given the many traits of index providers that resemble investment advice.

Such proposals are necessary as index funds have grown to become a multi-trillion dollar industry but one whose decisions to include or exclude issuers from the indices, and which many fund managers must closely follow, remain opaque and feature a number of conflicts-of-interest. 

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Letter to Regulators: Letter Commenting on the SEC’s Proposal on Money Market Reforms

AFREF sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission supporting its proposals to reform Money Market Mutual Funds to better protect investors and the financial system. Money Market Mutual Funds have now been bailed out by policymakers twice in the last 12 years and benefit from paying higher interest rates above bank deposits without being subject to the same investor protection and safeguards as them.

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Letters to Regulators: Modernization of Beneficial Ownership Reporting

AFREF sent a comment to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) supporting the SEC’s proposals to modernize the reporting of beneficial ownership by including cash-settled derivatives in large position reports over Schedules 13D and 13G. We also urge the SEC to clarify its definition of who should constitute a “group” under the proposal as it should only apply to the sharing of material nonpublic information related to not yet disclosed large positions instead of efforts to improve the long-term corporate governance of companies.

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Letters to Regulators: Letter to the SEC on Stock Buybacks

AFREF led a letter with thirteen organizational signatories commenting in support of a rule proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission that would significantly increase the transparency of stock buybacks.  A central component of the proposed rule is daily disclosures of stock buybacks.  (Current disclosure requirements are only quarterly.)  In the comment letter, we commend the SEC on the proposed rule and make recommendations to further strengthen protections against market manipulation and insider trading that we believe would improve long-term financial stability and growth.

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Letters to Regulators: Comment Letter in Response to the SEC’s Proposal on Swaps/Derivatives/13-F

AFREF sent a comment to the Securities and Exchange Commission calling for the agency to close long-running loopholes that have enabled certain hedge funds to use swaps and derivatives to avoid disclosing large positions which in turn can lead to coordinated attacks on companies and unnecessary volatility in the underlying prices of certain companies’ stocks. The implosion of family office Archegos Capital is emblematic of such a problem as its use of certain derivatives to build over an over 10% position of a company’s outstanding shares were never revealed until after it was forced to unwind and leading Globally Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) to take over $10 billion in losses as a result.